We’re honoured to have been voted the #1 Hamilton Personal Injury Law Firm in this year’s Hamilton Spectator Readers’ Choice awards! We also garnered Gold in the Top Hamilton Real Estate Law Firm category, and our Ned Nolan was rated Platinum in the Top Hamilton Employment Lawyer category.
It’s always nice to win recognition like this, but it’s important to take a moment to remember what it really means.
Does this mean that we’re actually the “best personal injury law firm in Hamilton”? Or that Ned is really the second-best employment lawyer in Hamilton? Or that we are in fact the third-best real estate law firm in Hamilton?
Of course not! These awards can’t tell you who is the “best” or who is “number 1” – in fact, no award will do that. We work hard to provide our clients with excellent service, but the reality is that there are lots of great lawyers and law firms in town whom we are proud to call colleagues – and we aren’t qualitatively ‘better’ than they are.
The Readers’ Choice awards can seem a bit frivolous, and we would be the first to say that you can’t read too much into them. But they do have some value in what they reflect about a business’s connection to the community.
It sometimes seems as if the city is drowning in aggressive and questionable legal advertising. If you spend just a couple of minutes online looking for a lawyer (especially a personal injury lawyer), it doesn’t take long before you come across outfits that pretend to be local firms that have no real connection to our community. For them, Hamilton is just another “market” to be exploited.
In fact, several of the “firms” you will come across literally do not exist – they are simply misleading “referral mills” for out-of-town operators. And it’s not uncommon for such “firms” to tout purchased or even entirely made-up “awards” to try to look more impressive. The whole situation is really an embarrassment to our profession.
Which brings us back to the Readers’ Choice Awards: frivolous or not, they are based on real local people voting for real local businesses. As a proudly local, community-oriented firm with roots in Hamilton stretching back over 100 years, recognition by members of our community really means a lot to us.
So, thank you, Hamilton, for your recognition and your support!
We are proud to continue our honourable record of honest advice, effective advocacy, and good judgment in our second century of service to the community we love.