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.