How to tell whether your attorney has any experience

An eager school boy gets his first experience in using War Ration Book Two
–An eager school boy gets his first experience in using War Ration Book Two–

How do you know if the attorney you hire has any experience in the area in which you hired him?

I have one answer to this question: Research the cases the attorney has been involved in, in Oklahoma courts.

The Oklahoma State Courts Network (“OSCN”) is a listing of most of the cases that have happened in the 13 largest counties in Oklahoma over the last 20 years or so. Each case displays what is known as a “docket sheet” which shows the events that happened in the case. Some events in which documents were filed include links to the view the documents.

The OSCN is good resource for a lot of things including seeing what type of case history an attorney has. You can search using the attorney’s name or the his/her bar number and then limit the search to certain types of cases. I used the OSCN in my recent post How to find an attorney to do an Oklahoma probate to demonstrate how to tell if your attorney has probate experience.

I created a short screen cast to introduce you to the OSCN and show you, step by step, how you can determine how much experience your attorney or potential attorney has.

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Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."