Plain-language explainers
Legal Guides
Practical resources for reading attorney data and making informed legal decisions, written from public NY OCA bar records. Every example is a real record, and none of it is legal advice.
- 7
- Guides
- NY OCA
- Data source
- No advice
- Informational only
Browse the guides
Seven explainers covering bar admission, discipline, law schools, and how to read the public record.
The factors that actually matter when picking representation: credentials, discipline history, and fit.
A step-by-step path to verifying any attorney's disciplinary history against the public record.
What active, inactive, suspended, and disbarred actually mean, and why the distinction matters.
Bar admission explained for non-lawyers: the statuses, the credential, and how to verify it.
Which law schools send the most graduates into the New York bar, and what the counts do and don't reveal.
Practical tips for finding and confirming an attorney using public bar registration records.
A plain-language map of attorney specializations to help you find the right kind of lawyer.
Methodology
Every guide on PlainAttorney is grounded in the same public bar registration data that powers the attorney lookup. Guides explain how to read and verify that data; they do not provide legal advice, and they do not rank or recommend specific attorneys.
- Sources: Every factual claim in a guide cites the underlying source (state bar, BLS, ABA, or academic research). Unsourced statements are avoided.
- Verification paths: Each guide points to the official channel where a reader can verify the claim themselves, typically the state court administration search portal or the data publisher.
- Update cadence: Guides are reviewed when the underlying data refreshes, when governing law changes, or when reader feedback surfaces an inaccuracy. Updates are dated on the individual guide pages.
- Scope limits: Guides describe how bar systems work in general and in the states where PlainAttorney has data. They do not constitute legal advice and do not substitute for consultation with a licensed attorney on a specific matter.
Primary sources: NY Office of Court Administration (data.ny.gov), BLS OES Lawyers (SOC 23-1011), American Bar Association. Full methodology documented at /methodology.