Finding a lawyer is often harder than it looks, especially one best fit for serving a client’s specific needs. Today, many opt for the internet in search of their perfect match, and one legal start-up believes it has found the answer to the endless search process for the best qualified attorney out there.
Legalist is the brainchild of two Harvard undergrads, who developed the organization after needing a lawyer themselves, and realizing how difficult it was to evaluate a lawyer’s effectiveness simply from online attorney reviews.
This legal start-up created an algorithm that will rate lawyers based on publicly available court records, and mine through data to match clients with attorneys who previously have won similar cases. It will also profile litigators’ win-loss records and consider the proximity of the client to the lawyer in question. Clients will be able to view profiles of the lawyers chosen by the algorithm, and will then be able to select their choice candidate and contact the attorney directly through the platform.
Currently Legalist is the only legal start-up out there using an attorney’s win-loss record as a factor in the search process. Sites like Avvo and Yelp instead only rely on published articles, client reviews, disciplinary records and the like when rating their lawyers.
At this time, the legal start-up is undergoing beta-testing using only Massachusetts cases, and is scheduled to launch later this year with only this state’s lawyers. It will expand its services across the United States over time as the organization gains popularity and builds up its caseload and credibility.
Would you use this service if you needed a lawyer? Is the measure of a quality attorney best done by an algorithm or should resources like this be one of many factors in selecting the right counsel for a client?
Let us know what you think.