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This is exactly why AttorneyGuide.com was born. Attorneys can take power that they are not given due to their ability to manipulate people and the position they are in. Please always research the attorney that you already have or one that you are thinking about hiring. We will check with the State Bar to make sure there are no complaints on file. The members that are part of AttorneyGuide have gone through background checks to make sure they are in compliance with the ethical standards of the legal profession and the State Bar ethics and conduct guidelines. We will continue to give you good information on lawyers in Nevada so you never have to fall victim to someone like this guy.

The attorneys name is Charles Radosevich. I’m not allowed to use the exact information from the article so I’m going to sum it up for you. You can Google the lawyers name and get the exact details.

Charles Radosevich pleaded guilty to forging court documents and stealing more than $200k from people who hired him for legal services. $90k was stolen from an estate case and then $140k from another estate. He was accused of using a phony court document with the forged signature of a District Judge.
Prosecutors filed criminal charges against Radosevich in October 2009 and new charges were added when they learned of new victims.

Please be aware of these people and allow us to do the digging for you. Thanks.

So I’ve been hearing ads on the radio lately for Ken Stover in Reno so I thought I would take a moment and do a review of him. He is a criminal attorney based in Reno with the emphasis on DUI from what I can tell. I start the process by putting his name into Google. The first result is his website of www.stoverlawfirm.com which doesn’t seem to work. Not a good way to start. I see that there is another website listed for him www.kenstoverlaw.com. Who knows why one works and one doesn’t but at least we found him. I click on his website and there is a nice picture of him. I also see a video link and after clicking on it I see that it is a 9 minute video done by myduiattorney, or something like that. I’m not planning on watching a 9 minute video and I doubt anyone else is either. They say that a website has about 7 seconds to catch your attention or you move on. I’m moving on since I want to see what Mr. Stover is really all about. Back to Google where I see that he has a website www.electstover.com which means that obviously he was running for Washoe County District Attorney in 2010. Since he is running radio ads I’m assuming that he didn’t win.

I continue to look at the Google listings and don’t see much other than lame sites that have him listed but no other good information. I’m telling you my whole process in the hopes that you will do just as thorough of a search if you really think he’s the right attorney for you. I now turn to www.AttorneyGuide.com since they list ethical attorneys and you can check to see if they are ethical or not. I put his name in and it says that he isn’t in their database. Next I turn to the Reno Gazette Journal website (rgj.com) and do a search of his name. Not much comes up other than he represented some high profile cases, one being a woman who had smoked marijuana and then drove only to crash into and kill a cop in Reno. She was given a very light sentence even though the offense was very serious. Other than that I don’t find much. I then go back to Google and type in Lawyer Reviews. The first site that I recognize is that of avvo.com. I’ll put a post about avvo.com sometime soon. Basically it’s a joke and I’ll explain why later. I put his name in and nothing comes up. I then turn to martindale.com which I think is somewhat of a reputable site, even though it’s attorneys rating attorneys which means that friends and cronies rating each other. I put his name in and nothing shows up. I’m a bit surprised at this since I know that a majority of attorneys have a rating of some kind in martindale. My research comes up empty I’m afraid. I’m hoping that some people can provide me some good reviews of him via the comments page of this blog post. Please let me know if you have dealt with him or not. I just wonder if he hasn’t had that many clients and that’s always a red flag.

They did a terrific job in a Real Estate case. My highest recommendation.

News popped up today in regards to the Motley Crue front man Vince Neil and the fact that he plead guilty to DUI and will serve two weeks of jail time and then two more weeks of house arrest. If you do a little digging you’ll find out that back in the 80′s Vince Neil pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving for being behind the wheel in a crash that killed the drummer of Hanoi Rocks. I realize that alcoholism is a disease. My father was an alcoholic and he told me a story where he woke up the next morning to find the side of his car was severely damaged, only to realize that he had driven along a guard rail for about 30 miles the night before. This was 30 years ago and thank the Lord that he survived and has been sober ever since. He could have easily killed someone and if he had I would have wanted him to serve a lot of time in jail. Vince Neil only served 15 days of a 30 day jail sentence, paid 2.5 million to his victims and 200 hours of community service. I’m not one to judge but I tend to think that this very light sentencing did absolutely nothing to deter his drinking. Who knows what happened to him over the last 20 years but obviously him killing someone didn’t stop him from drinking and getting behind the wheel. How it relates to law is that he is a rock star and was able to get a very good attorney that was able to get him such a minimal sentencing. Again, I don’t know all the facts and I’m making some broad assumptions here but I’m led to believe that the attorney most likely did nothing to help Vince get on the right track, like encouraging him to go to rehab, whatever. Attorneys have a unique ability to not only help someone with their legal matter but to also act as a guidance counselor. I do know of some that take on that role and see it as their ethical duty to help their clients but I would imagine that most attorneys want nothing to do with that role. I just wonder how many fewer repeat offenders there would be if the legal community took more of an active role in the well being of their clients.

For the next few posts I’m going to be taking a name out of the headlines and walking through what I think is a great way to review an attorney.  If I needed an attorney and had a name in mind, this is most likely how I would go about it.  Since I’ve personally worked in the industry for a while I can share a few secrets with you that will hopefully help you with your search.

Most of us probably all know who Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is and his recent legal troubles.  His attorney is Karen Winckler from the firm Wright Stanish and Winckler, in Las Vegas, NV.   If  I was a boxing aficionado and fell in to some legal trouble, perhaps I would want Karen to represent me as well.  Hopefully with the knowledge that you have you would do some due diligence and validate her as being an ethical and quality attorney first.

So, what is the process that you should follow?  First, I would probably Google her name.  When I did that the first 2 results were from the website Lawyers.com.  The third was from Justia and then it lists some news articles and then other random websites.

Let’s take a look at what Lawyers.com has to say.  You click on the link and it goes to her profile.  There are a couple of items to look at to help you with making the best decision for yourself.  The first is the profile itself.  Make sure that the attorney’s main area of practice is in the same area as what you need.  Attorney’s can represent multiple areas of practice.  You really don’t want a bankruptcy attorney handling your criminal case.  Secondly, there is a box to the right that contains both client reviews and peer rating reviews. This is where I share some secrets with you.

The peer reviews ratings are basically ratings of attorney provided by other attorneys, that are supposed to have intimate knowledge of that person’s ability and ethical standing.  From what attorneys tell us, this is often just a popularity contest and if you’ve been around a long time and have lots of friends to solicit good reviews from, you’ll have a high rating.  Take it for what it is, I just don’t think it should be the one thing that you use to decide if this is a good attorney or not.  I know for a fact that there are really bad attorneys out there that have a perfect 5.0 rating.  For the sake of this post, we’ll use it as part of our decision making process.  Karen’s rating is a 4.4.  Lawyers.com also provides client reviews but Karen doesn’t have a client rating.  Let’s take a look at the firm though to see their rating.  You should always take a look at the entire firm because you will definitely deal with them at some point also.  Richard Wright has a peer review rating of 5.0 but a client review rating of 3.0.  There is a bit of a discrepancy there.  Let’s look deeper at that.  The biggest complaint is lack of communication.  The bad part though is that there is only one client review listed and I certainly don’t think that is a very good sample size to make any judgment about Richard. Overall the firm looks pretty good.

Let’s turn our attention back to Google for some help.  The third post is from Justia but there is nothing there that tells us anything.  That’s pretty common with that website.  Looking through the rest of the page one results there is something that caught my eye.  It looks like Karen Winckler also represented Dennis Rodman and his DUI case a few years back.  That’s interesting and leads me to believe that perhaps she’s the criminal attorney to the stars of the sporting world.  I imagine she’s very busy, especially in Las Vegas.

I would then put her name through the www.Attorneyguide.com ethical check and after doing that there is no indication that she is ethical or not.  We’ll make sure she gets that updated right away.

If at this point you still wanted to hire Karen or the firm to help you with your criminal case then I would recommend you reach out to your friends and see if anyone else knows anything about them.  Lastly I would pick up the phone and interview the firm.  Have some questions on hand and ask them how they operate.  Ask them about how quickly they get back to you, how they follow up, how they communicate, etc.  You’ll be dealing with the front desk people most likely 75% of the time. Remember that your legal situation, especially a criminal case, is nothing to take lightly and hiring the right attorney can make or break your entire experience.  The whole process of doing some research on an attorney literally took me about 10 minutes.  Don’t you think it’s worth it?