Working out whether a lawyer is good, and more specifically good for what you want, is difficult even for another lawyer.
People often ask me for recommendations of a lawyer outside my field, or indeed in my field if I can't help them because my firm is conflicted or for some other reason. The thing is I don't personally use lawyers, so I have only the vaguest idea. I can tell some things from firms' reputations and their websites, but even for me it is a hard call.
And the law firms I have most experience of in practice tend to be the ones which I would go out of my way to disrecommend :-).
So I agree, that is a problem. Particularly for litigation. Unless you are doing litigation a lot - which is likely to be bad news for you - you can't get experience of a lawyer and decide that you like them. Word of mouth is also rather less useful.
People often ask me for recommendations of a lawyer outside my field, or indeed in my field if I can't help them because my firm is conflicted or for some other reason. The thing is I don't personally use lawyers, so I have only the vaguest idea. I can tell some things from firms' reputations and their websites, but even for me it is a hard call.
And the law firms I have most experience of in practice tend to be the ones which I would go out of my way to disrecommend :-).
So I agree, that is a problem. Particularly for litigation. Unless you are doing litigation a lot - which is likely to be bad news for you - you can't get experience of a lawyer and decide that you like them. Word of mouth is also rather less useful.