Legal Research

Provincial, Territorial and State Lawyer Licensing Databases

By Dan Pinnington

I have had calls from lawyers in the midst of handling apparent fraud attempts who were wanting to verify whether the lawyers named as the drafter of the collaborative family law agreements presented to them by the fraudsters were in fact real lawyers. There were names and signatures in the agreements ? but nothing else. No firm names, telephone numbers, addresses etc. Red flag!! Searches of the internet failed to turn up anything.

So where can you go to attempt to establish if you are dealing with a real lawyer that is in good standing?

A newly updated LLRX article, A Compilation of State Lawyer Licensing Databases, has a great list of the lawyer licensing databases, as well as the phone number for each licensing authority for 43 states.

And, here is the same list for the Canadian provinces and territories :

• Alberta
• British Columbia
• Manitoba
• New Brunswick
• Newfoundland and Labrador
• Nova Scotia
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut
• Ontario
• PEI
• Quebec
• Saskatchewan
• Yukon

Cross posted on Avoid a Claim and Lawyer Success Tips

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 26, 2010 (boomark / email).