Editorial policy
What we publish, what we will not, and how it is made
- Publisher
- PlainAttorney
PlainAttorney publishes what the New York attorney register records and what the court rules say about it, and nothing it cannot trace to a named public file or a quoted rule. Every figure is computed from the register when the page is opened; every guide quotes the rule it explains.
What we publish
An attorney’s record shows the register’s own fields: name, registration number, admission year and department, the office’s city, employer and law school as the attorney reported them (not the street address or telephone the register also holds), and the status, with its meaning under 22 NYCRR 118.1 and its history across the files we hold. Counts put a record in context: how many attorneys share a school, a firm or a city.
What we will not publish
No ratings, reviews, practice-area claims or fee estimates: the register holds none of these. No lists of attorneys by disciplinary status; each attorney’s own record states its status. No reason or date for a suspension or disbarment, because the register gives none; the Appellate Division’s order does. No deep links into the court system’s own attorney search, whose terms do not allow them.
How pages are made, and where AI is used
A scripted pipeline loads each register file into one database; pages read their figures from it when you open them. We use AI tools to write the code, the page templates and the prose of the guides and research write-ups. AI does not decide the figures: they come from database queries, and each analysis states its method and limits. Guides are checked against the rules they quote before they are published.
Independence
Advertising pays for the site. No attorney, firm or advertiser can pay to add, change, rank or remove a record, and none has a say in what is written.
Corrections
Tell us about an error at hello@plainattorney.com. We check it against the source file and answer within one month. An error of ours is corrected at once and listed on the corrections page with its date; an error in the court system’s file is reported to the court system, and the page follows at the next file.