Certification: let's make it better, fairer, and more valued.

• Author: Nagin, Stephen

After 20 years The Florida Bar Certification program evokes significant praise, lingering skepticism, and a little disdain. These reactions derive from complimentary economic issues and emotional concerns.

What may be a great benefit to some lawyers others perceive as a detriment. This article explores why such a dichotomy exists. It suggests eight ways in which our certification program can be improved, enhanced, and reinforced to make it better and fairer and much more highly valued.

Why Certify?

There are four reasons for a certification program.

The first reason is that licensure, by itself, is not sufficient. After years of practice, the legal shingle provides scant assurance to potential clients that their attorney's current level of professional development, judgment, and skill as an advocate and a counselor is of highest caliber. Most potential clients (even sophisticated corporate clients) really don't know how to best assess whether a lawyer is most suited to handle their matters. Certification provides better guidance, which is laudable. It confers peer and public recognition of superior credentials and confirms qualifications in a specialty area.

If certification did not exist, the truly better-talented attorneys still would rely on time-tested promotional methods: word-of-mouth and more formal marketing efforts (including personal networking, limited public advertising that the Florida Supreme Court permits, and targeted public relations). Consequently, if peer recognition and lay public recognition were the only justifications, our certification program still would be of value. It just would not be of as much value unless the other reasons for having certification exist.

The second reason for certification is the competitive advantage it can bestow in the marketplace, both for lay and professional referrals. An analogy can be made to medical services, because consumers of legal services also are consumers of medical services. They know that doctors who are board certified are "vetted" by their peers through rigorous testing (and presumably heightened education or re-education). The cachet of certification for health care providers elevates perceptions about the level of knowledge, judgment, and dexterity a medical practitioner is likely to possess. By analogy, a board certified lawyer should benefit from the same reasoning process. Legal certification has not yet reached this level of marketplace effectiveness, but it should, eventually, if the right steps are taken in promoting and developing the certification program.

All of us know that when an angioplasty or laparoscopy procedure is needed, the "certified" specialist will get the referral, not the generalist. The health care specialists who provide these services typically require the facilities and backup available only in a hospital. To be granted the requisite "privileges" to practice in or to admit participants to a hospital, a doctor must apply to and be approved by committees of doctors. For a hospital to be perceived as having "better trained" doctors, and to restrict the number of medical practitioners eligible for "privileges," specialists typically are required to hold "certification" in their field. Consequently, possessing relevant, field-specific certification(s) transforms such credentials into the ticket for admission past the gatekeepers--who happen to be the hospital's medical committees and the administrators. Potentially, this is a huge economic benefit for a doctor. No comparable process exists in the law. That's the challenge for us lawyers.

Less sophisticated clients (and potential clients) of legal services typically don't know how to form an accurate opinion about a lawyer's capability. In law school we learn the gift of gab; our professional milieu encourages it. As a consequence, lawyers tend to be comfortable professing their accomplishments, which through politeness or ignorance, potential clients generally do not openly challenge. The existence of certification--which would-be clients could presume to be similar to the comparable credential possessed by their health care provider--may provide a helpful, external validation of competency. If so, perhaps they tell their family, friends, colleagues, and others.

A lawyer's professional colleagues and acquaintances who are appraised of a fellow practitioner's certification credentials are more likely to recognize some level of potentially superior skill. Without a third-party professional practice gatekeeper, however-such as what exists for medical specialists in the form of hospital committees and administrators--the legal credential simply carries less weight. That's a fact. Whatever sustainable economic advantage Florida Bar certification confers, it still is dependent upon the time-tested methods of word-of-mouth recommendations and targeted marketing efforts.

When a lawyer specializes in one or more areas of law, he or she is likely to become more dependent on referrals from other lawyers, typically generalists or corporate lawyers who serve as the "gatekeepers" for their clients. Certification offers a specialist the competitive advantage of an easier cue that will remind potential referring sources about whom to contact for a potential referral in a specialized area of law. Certification also tends to provide a measure of comfort to the referring attorney with respect both to the limited role of the referred attorney (and the lessened likelihood of loss of the client for other legal services), as well as to the referred client, who may appreciate the external validation of superior qualifications (conferred by heightened standards for the certified lawyer). Moreover, from a marketing standpoint, it may be easier and less expensive for practitioners in some areas of the law to obtain new clients through professional referrals than it would be to advertise directly to potential clients, especially given the significant restraints on advertising...