About PlainAttorney

NY OCA
Data source
Attorney registration + discipline
429K+
Attorneys
Registered in New York
Public
Records
State bar registration data
None
Ratings
Raw public data, no rankings

Our mission is to make authoritative public-record data legible to everyone. PlainAttorney exists to help researchers, journalists, and ordinary readers find and understand information that already belongs to the public, without paywalls, without data-broker profiling, and without hiding the underlying source. We focus on clear presentation, transparent methodology, and careful labeling, so you can use what you find here to ask better questions and make better decisions.

PlainAttorney is a free attorney lookup tool that makes public state bar records accessible and searchable. We believe everyone has the right to verify the credentials and discipline history of attorneys before making important legal decisions.

Our Data

All data comes directly from the New York Office of Court Administration, published as open data via data.ny.gov. This includes:

  • 429,620 attorney registrations from New York State
  • Bar status records including active, suspended, disbarred, and other statuses
  • Law school information for each registered attorney
  • Practice location data covering 2,609 cities

Methodology

We download raw datasets from the NY OCA Socrata open data portal, process them through our ETL pipeline, and organize them into searchable pages. No data is modified, interpolated, or editorialized. Attorney names, statuses, and other fields are presented exactly as they appear in the source data.

Data Currency

PlainAttorney currently displays attorney registration data from the New York Office of Court Administration as of Q1 2026. The NY OCA updates their attorney registration dataset on the Socrata open data portal on an ongoing basis as registrations are filed, renewed, or status changes are processed.

We refresh our database quarterly to incorporate new registrations, status changes, and updated records. Because the source data is continuously maintained, there may be a lag of up to 3 months between an official status change and its reflection on PlainAttorney. For the most current status of a specific attorney, verify directly with the NY Courts Attorney Search.

Why Discipline Transparency Matters

Unlike some legal directories that downplay or hide discipline records, PlainAttorney prominently surfaces this information. We believe consumers deserve to know if an attorney has been disbarred, suspended, or otherwise disciplined before hiring them. All discipline data comes from public state bar records.

Many online attorney directories are marketing platforms, attorneys pay to be listed, and discipline records may be minimized or omitted. PlainAttorney takes the opposite approach: we present the data exactly as the state publishes it, with equal prominence for discipline records and active status. Disbarred and suspended attorneys are surfaced just as prominently as active ones, with clear labeling so there is no ambiguity about status. This transparency is a public safety feature, not an editorial choice.

Not Affiliated

PlainAttorney is not affiliated with any state bar association, the New York Office of Court Administration, or any government agency. We do not provide legal advice, referrals, or endorsements. We are an independent data portal presenting public information.

PlainAttorney pulls raw attorney registration records from the New York Office of Court Administration via the Socrata open data portal, runs them through a structured ETL pipeline, and organizes them into searchable pages by name, city, law school, and bar status. No records are altered or summarized, names, statuses, and registration details appear exactly as the state publishes them.

We prioritize discipline transparency because consumers deserve straightforward access to this public information. Disbarred and suspended attorneys are surfaced just as prominently as active ones, with clear labeling so there is no ambiguity about status.

Important Disclaimer

This site is for informational purposes only and does not provide legal advice. PlainAttorney does not endorse, recommend, or rate any attorney. The information presented comes from public state bar records and may not reflect the most current status. Always verify attorney credentials directly with the relevant state bar association before making legal decisions.

Editorial Independence

Every profile on PlainAttorney is built from official source data by a documented data pipeline, primarily the New York Office of Court Administration (OCA) attorney registration dataset, with attorney-fee context from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and firm-level consumer-complaint context from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. No profile is hand-written and no field is typed in by an editor: each value is read directly from the official source record. The PlainAttorney editorial team, is responsible for the decisions a pipeline cannot make on its own, which datasets to use, how each field is defined and labeled, what the methodology says, and how corrections are handled.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from attorneys, law firms, or law schools, and no message from a covered party will move it up or down a ranking. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense, advertisers do not influence which entities we cover or how we present data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Editorial Team

PlainAttorney is published by PlainAttorney Editorial, a small independent team that builds public-data portals so that government legal-records remain accessible to the people they describe. Our editorial work on PlainAttorney is led by editors with backgrounds in legal-data analysis, public-records journalism, and bar-registration research, disciplines that combine to vet what the New York State Unified Court System publishes, surface its limitations, and translate technical taxonomies (NY OCA Attorney Registration data, ABA practice categories, law school accreditation classes) into language a prospective client, journalist, or policy researcher can actually use.

We do not employ practicing attorneys and do not publish original legal advice. Instead, our editorial standard is verification, citation, and transparency: every data field we surface is traceable to an OCA or state bar publication, every caveat (registration lag, disciplinary recency, practice-area inference) is disclosed at the page level, and every methodology decision is documented at /methodology. When source data has known shortcomings, for example, NY OCA registration may lag actual practice-status changes by months, we say so on the page where the data appears, not buried in a footer.

Editorial questions, fact corrections, and source-attribution issues should go to hello@plainattorney.com. We are accountable for what we publish: every correction we make is reflected in the next data refresh, and our update schedule is documented at the top of this page so readers can see how recent the underlying figures are. PlainAttorney does not accept paid placement, sponsored listings, or any incentive that would compromise the neutrality of how attorneys and law schools appear on the site.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or feedback? Email us at hello@plainattorney.com.

We welcome:

  • Questions about data sources or methodology
  • Reports of apparent data errors or anomalies
  • Suggestions for additional data or features
  • Media and research inquiries