How do I look up the trial experience of a lawyer? I want to review the trial experience of a particular plaintiff lawyer in Ontario. Where can I get this information? . . . no answer Then how does one look up a lawyer's trial record in other jurisdictions around the world? Maybe I can adapt the method to Ontario.
Sounds like you are doing this search surreptitiously. If not, the process is the same, except for asking the lawyer himself. Regardless of the actual value of knowing a lawyer's trial experience - the value and knowledge of an attorney is much more than trial experience, and the best indicators of experience and judgement are the least public aspects of a lawyer's work - there are two major sources of information: public search engines and court record systems. Your searches will yield a lot of raw data in terms of personal names, case names and legal documents that you will need to use your own judgement when analyzing. Google: Best thing to do is start with Google and the lawyer's name. That may sound simplistic, but a simple Google search will give you any firms he is associated with, any news articles with his name in conjunction with trial cases, professional affiliations, and more. Once you find any references, you will find case names, names of past clients, and more. Search again. Follow all the rabbit trails. Google doesn't typically show search results from commercial databases and library catalogs. Most public libraries have access to commercial journal and magazine databases that cover thousands of titles, including law journals, as well as databases of historical newspapers; if not, university libraries do. You may need to go to a state or provincial law college to access legal journals. Contact the people - past clients, etc. - you find and ask them about the lawyer and the trials in question. I doubt very much any lawyer will have anything more to say that you need to talk to him yourself. Bear in mind that if you misrepresent yourself to people you contact about the lawyer - you say you're looking for a long lost cousin on the pretext of finding out information about the lawyer and his cases - you're treading a fine legal line called pretexting. Pretext is legally defined as a reason for an action which is false while offered to cover up the true intention. If you pretext, it can come back to bite you. Court records: Find the court record system for your jurisdiction. These will greatly vary, and vary between civil and criminal courts. Google will lead you to the website of the court jurisdiction in question; there will be different methods of access to the court records systems. The big problem you're up against is that many cases are settled out of court, and there will be no records in court systems. And if there are records, you will have to parse the decisions to find out if the lawyer in question was actually involved. As a last resort (other than asking the lawyer himself), hire an unemployed just-graduated law student to research for you :)
Yes. The jurisdiction I am familiar with is England and Wales. Conviction requires evidence (witness testimony is evidence) which proves the case "beyond reasonable doubt". It is open to the jury to find the witness so convincing that they find that they are sure the defendant committed the crime. In general of course, prosecutors prefer to have some supporting evidence (either additional witnesses, or circumstantial evidence - like DNA.)
The first question would be whether those papers are indeed "legit", and we don't do product reviews. Assuming the company didn't mess up and she was legally served, the next question would be whether she responded (in the legal sense) or not. If she failed to respond at all within 21 days (add 9 days if she is out of state), then your next step would be to file default divorce paperwork (presumably that's covered in the service you paid for). If she agreed to the divorce and the courts knows that, then you file some more paperwork and she doesn't have to show up to anything. If she disagreed, there will be an "answer" and possibly a counterpetition. There is an exchange of paperwork w.r.t. assets, a mandatory mediation stage, more paperwork, disclosures etc. and a pre-trial conference, followed by a trial. If you are at this stage, attendance is mandatory. As long as you have proof of service, nobody requested a postponement, and there is some evidence to support your claim, a default judgment can be issued. It's not clear what "divorce proceeding" you are referring to that involves her attendance. However, you can file divorce paperwork yourself or using an online service, and using an online service does not render the paperwork illegitimate. It's not guaranteed that the service did what would be necessary for you to get the outcome you desire, but that's beyond the scope of what we can tell you.
It's happened before in real life. Here is a 1994 article describing an Illinois criminal trial where defense counsel pulled the old switcheroo and sat a different person with him at the defense table instead of the defendant. The defendant, instead, sat somewhere else in the courtroom. After a witness misidentified the perp as the person at the defense table (not the defendant), the judge directed a not-guilty verdict to settle the case but sanctioned the defense attorney instead. The appellate and state supreme courts upheld the sanction (by a one-vote margin in both cases) but dissenting opinions noted counsel and defendant technically broke no rules. From the article: The dissent said Mr. Sotomayor's intent was only to show the unreliability of the prosecution's witness. Moreover, seating a client at counsel's table is customary but not required. Nor is a lawyer obliged [...] to help a witness make an identification. Also, here is a similar but not duplicate question.
No. If the person who reviews the contract is in fact a lawyer, and does the review in his or her capacity as a lawyer so that there is in fact an attorney-client relationship, the lawyer would be subject to malpractice liability if the review failed to meet the required standard of care. This generally means that the lawyer made errors that no reasonably careful attorney would make. It would also require proof of loss caused directly by the negligent legal advice. See the Wikipedia article on Legal Malpractice. If the person reviewing the contract is not a lawyer, or there is clearly no attorney-client relationship, there is probably no liability (although there might be a case for unlicensed practice of law, depending on the jurisdiction). A lawyer might be able to use a written disclaimer to indicate that there is not an attorney-client relationship, but I am not at all sure of that. I am not addressing the issue of why a lawyer would be willing to provide such advice for free, nor the ethics of asking for such free advice, as mentioned in the comment by @Studoku above. If a lawyer is willing to give such free advice, that is his or her decision. This answer assumes US law, since no jurisdiction is stated in the question or comments. Details may depend on the specific state. Laws elsewhere will likely be roughly similar, but may not be. This answer is not to be construed as legal advice, but merely as a general opinion on the state of the law, for educational purposes.
Yes Deciding a case on a basis the parties have not raised is a denial of natural justice (or procedural fairness) and invalid. The reason is very simple, the parties have not had the opportunity to produce evidence or make submissions about C or D that might have changed the judge’s mind about them. Notwithstanding, to successfully appeal, the aggrieved party must show there were arguments that could have been raised which could reasonably have altered the outcome. That said, it’s the judge’s courtroom and they can say “That’s interesting but what about C and D?” and then the parties can make submissions about them. They do have to be circumspect and make sure that they do not become one party’s advocate - one party might be well aware of C and D and don’t want them brought up because they damage their case and they are hoping the other party misses that - and then the bloody judge come charging in with his bloody duty to wider interests of justice. Non-judicial decision makers like arbitrators, adjudicators and other tribunals need to be even more circumspect because they generally don’t have a duty to anyone but the parties. Unlike in civil law systems, the role of the judge is to decide the dispute between the parties as a referee, not to determine some objective”truth” as an investigator. To keep things simple: if the plaintiff contends that the light was red and the defendant contends the light was green then, assuming there is no evidence opening the possibility, it is not open to the judge to find that the light was amber. Similarly, if the parties agree that red means go and green means stop, it is not the judge's role to tell the parties they are wrong (I'm sure questions would be asked but if the parties are adamant ...): since there is no dispute over this issue the judge would be wrong to agitate one. Now, a judge is free to apply the law that was argued as a whole - if arguments centred on Section 14 of the Relevant Act 1875 but Section 15 is applicable and germane the judge is not wrong for applying Section 15. However, they are on shakier ground if the bring in Other Slightly Relevant Act 1956.
To be very straightforward, yes, a police department would very likely have records of their past interactions with you in the form of police reports. They cannot just throw them away because it's been scrubbed from your public record. They detail the interactions the police officer had with you. That being said, those records would not show up in a general inquiry into your record, because those records are meant to protect the officer and the department as a reference point they can go back to in case some dispute arose in the future. If a police officer really wanted to find them, they'd have to do a bit of digging for them. The difficulty in finding them would depend on what system the particular police department uses to store those records. Smaller departments may just file them in a cabinet somewhere, whereas larger ones may actually have their own searchable database. But a traffic cop out on the street is only gonna see what you're seeing at the DMV - nothing. There is also a formal NCIC database, but traffic violations would never end up in there. That is a national database that basically stores red flag persons of interest (think stolen vehicles, sex offenders, and gang members). Sometimes multiple departments within a state will share their information with each other, but a department's database is usually kept to that department only. Also keep in mind court records. The court case that had a violation removed under such and such conditions is still gonna be a public record. Those records would generally be available to a judge overseeing your case so if you repeatedly end up in court for the same thing, they're gonna know and they're gonna stop scrubbing it from your record or offerring certain options because you're clearly not learning your lesson. Many laws allow you to have one offense stricken per year and similar stuff like that, but that kind of stuff doesn't just permanently disappear. They have to keep record of it in order to know you've already had your once per year etc. Also a note about parking violations: not all of those are actually issued by police. If it was issued by a private firm then that is not something that would ever show up on your record. It would just be in a database somewhere with whatever private firm issued the fine. Those kind of tickets get sent to collections and hurt your credit score if you don't pay them, rather than affecting your driving record.
Some people seem to believe that just because something happens 'in the internet' it is somehow outside normal jurisdictions. Wrong. In may be harder to investigate and prosecute crimes in the internet, but the laws apply all the same. There are some problems when it is unclear 'where in the world' something did happen -- in the jurisdiction of the perpetrator, the victim, or the service provider? But problems of jurisdiction apply e.g. to international fraud cases in the non-web-world as well. In many jurisdictions, the informed and voluntary consent makes some things legal which would otherwise be illegal. For instance, if two boxers get into the ring, it is understood that each of them did consent to be hit by the other. But usually two fighters could not legally agree to a fight to the death, because even if there are laws on assisted suicide, they do not apply to a fight. Insults, libel, and slander are not on the same level as homicide. There are jurisdictions where they are not prosecuted without the request of the victim. But an insult might also violate other laws, e.g. disturbing the peace. So don't bet on such an app unless you know for sure which jurisdictions are involved.