Ted Smith is in the 11th Edition [2005], through the 19th Edition [2013] of The Best Lawyers in America

Ted Smith. is listed in the 11th Edition [2005] through the19th Edition [2013] of The Best Lawyers in America.

Best Lawyers has come to be regarded – by both the legal profession and the public – as the definitve guide to legal excellece in the United States. Best Lawyers has been featured in national newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Forbes, and The Washington Post, and is the basis of more than 50 best lawyers features in regional newspapers and metropolitan magazines every two years. In addition, American Lawyer Media has chosen our lists to be excerpted in Corporate Counsel magazine, calling Best Lawyers the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.

Published biennially since 1983, The Best Lawyers in America is widely regarded as the preeminent referral guide to the legal profession in the United States. The Best Lawyers lists, representing 30 specialties in all 50 states and Washington, DC, are compiled through an exhaustive peer-review survey in which thousands of the top lawyers in the U.S. confidentially evaluate their professional peers.

This unique referral guide is subscribed to by more than 4,000 of the leading law firms in the U.S. and abroad, and by more than 1,000 of the world’s largest corporations. For twenty years, they have used Best Lawyers to locate counsel in unfamiliar jurisdictions for major legal matters.

Law & Politics and the publishers of Indianapolis Monthly just released their list of Indiana Super Lawyers 2005™ in “The Ultimate Guide to The Best Attorneys in Indiana”. Ted Smith was named as one of the Indiana Super Lawyers™ for 2005.

The method of selecting Super Lawyers™ was as follows:

The General Survey
In May 2003, the publishers mailed more than 14,500 ballots to attorneys across Indiana. They asked attorneys to vote for the best lawyers they have personally observed in action – whether as opposing counsel, as co-counsel, from first- person observation in the courtroom, etc. Their intent was to avoid lawyers voting for others based purely on reputation or hearsay. Each ballot had the name of the addressee-attorney on it. Only ballots properly verified by that attorney (with signature and attorney registration number filled in) were counted. Each lawyer was given a score based on the number of votes he or she received and where these votes came from. Votes received from lawyers in other firms were awarded significantly more points than votes received from lawyers in the same firm.

The Screening Process
Lawyers who received only same-firm votes were eliminated from the list of candidates. In other words, in order to be considered for inclusion, a lawyer had to have received votes from lawyers outside his or her firm or organization. We also kept track of who voted for whom. They did this to watch for what we call “back-scratch voting,” that is, two lawyers voting for each other. If they noticed a disproportionate number of back-scratch votes, they eliminated that lawyer from our list of candidates.

The Blue Ribbon Panel Review
The lawyers who remained on the list were then divided to nearly 60 areas of practice. A Blue Ribbon Panel consisting of the top vote-getters from their previous surveys was assembled for each area of practice. These panels reviewed and voted on the list of nominees in their areas of practice. The point totals resulting from the Blue Ribbon Panel votes were then added to the lawyers’ scores. The Final Selection Process In order to ensure a well-balanced list with lawyers from a variety of practices, they divided the nominees into three groups according to their firm size, i.e., small/solo, midsize and large. We took the top vote-getters from each of these three groups to compile our final list.

Final List
The final list of Super Lawyers™ represents 5 percent of the lawyers licensed to practice in Indiana. The list of Super Lawyers™ includes not only attorneys in private practice but also non-private practice lawyers, such as prosecutors, in-house counsel and public-service lawyers.