How PlainAttorney is made

The files we hold

We download the register file from data.ny.gov and keep every file we have compared. A change of status is a registration whose value differs between two consecutive files, matched by registration number. The move between “currently registered” and “due to re‑register” happens to every attorney every two years around their birthday, so we count it apart and never mark it as a change on a record.

The checks

A scripted pipeline loads each file into one database. It refuses to rebuild the database if the rebuild would lose rows its steps cannot restore, and it flags a source file that is older than the publisher’s update schedule. Pages read their figures from that database when you open them, so a page and its source line always describe the same file. We check the pipeline’s output against the file’s own totals rather than reading hundreds of thousands of records one by one, which is why every page states its file and date and how to confirm it.

Law schools and firms

The register holds the law school and the employer as each attorney typed them, in thousands of spellings. We match school spellings to 234 schools with published rules (abbreviations expanded, a school’s former names kept together). A spelling we cannot match with certainty is shown as written and counted in no school. A school page exists for a school with 25 or more living graduates on the register. Where a school page gives the share “registered”, it counts attorneys currently registered or due to re‑register: the value every attorney passes through at each registration, including registrations whose due month has passed but which the register has not marked delinquent.

Employer spellings are merged into one firm when they differ only by case, punctuation, “&” or “and”, spacing and the entity suffix (LLP, PC and the like). A firm’s former names, the firms it merged with, and short or office-tagged forms of its name are counted with it too; each firm page lists those other names, and an attorney’s record gives the employer exactly as the register spells it. Only employers whose names mark a law practice count as law firms (9,583 of them); courts, agencies, companies and public defenders are counted separately. A firm page exists for a firm with ten or more living attorneys. A firm’s count is of attorneys who name it on the register, wherever they work: it is not the firm’s head count or its New York office.

Other files

A foreign office’s postcode is removed from its city so that one city is counted once; an address with a city but no U.S. state is counted as an office outside the U.S., and one with neither as no address. County rates divide currently registered attorneys with an office in the county by the county’s population from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-year estimates (U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B01003). Bar exam pass rates are copied from the New York State Board of Law Examiners’ annual file, which reports them by type of candidate (New York law schools, other ABA-approved schools, foreign-educated), not by school; they appear on the pass-rate analysis, not on school pages. Rules are quoted from their published text and cited.

How the pages are written, and where AI is used

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: every number comes from a database query over the files above, sentences on a record are built from that record’s own fields, and each analysis states its method and limits. Guides are checked against the rules they quote before they are published.

What the register cannot tell you

The register records registration and standing. It does not record practice areas, experience, ratings, fees, disciplinary reasons or dates, and it is not a certificate of good standing. An address or employer is whatever the attorney last reported, and a file is a snapshot: a status can change after its date. We add none of the things the register lacks. For an official statement, contact the Attorney Registration Unit (nycourts.gov/attorneys).

Who answers for it

PlainAttorney’s data editor reviews every correction request; the publisher and its owner are named on the about page. Write to hello@plainattorney.com: we check a reported error against the source file and answer within one month. An error of ours is corrected at once and listed on the corrections page; an error in the court system’s file is reported to the court system.