Rating Litigation Services

by Mike Rosen

New Online Options
Services	Description
Courtroom Insight	Experts can post basic profile information for free but pay $349 a year to upload their entire résumé. Currently, there?s no charge to view profile reviews.
JuryBank	Jury research costs $10 for each mock juror. Most jury research projects cost between $1,000 and $5,000.
Positively Neutral	Will probably be free to lawyer viewers; neutrals will pay a modest, negotiated fee to participate.

Consumers have plenty of online services they can use for locating a lawyer to hire. But when litigators need to employ specialists - such as arbitrators, mediators, or expert witnesses - they often fall back on leads from colleagues they trust.

"Attorneys still use the archaic way of finding experts - sending out emails or asking other attorneys for names," says Mark Torchiana, founder of Courtroom Insight, a new San Francisco company that profiles 30,000 expert witnesses and litigation consultants, and more than 10,000 mediators and arbitrators. The company's website is part of a new breed of services that aims to change the way lawyers line up trial and settlement services.

The packaging and technology may be new, but the site's approach is based on the same enduring principle: "We attorneys really value the opinions of other attorneys," says Debra Bogaards, managing partner of Pave & Bogaards in San Francisco, who has posted reviews on CourtroomInsight.com. "What distinguishes this site is the attorney reviews. More than credentials, it matters how [an expert] does in trial or under a difficult cross-examination."

Typically, lawyers rely on word of mouth to learn about mediators and arbitrators, so the same well-known ADR professionals end up doing the bulk of the dispute-resolution work, says mediator Ruth Raisfeld of New York. She is listed on PositivelyNeutral.com, which expects to expand its services to California next month. Lest a lawyer on the losing side of an issue be tempted to leave a negative review, Positively Neutral asks attorneys who leave ratings an extra question to help filter out potential bias.

"[Losing] can color a lawyer's view of an arbitrator, so we ask reviewers whether the settlement was better or worse [for their client] than they had expected," says the site's founder, Robert Harris. "It's especially telling when an arbitrator still receives good ratings from a lawyer who wasn't happy with the ultimate decision."

A third new site, JuryBank.com, lets lawyers test their courtroom strategies online with mock jurors - ordinary, jury-eligible people from across the country. Traditional mock-jury research often can be quite expensive, as it may require extensive travel to round up the right mix of people, notes Charles Hockenbury, a JuryBank director in Newport Beach. But by doing everything online, his service keeps costs down. Lawyers can survey a roster of eligible mock jurors - selecting either from a broad national cross section or even from a particular ZIP code - without ever having to be in the same room with them.

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