Law: Who Rates Whom?

Appearing every year in five gigantic tan volumes of more than 3,000 pages each, and selling for a handsome price of $85, the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory is to the legal profession a combination of Who's Who and Standard & Poor's, with perhaps a touch of the Social Register. Since 1868, it has undertaken not only to list every member of the bar in the U.S. and Canada, but also to rate many of them from c to a (for "legal ability," based in part on years of practice), plus an occasional and mysterious v (for "very highly" recommended). In some cases...

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