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  • Above are charts of the top 10 law firms and attorneys for the county and time period in the title of the article.

    The rankings are measured by the number of private criminal cases each firm and attorney had.

    If the attorney also had public cases (e.g., as a public defender or by court appointment), the attorney and the firm for whom the attorney worked are marked with an asterisk. Only the private cases are reported here.

    A “private” criminal case is one where representation is paid for with private funds (e.g., by the defendant or his/her family) and not by the government.

    A “public” criminal case is one where representation is paid for with public funds and by the government (i.e., taxpayers).

    The rankings are based on data that was obtained and can be verified by doing a Case Search by attorney on the Web Portal of the Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania.

  • To get our attorney data, we do a Case Search by attorney over the applicable time period.

    We then click/tap the filter icon and use the number there for the applicable county.

    To get our firm data, we add together the number of cases each attorney from the firm has.

    Sometimes it can be complicated, but it is usually pretty easy to do. Press the “Do Case Search” button if you would like to give it a try. Press the “Report error” button if you notice an error.

    The results of a Case Search that are relevant to this article include:

    • All cases with a magisterial district court docket number (“MJ”);

    • All cases with a court of common pleas docket number (“CP”);

    • All felonies and misdemeanors cases (which have a “CR” docket number); and

    • All summary cases, including traffic offenses (which have a “TR” docket number) and non-traffic offenses (which have a “NT” docket number).

    All such results are included in the data we use. If we want more information about a particular case in the results, we select the document or court icon for such case.

    There is no automatic filter for distinguishing private and public cases available through a Case Search. We filter those cases manually. If you inspect the documents, they list the attorney for the defendant and indicate whether s/he is private, court appointed, conflict counsel, or a public defender. Only “private” cases, without qualification, are treated as private.

    We do not manually filter out public cases unless we have, or are given, reason to believe that an attorney has both types of cases and that such filtering may have a significant impact on the rankings (e.g., the attorney used to work at the public defender’s office in the county or has a standing contract with the county to representation at government expense).

    There is also no automatic filter available through a Case Search when you search by attorney for the following docket types:

    • Miscellaneous (which have a “MD” docket number);

    • Landlord tenant (which have a “LT” docket number); and

    • Civil (which have a “CV” docket number).

    We filter those cases out manually. They are not counted.

  • The rankings are done to the best of our ability, knowledge, information, and belief.

    The rankings are one measure of achievement. They are by no means the only measure.

    The rankings are one of the most readily verifiable measures, however, one where you can see for yourself what the numbers are.

    It is certainly worth taking a look at how often people choose a firm or lawyer to represent them among the available options.

    The numbers behind the rankings also say something about the level of familiarity a firm or lawyer has with the criminal justice system in a given county. Firms and attorneys with public criminal cases alone or a mix of private and public cases often rank higher in this regard.

    The numbers may change over time. For example, the numbers can be affected by how quickly the data is entered by court personnel. Also, some of the cases may become expunged or subject to limited access. The data may not be available through a Case Search.

    The firms and attorneys may change over time. For example, although we think we know who the players are where we practice, it is possible that we overlooking a firm or attorney, especially for firms that have attorneys who come and go with any frequency.

    If those changes are significant enough, it could affect the rankings. Which is why we encourage you to do your own case searches if precision is important to you as of a given moment in time.

    We have a change log below to report changes we make to the article based on feedback from users like you. We normally make changes only if any errors we made are significant.

  • This section, which appears in each article, is to report any significant changes to the content of the article.