A WORD OF CAUTION:

Anyone with a bar license and access to a computer can create a website and declare themselves to be an animal law attorney. When you visit those sites, the most you can be sure of is that the person went to law school, can use a dictionary, and likes animals. What you cannot be certain of, on the other hand, is whether the person truly is a competent lawyer who knows how to actually handle an animal law case.

As you click past the colorful pictures of kittens and puppies on those websites, one good test is to see if you can find the answers to two important questions hidden among the adjectives:

Question #1:  How long has the person actually been an attorney?

Question #2:  How many animal law cases has the attorney actually successfully handled in their career?

The more inexperienced the practitioner, and the fresher they are out of law school, the less likely you are to find any hard information about their own experience at all, and more likely to find these things instead:

• A liberal use of phrases such as "we", "our firm", and "our office", implying that you are hiring a team of lawyers in an established office rather than a recent graduate sitting at a laptop in a coffee shop.
• Links to other websites, blogs, posts, and animal-related news articles that have nothing to do with the lawyer's own particular experience or specialized knowledge in any fashion.
• Extensive promises about "compassion", "concern", "commitment", and a host of other related buzzwords selected to convince you of the attorney's deep personal involvement in your case.

I am different. First, I can answer the two important questions straight up:

Answer #1:  I have been an attorney for 30 years, over a quarter of a century of good, hard, law work.

Answer #2:  I have successfully handled over 1500 animal law cases in my career.

In fact, let's get even more specific:

I guarantee you that no other lawyer can make all those claims and support them. An attractive webpage is no substitute for experience, and I am the most well–known and experienced animal law attorney in this country. The courses I've taught, awards received, hearings fought, verdicts achieved – the time and knowledge those took to accomplish really mean something. At my practice, there is no "us" or "we" – there is just one attorney: me. At my practice, the articles are either those I wrote myself or which have been written about me. At my practice, I am not pre–"committed" to you or your case – until we meet, I have no idea who you are, what your case is, or if there is any good reason to be committed, compassionate, or concerned about it. What you can be assured of, however, is that once I do decide to become involved, my adjectives will have a real life basis to back them up, and you will not find in this nation a more experienced, intelligent, creative, and effective litigator and trial attorney on your side, one focused on confronting and overcoming each obstacle in the path between your specific animal law problem and its satisfactory solution.

Should you have any question about your legal rights or responsibilities affected by an animal's actions, by an owner's actions, by the health, safety, or welfare of an animal, or by the obligations or privileges associated with having an animal, please contact me by phone (503) 546-8052, by fax (503) 841-6278, or by e-mail at geordied@animallawpractice.com.