If you are about to get involved in a business activity where you feel a lawyer may be necessary, you may be asking yourself: "Which lawyer? How can I make sure I get the best lawyer for my money?" Finding the right lawyer for you does not have to be a difficult task. You can make an excellent selection using the following as guidelines:

QUALIFICATIONS
Attorneys specialize. General attorneys will work on most anything you give them, but most have a specialty. Call your local Bar Association and ask for a list of attorneys that handle your type of work. If you don't get a good answer (and sadly that is the case most of the time) , call your local library and ask where you can get a copy of the state book that lists attorneys and their specialties. Be careful here as attorneys use this book as a badge of honor and continue to list themselves long after they have stopped practicing. The final answer is to ask a friend. You may discover they know someone who knows someone and so on .

ENERGY
Pick a fast mover, one who gets right into action. Time is not always on your side, so you need someone who will get right down to business without jumping in feet first. Request an action plan. A good lawyer should be able to develop an action plan for you within a few days that will lay out his or her strategy for your case. Don't proceed without this vital step.

EXPERIENCE
Ask about the track record and experience of your lawyer or law firm in the area of your needs. Remember, a senior partner can often save you money even though his or her fee may be higher than others in the firm. Their vast experience and knowledge can often cut right through to the heart of the matter and save you both time and money in the long run. The senior partner will not do the research, that's for new attorneys, but he or she will control your case.

AVAILABILITY
Walk away from the daytime lawyer. Often key or critical events in your case will take place before or after the regular work day. You need a lawyer who will be available on a 24 hour basis. Your case is timely and important to you and should be timely and important to your lawyer. If you don't get a satisfactory answer on this one, look for another attorney.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Find an attorney who will make an effort to get along with you and your staff, but at the same time will be tough when it calls for toughness. You need a lawyer who can understand your position on a matter, but you also need a lawyer who will stand up for what is right. You hired an expert, so let your expert do his or her stuff. If you feel you are not getting straight answers, confront your attorney. If you still don't get satisfactory answers, fire him or her and go somewhere else. Your new attorney will get the case file from your former attorney.

REPRESENTATION
Remember that in most cases you are not just hiring a lawyer, you are hiring a law firm. In complicated matters a lawyer without a support staff is already behind the curve and may never catch up. You need to know that there are adequate resources available to your lawyer to properly carry out your task. Many attorneys use Para-Legals (non-attorney wannabes) to do the grunt work. This may be okay in simple cases, but if it gets complicated, you want an attorney to either do or closely supervise the work. Some law firms hire graduate attorneys waiting to pass their bar exams. These are excellent workers as they know how to research and are eager to show their potential bosses how good they are.

WORD OF MOUTH
Of course one of the tried and true methods of locating that just-right attorney is to watch the papers and see which firm seems to win their cases. Then ask around to see if they have the personality to work with you; and, of course , you need to determine if you can afford them.

ON-LINE RESEARCH
One marvelous thing about the Internet. It attracts all kinds of information. You can discover just about anything about any attorney in your area by tuning into one of the two on-line sites which list attorneys by specialty in your state. One site is www.westlaw.com and the other is www.martindale.com. Both are teriffic sites for information!