LouLife

245 of Louisville’s Top Attorneys, Chosen by Their Peers.
About the Listings

This list is excerpted from the 2007 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, the pre-eminent referral guide to the legal profession in the United States. Published since 1983, Best Lawyers lists attorneys in 77 specialties, representing all 50 states, who have been chosen through an exhaustive survey in which thousands of the nation’s top lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. The 2007 edition of Best Lawyers, published in September 2006, is based on more than 1.7 million evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers.

The method used to compile Best Lawyers remains unchanged since the first edition more than 20 years ago. Lawyers are chosen for inclusion based solely on a vote of their peers. Listings cannot be bought, and no purchase is required to be included.

The nomination pool for the 2007 edition consisted of all lawyers whose names appeared in the previous edition of Best Lawyers, lawyers who were nominated since the previous survey, and new nominees solicited from listed attorneys. In general, lawyers were asked to vote only on nominees in their own specialty in their own jurisdiction. Lawyers in closely related specialties were asked to vote across specialties, although voting lawyers were also given an opportunity to offer more detailed comments on nominees. Each year, half of the voting pool receives fax or email ballots; the other half is polled by phone.

Voting lawyers were provided this general guideline for determining if a nominee should be listed among “the best”: “If you had a close fri/files/storyimages/or relative who needed a real estate lawyer (for example), and you could not handle the case yourself, to whom would you refer them?” All votes and comments were solicited with a guarantee of confidentiality – a critical factor in the viability and validity of the surveys. To ensure the rigor of the selection process, lawyers were urged to use only their highest standards when voting, and to evaluate each nominee based only on his or her individual merits. The additional comments were used to make more accurate comparisons between voting patterns and weight votes accordingly. Best Lawyers uses various methodological tools to identify and correct for anomalies in both the nomination and voting process.

Ultimately, of course, a lawyer’s inclusion is based on the subjective judgments of his or her fellow attorneys. While it is true that the lists may at times disproportionately reward visibility or popularity, the breadth of the survey, the candor of the respondents, and the sophistication of the polling methodology largely correct for any biases.

Best Lawyers lists are available at www.bestlawyers.com. “Best Lawyers,” and “The Best Lawyers in America” are registered trademarks of Woodward/White, Inc.

 The Best Lawyers List

About BEST LAWYERS

The Best Lawyers in America© 2007 is published by Woodward/White Inc., Aiken, S.C., and can be ordered directly from the publisher. For information call 803-648-0300; write 129 First Avenue, SW, Aiken, SC 29801; e-mail info@bestlawyers.com; or go to www.bestlawyers.com. Online subscriptions to Best Lawyers databases are available at the Web site.

Woodward/White Inc. has used its best efforts in assembling material for this list but does not warrant that the information contained herein is complete or accurate, and does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident or any other cause. All listed attorneys have been verified as being members in good standing with their respective state bar associations as of Sept. 1, 2005, where that information is publicly available. Consumers should contact their state bar for verification and additional information prior to securing legal services of any attorney.

Copyright 2005 by Woodward/White Inc., Aiken, S.C. All rights reserved. This list, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without permission of Woodward/White Inc. No fees may be charged, directly or indirectly, for the use of the information in this list without permission.

BY THE NUMBERS

• The Kentucky Bar Association has 15,219 member attorneys statewide. Of those, 4,125 are in Jefferson County, 2,835 of whom are men and 1,290 women. The KBA is a mandatory bar, which means lawyers cannot practice in the state without being members.

• There are 3,211 member attorneys in the Louisville Bar Association, a non-mandatory bar. Of this number, 307 are non-residents (not living or practicing in Jefferson County), 157 are government employees and 77 are judicial employees.

• A 2005 survey of Louisville Bar Association members — to which one-third of the membership responded — produced these numbers: the median age for LBA attorneys was 46, with 18.5 years the average length of time in practice; one-third of the local bar members worked in offices with more than 20 attorneys and one-fifth of the members were solo practitioners; nearly one-fourth were litigators and nearly one-half partners or associates in firms.

• The profile of the 142 students in the fall 2006 entering class at the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law includes: an age range of 21-51, with an average age of 25; 80 men and 62 women; 109 Kentucky residents, 50 of them from Louisville; and 102 enrolled in day classes and 40 in evening classes.