Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi everybody and welcome to my Youtube channel. What Iíd like to use this channel for, at
least initially, is to go over a lot of the questions that I get asked. It turns out I
found that a lot of the same questions pop up over and over again and the answer to them
is really not hard so I figured I would shoot a video and you guys can maybe learn how I
get the answer. If you have the same question pops up for you, you guys can look it up yourself.
You donít need to go through me and so forth so. The first question I want to deal with
today is how do you go online to verify an attorneyís bar record. So that basically
allows you to verify that the person is an attorney. If they are, whether or not their
license is active, what their mailing address is, phone number, where they went to school,
whether or not they have any disciplinary complaints against them. So thatís a question
that I get actually quite a bit, probably the number one question. To answer it, all
you really need is a web browser. So, tell you what, why donít you hope online with
me right now and I will show you how to do it. Okay everyone, so the first thing you
want to do is open a web browser. So, on my computer, itís down here on the right, er,
the left rather. And you go ahead and click on it and it opens Google Chrome. So normally
I log in to Gmail first but in this case what I want to do is go to Google. And, lets go
ahead and do California first. The way youíre going to do it is California State Bar and
type in ìattorney searchî. So if you were doing this for, say, New York, you type in
New York state bar attorney search ñ weíll do that right after this. And then if youíre
looking for Georgia, you type in Georgia State Bar attorney search. Illinois, Texas, whatever
state youíre looking for go ahead and type that name in in place of California. So if
you do California, though, you get this first hit where it says Attorney Search and itís
from the members ñ excuse me ñ the members dot calbar dot ca dot gov home page. So go
ahead and click on that and it takes you to this page of the State Bar of California.
And, you get this box here and it says enter attorney name or bar number. So, for example,
letís say youíve met an attorney that you want to hire, but you want to make sure that
their license is active, you want to see whether or not theyíve been subject to discipline
in the past. So what you do, letís say that youíve met me so you go ahead and type in
the attorneyís name, in this case, Andy Chen. This box here on the lower left where it says
include similarly sounding names. You can check that if you want. What that basically
does is it gives you search results not just from what youíve entered here, but stuff
that sounds phonetically similar. You can, if you want, it just gives you more hits.
Generally you can use this if you arenít quite sure of the spelling something like
that. But in this case, if youíre looking up me Andy Chen then you donít really need
to check this box. So, anyway, after you type in Andy Chen, click on Quick Search and ñ
lo and behold ñ you only get one hit. So, on this kind of abbreviated view what you
get is the last name of the attorney, whether or not theyíre active or inactive ñ in this
case Iím active, the bar number of the attorney, the city where they live, and the admission
date. In my case, I was admitted in December of 2009. If you want a more detailed view,
go ahead and click on the name and you get to this page. This is what I would call ñ
I guess ñ the public profile of every member of the State Bar of California. So to go over
some information here, at the top I have my name and bar number. And over here I have
my current status so in this case Iím active and it says below that this member is active
and may practice law in California. Going on further, I have my bar number again. My
mailing address so if you want go ahead and shoot me a letter. My phone number, fax number,
email if I disclose those. I havenít mainly because I get a lot of spam, but you can always
contact me by sending me a letter or giving me a call. Undergraduate school so ñ in this
case ñ where I went to college, law school, county that I live in, district. Down here
itíll list if Iíve ever gone inactive. In my case I havenít so all it says is active.
If, for example, I went inactive in 2011 itíll say inactive as of March 1, 2011 and then
if I became active again itíll say January 1, 2012 go back to active. Down here is where
you would find Actions Affecting Eligibility to Practice Law so if I had ever gotten in
to trouble with the state bar it would be listed here. If I had ever been subject to
any administrative action, it would be listed here also. So thatís the basic page that
every member of the California State Bar has. Over on the right here is additional stuff
that Iíve chosen to put in. So, this is me, thatís my picture. And it also says over
here other languages I speak and its Chinese and Mandarin. Over here it also says that
the people who work for me also speak Mandarin Chinese. And if you ever want to contact me
or find me on the web, hereís my website address andychenlaw.com.So thatís basically
how you do it. The basic idea again is go to Google and type in California State Bar
Attorney Search, Illinois State Bar Attorney Search, Washington State Bar Attorney Search,
whatever your state happens to be, and then at the search box go ahead and type in the
name of the attorney that you want right here, click on Quick Search, and it should give
you the name and all the other information that youíre interested in. So thatís how
you do it for California.Iím also licensed in New York so Iíll go over briefly how to
do that too. So what you want to do is ñ Iíll open up another browser and go back
to Google. Before where we were typing California State Bar Attorney Search, Iím going to type
in New York State Bar Attorney Search, but the logic is the same. So the first hit that
you get is from the courts dot state dot ny dot us server so go ahead and click on that.
New York implements it a little differently, but the idea is the same. For New York, you
have to type in this number here just to make sure that youíre not a machine so 31418,
click submit, and you get to this box that all these fields on it. In New York, Iím
actually listed as Andrew so go ahead and type in Andrew and Chen and here you can choose
to sort by city, last name, state, etc. So letís go ahead and sort by last name. Click
on Find Attorney.In the state of New York thereís actually 5 attorneys named Andrew
Che. Um, actually, sorry, 6 attorneys named Andrew Chen or some other similar sound thatís
similar so there are a couple guys here named Andrew Cheng ñ CHENG ñ but if you go through
here, Iím actually the second one Andrew Chen registration number 5048467 Los Altos,
California. Currently registered and I just got admitted in New York in 2012. So if you
click on the name again it goes to the more detailed view. And again hereís my address,
phone number, got admitted in 2012, next registration is May 2014, and I am a graduate of Santa
Clara University Law School. So that is basically how you do it. Again, go to Google, type in
blank the name of your state attorney ñ er, sorry ñ blank state bar attorney search and
youíll get to a page that should have a way to search the membership and if you type the
name of the attorney it should pop up the attorneyís name if theyíre a member of that
bar and you can click on the more detailed view and itíll show you their address, where
they went to school, so on and so forth. Each state does it a little bit differently. So
hopefully that was helpful and hopefully that was easy to understand, but that is basically
how you do it. Thatís how I verify if somebodyís an attorney and hopefully you guys can do
that yourselves in the future too. Anyway, if you have any other questions, go ahead
and shoot me an email or leave me a comment and, yeah, so go ahead and visit me online
andychenlaw.com and I will see you soon. All right, bye bye.