SwitchMyAttorney is not a law firm

There are no attorneys on staff here. Nobody here reviews your case, nobody here will tell you what to do about it, and nothing on this site is advice about your situation. That is worth saying in full rather than in small type, because what this service is allowed to do is exactly what makes it useful.

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What a qualifying provider actually is

Rule 4-7.22(b) defines a qualifying provider as any person or entity that receives a benefit or consideration for the direct or indirect referral of prospective clients to lawyers, and the first category listed is:

matching or other connecting of a prospective client to a lawyer drawn from a specific group or panel of lawyers or who matches a prospective client with lawyers or law firms

Rule Regulating The Florida Bar 4-7.22(b)(1)

That is this service, and being inside that definition is what imposes the twelve conditions in Rule 4-7.22(d) — the flat fee, the office disclosure, the annual filing with the Bar, the four-firm minimum, the ban on anything that reads like a law firm. The conditions are not a burden grudgingly accepted. They are the reason a person can read this site without wondering who paid for the answer.

The Bar is not neutral about whether services like this should exist. The Comment to the rule opens with a sentence that is not hedged: “Every citizen of the state should have access to the legal system.” It goes on to say that citizens “often encounter difficulty in identifying and locating lawyers who are willing and qualified to consult with them about their legal needs.” It then states the policy of encouraging providers to make legal services available through a method that considers, among other things, the client’s spoken language and geographical convenience. That is the job. The limits are how the job gets done without becoming something else.

What you will never see here

• “Our attorneys.” There are none. Every attorney named anywhere on this site is an attorney at an independent law firm that chose to participate, and that firm is responsible for its own work.
• A recommendation, a ranking or a score. Nobody here will tell you that one attorney is better than another, because Rule 4-7.22(d)(11) does not allow a provider to communicate in a way that leads you to conclude it is a law firm or provides legal services. What a match shows is which participating attorneys handle your kind of case and where their offices are.
• A case evaluation. No one here reads your fee agreement, your medical records or your police report, and no one here can tell you whether your case is worth more than the number you were offered. An attorney can. That is the conversation this site exists to get you to.
• Settlement or verdict figures. No amounts, no ranges, no “average case value.” A number on a marketing page is not evidence about your case, and publishing one would be a promise nobody here is in a position to make.
• Any claim of Florida Bar endorsement. A lawyer may participate only with a provider that “neither represents nor implies to the public that the qualifying provider is endorsed or approved by The Florida Bar” — Rule 4-7.22(d)(8). Rules are cited on this site because they are the law that answers the question; citing a rule is not approval by the Bar, and the Bar has not reviewed, approved or endorsed this service.
• An unsolicited call or letter. Nobody is contacted first. A Florida lawyer may not send a written communication to a prospective client about a specific matter when the lawyer knows or reasonably should know the person is already represented in that matter — Rule 4-7.18(b)(1)(B).
• “Free case review” language. A review is something a lawyer does. What is free is the consultation with a participating firm, and that is the firm’s offer, not ours.

Who answers which question

The division is not subtle once it is written down.

Why a site that is not a law firm cites rules at all

Because the alternative is asking you to believe things. Nearly every question that stops someone from changing lawyers — will I pay twice, can they take my house, am I allowed to leave — has an answer in a published Florida decision or a numbered rule. Stating the answer and the source is not practicing law; it is the same thing a reference book does. What it is not, and cannot be, is advice about your case, because that requires knowing your case.

Everything on this site is written by the editorial team at SwitchMyAttorney, not by a legal department, because there is no legal department. Where a page states a legal rule, it names the rule, the statute or the decision by number so you can read the source yourself and so an attorney can tell you in thirty seconds whether it applies to you.

If something here is wrong

Two separate routes, and both of them work.

Tell us. A factual error on any page gets corrected, and a page whose legal statement cannot be supported by a current primary source gets taken down rather than softened.

Tell the Bar. A qualifying provider is answerable to The Florida Bar directly, and must respond “in writing, within 15 days, to any official inquiry by bar counsel” seeking the information described in Rule 4-7.22(d) or investigating the conduct of the provider or of a participating lawyer — Rule 4-7.22(d)(7). A participating lawyer who is told by the Bar that the provider is out of compliance and does not cease participation within 30 days becomes responsible for that non-compliance under Rule 4-7.22(e)(2)(B). Those two provisions are the enforcement behind every claim on this page, and neither of them depends on our goodwill.

Where the answer comes from

• What a qualifying provider is: Rule Regulating The Florida Bar 4-7.22(b), and (b)(1) for matching services.
• The prohibition on looking like a law firm: R. 4-7.22(d)(11).
• No claim of Bar endorsement: R. 4-7.22(d)(8).
• The annual filing that is not an endorsement: R. 4-7.22(d)(5).
• The 15-day duty to answer bar counsel: R. 4-7.22(d)(7); the participating lawyer’s 30-day duty on notice of non-compliance, R. 4-7.22(e)(2)(B).
• Why nobody contacts you first: R. 4-7.18(b)(1)(B).
• The Bar’s stated policy on access and on the referral method: Comment to R. 4-7.22.
• The right to discharge counsel, and the cap: Rosenberg v. Levin, 409 So. 2d 1016 (Fla. 1982).
• Fee agreements: R. 4-1.5, including the contingent-fee requirements of R. 4-1.5(f).

• How we are paid — the flat fee, and the rule that requires it.
• How this works — what happens, and who sees what you tell us.
• Participating with SwitchMyAttorney — what a law firm is agreeing to.
• Can you change attorneys in the middle of a Florida injury case? — the right, and the decision behind it.
• A second opinion, or a new lawyer? — two different things.