It is important for you to know how to check a lawyer's record on appeal before you hire him or her. How many appeals have they handled? How many have they won? How many have they lost? From looking at the opinions of the Court of Appeals, does it look like the lawyer put a lot of work into trying to win the appeals they lost?
You can search for Court of Appeals decisions by a lawyer's name or Supreme Court Number (you should try both ways to make sure you do not miss anything). Let's use Appeal Lawyer Robert Alan Brenner as an example. I practice in the Second District. When you go to the web site (for which there is a link at the end of this paragraph), pick "Second District Court of Appeals" under "Source," pick "Anytime" under "Decided," enter "Brenner" in the "Full text" search area, make sure "Topics/Issues" is checked and click "Submit." You can see every case I handled in the Second District Court of Appeals that made it to a decision. Some of those are not my cases since "Brenner" will pull up some miss-hits, but you get the idea. Check each case by clicking on its link to confirm you found the attorney you were looking for. Here is the link to the web site.
Make sure you check a lawyer's history when you are considering hiring them. Or you could just trust what the lawyer tells you. You know, how great they are, how they can handle your situation, how much experience they have with your kind of case, etc. But if I were you, I'd run a search.
And do not forget that you do not know who is actually doing the appellate work in these cases. Just because a particular lawyer's name is on a decision does not mean they reviewed the transcript and the rest of the record, did the research, or even wrote the brief. Word has it that a popular local firm uses a lawyer outside of Ohio for their appellate work. As I have said elsewhere on this site, I do all the appellate work myself on all the cases I handle. And since I am located in this area, I can go to the clerk's office myself, view the evidence myself, and even visit important landmarks related to the case. Click here for the rest of my tips on picking a lawyer for your criminal appeal.
