In the late 1970s the prohibition against lawyer advertising went away. The US Supreme Court held they had a connotational right to market their services through the media. Because of that there was a flood of advertising lawyers. Anyone who had a budget regardless of experience or background could set forth hire me for divorces or DUIs or bankruptcy or personal injury, that sort of thing.

In order to protect the public from folks who may not be as experienced as their advertising says they created a specialization process by which lawyers take a written test, they are reviewed by their peers, those who practice in the same area, they have a certain level of experience, they’ve had a number of trials under their belt. They get judges reviewing them and after all that is shifted through, they get a certification. That requires extra training each year to keep the certification and every five years they have to be recertified.

There’s some 22,000 lawyers in Arizona, there are 245 or so who are certified as specialists in injury and wrongful death litigation. My first certification was in 1992 so I was in the first group to be so certified. It doesn’t mean I’m any better than anybody else it means that I’ve seen a lot of different situations and have a greater knowledge base upon which to try to solve problems.