I’m Kurt Arbuckle. I’m an attorney here in Houston, and I represent people who have received personal injuries because someone was negligent, because of a dangerous product or because of a dangerous condition.
One of the questions I often get asked is what should a person look for in a lawyer? There really is one main thing in Texas. The Texas state government provides something called board certification. A lawyer who has sufficient experience, who has been practicing long enough and can meet the requirements, is allowed to say that they’re a specialist in an area, that they have board certification. This involves having practiced in that area as a main part of the lawyer’s career; it involves passing a test to show that the lawyer is competent in the law. It involves getting recommendations from the judges, it involves getting recommendations from other lawyers, and it has to be re-certified every five years to make sure that the lawyer is keeping up with the latest trends in the law. This is something that’s done by the State of Texas so that you can know that it’s not something that some lawyer can just pay for and tell everybody that they’re board certified. It’s something that you can rely on if you have lawyer who is board certified, you know that you’ve got a lawyer who has been tested and who has recommendations from other lawyers and judges.