How to check a lawyer by case law: win rate and specialization

The choice of a lawyer is still often based on the advice of acquaintances or on the words of the lawyer himself about "many years of experience." But years of experience and real results in the courtroom are different things. An objective assessment of a specialist can only be made based on what is visible in judicial practice: how many cases he has conducted, in what categories and how they ended. Let’s figure out what to look for and where to get this data.

Certificate and status: the first mandatory check

It’s worth starting with the formal: does the person have the right to practice? The status of the certificate must be "Active" in the Unified Register of Advocates of Ukraine (UNRAU). A suspended certificate means that the lawyer is temporarily not entitled to provide legal assistance. This is a five-minute question, but without it, the rest of the analysis makes no sense.

The percentage of wins: why the number must be read correctly

The key objective indicator is the percentage of cases won. But looking only at "100%" is wrong: the number of cases is also important. One hundred percent in five cases is statistically less reliable than 72% in thirty. It is generally accepted that at least five cases are required for reliability. The decisions themselves can always be checked in the primary source — The Unified State Register of Court Decisions, where the full texts are published.

Collecting such statistics manually is realistic, but time-consuming: checking the UNBA register, searching for cases in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, reading dozens of decisions and comparing them takes an average of 5–8 hours per lawyer. That is why it is more convenient to use ready-made analytics. For example, there is an open lawyer rating by share of cases won, which compiles more than 20 thousand lawyers based on more than 99 thousand cases, with automatic weighting of the share of victories and the number of proceedings and filters by direction, period and region.

Specialization is more important than universality

A lawyer with fifty cases of one type is usually stronger than a "universal" with five cases in each category. Judicial practice is divided into civil, commercial, administrative and administrative offense cases - and experience in your type of dispute means more than general experience. It is worth paying special attention to the courts where the lawyer works: knowledge of procedures and local features often gives an advantage.

Trend and opponent verification

It is useful to look at the dynamics over the years: if a specialist had 80% of victories last year and noticeably fewer this year, it is worth finding out the reason - current data is more important than old ones. And another technique that is underestimated: check the lawyer of the opposing side. His typical arguments and weaknesses are your strategic advantage even before the start of the process.

Summary

An objective verification of a lawyer rests on three pillars: a valid certificate, the share of victories with a sufficient sample of cases, and specialized specialization. All this data is open - it is only a question of time to collect it. And if you can’t afford a lawyer yet, Ukraine has a free legal aid system (legalaid.gov.ua).