Your Doctor is Board Certified. Is Your Lawyer?
May 25, 2011
By: Thomas Sartwelle
The Professional Lawyer
It is estimated that 80%-90% of physicians practicing in the United States are board certified. On the other hand, less than 3% of private practice lawyers are board certified by a state or national certifying body. Why the stark contrast between the two professions?
This article explores the reasons that so few lawyers seek peer review certification and recognition as certified specialists while physicians continually expand the specialties and sub-specialties available for certification and re-certification.
This article also looks a the history and future of lawyer certification, compares it to medial board certification and discusses the issue of standard of care when certified lawyers are sued. Finally, it looks a the competition to legal board certification and probably the primary reason lawyer certification lags so far behind the medial profession, that is Super Lawyers-Best Lawyers. Analyzing how Super Lawyers-Best Lawyers impact the profession's most recent sea change -advertising-reveals why true peer review specialization certification will probably never be popular under the current professional paradigm. Finally, a paradigm shift is suggested in lawyers' path to professionalism, a model based primarily on medicine's familiar board certification strategy.
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