Attorneys, Law Firms, Corporate Counsel If you need to locate an attorney, you can always check the local phone and yellow page directories, but if you want more information on an attorney than a phone number and an office address, try Martindale-Hubbell's Lawyer Locator at http://www.martindale.com. The Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory has been posted on the Web for several years now. The print directory dates back to the 1800s, when it was called Martindale's United States Law Directory. Still the standard legal directory for locating attorneys, Martindale-Hubbell Law Directoryprovides listings of attorneys around the world. You can search by a lawyer's name, firm, location or area of law. This directory also provides law school faculty listings. There is an associated cost for attorneys to list in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, so not all attorneys list in this directory, but many large and mid-sized law firms list with this resource. Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory is also available on LexisNexis. In Wisconsin, an alternative to Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, is to use the Lawyer Directory provided by the Wisconsin Bar Association, at http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Lawyer_Directory. This site provides information on all attorneys who are members of the Wisconsin Bar Association and is a great way to locate information on Wisconsin attorneys and judges. Another alternative to Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, also located on the Web, is Findlaw Lawyer Directory/West Legal Directory at http://legalreccords.findlaw.com/search_index.jsp. For locating corporate counsel, Findlaw offers Findlaw's Corporate Counsel Center at http://www.corporate.findlaw.com. This site allows you to search for an attorney with experience in a specific legal matter, in particular courts and with particular judges. The Corporate Counsel magazine provides a survey of corporate counsel for the largest American companies in, "Who Represents America's Biggest Companies." Corporate Counsel magazine is available through Lexis-Nexis Academic. You can locate Lexis-Nexis Academic by selecting Electronic Resources at the Law Library home page at http://www.library.law.wisc.edu, select Cases, Legislation, & Regulations, scroll to Lexis-Nexis Academic. The Web site for Corporate Counsel magazine is located at http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/index.jsp. Once a print directory, the Directory of Corporate Counsel is now also available on LexisNexis. The Directory of Corporate Counsel contains information on the corporate law departments and practitioners of the companies of the United States and Canada. Hieros Gamos World Wide Directory at http://www.hg.org/lawfirms.html provides a directory to international law firms, US law firms, Canadian law firms, and links to an assortment of other legal directories. For example, this site provides a directory of expert witnesses, court reporters, process servers, and litigation support. Heiros Gamos also has directories to American law schools and faculty. An additional feature this site provides is links to law school rankings data, including a link to US News & World Report law school rankings. Another resource for locating information on attorneys, is to try use a business database such as Hoovers.com at http://www.hoovers.com. Hoovers profiles both public and private companies. To locate an attorney check the Key People section in the company profile. If you are searching for counsel at a public company, another good resource is located on the Securities and Exchange Commission Web site. The SEC now offers full-text searching on its database. This database can be located by going to the home page, at http://www.sec.gov. Select search for company filings under filings and forms (EDGAR). If you select "advanced search" in the full-text database, you can create a specific search for an individual name in the filing or to search for a phrase, put quotes around the phrase, for example, "general counsel." You can also limit a search by a specific company name, filing form, or date range. To locate attorneys representing an individual or company in federal court, you can search Pacer (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) for information at http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/. PACER is a fee-based service that provides access to the federal court filing service system. A link to their fee schedule is provided at the home page. Finally, if you want not just a brief attorney listing or profile, but desire information on the many talents, interests and benefits bestowed upon the legal community by a specific attorney, then you'll want to check what has been posted on an attorney's law firm or company web site. Judges The Federal Judicial Center at http://www.fjc.gov/public/home.nsf/hisj, provides information on federal judges. Another resource for judicial profiles can be located at Resources on Judicial Profiles by LLRX, at http:///www.llrx.com/columns/reference29.htm. Many state courts also provide biographical information on their judges, although not every states provide profiles of their judges. To locate biographies of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices, go to the Wisconsin Court System at http://www.wicourts.gov/about/judges/supreme/index.htm.
Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on October 17, 2006
This article appears in the categories: Law Library/IT
