Gail Landau and I had a good laugh this morning when I told her that a new attorney-ranking site has decided that she is the third-best accident and injury lawyer in Maryland. Ditto Terrence McAndrews, when I broke the news that bestattorneysonline.com says he’s the second-best.

Landau, as it turns out, is a family lawyer. She doesn’t practice accident and injury law. Years ago, McAndrews did a bunch of insurance-defense work, but he never did a significant amount of plaintiff’s injury work. He’s chiefly a criminal defense and business attorney.

Told that she has a 96 percent rating from the Web site, Landau joked, “that’s because I’ve just never lost one.”

When I suggested that it was all a little funny, she turned serious.

“Unless, of course, you’re the public and actually using this,” she said. “It would be incredibly frustrating.”

I was tipped off to the problems with bestattorneysonline.com by a blog post from Bob Ambrogi, a lawyer up in Massachusetts who put to the test the site’s list of the best intellectual property lawyers in that state. In a nutshell, he found:

At least four of this site’s picks for the top 10 IP lawyers in Mass. do not practice IP law or even dabble in it. One of the top 10 is not even in Mass.

I am willing to bet that the problems with this Web site’s rankings are not limited to the lists with which Ambrogi or I experimented.

So what gives, bestattorneysonline.com?

I called Jeev Trika, who’s in charge over there. His explanation was confusing. At first, he said the site takes its data from lawyers who set up profiles with the site. When I said it didn’t sound like the folks I spoke to had even heard of the site, he said his people also take data on practice areas from combing the Internet, such as lawyers’ own Web sites and other lawyer-evaluation hubs like Avvo and Martindale. So if bestattorneysonline.com gets it wrong, “it would certainly be an indication that that information is incorrect on other sites as well; I can tell you that,” Trika said.

Very well, but inaccurate information is still inaccurate information, and there doesn’t seem to be a point to any lawyer ranking that gets so much wrong.

Trika told me the business model includes selling advertising to lawyers. According to the Web site, lawyers can also pay to be considered for the site’s rankings:

Our rankings are one of the best ways to gain placement within the legal industry. bestattorneysonline.com uses a rigorous evaluation process to acknowledge the best attorneys around the world. Being evaluated is being given the opportunity to receive access to more potential clients and better conversion rates on potential calls.

It appears to cost $500 for each practice area in which you would like to be evaluated.

Aside from being willing to fork over the cash to be evaluated in the first place, a section of the site to which Trika referred me identifies other criteria used to formulate the accident and injury lawyer rankings:

We evaluate each of the accident and injury attorneys based on their ability to assess their clients’ situations and to work with them to protect their rights and to ensure that they receive the treatment and proper compensation they deserve.

The first aspect of the evaluation reviews the firm’s understanding of the important general accident and injury issues and laws.  Is the firm up-to-date on new court rulings and changes made by congress to protect the rights of those in accidents? Does the firm have a good handle on general precedent and case law regarding accident and injury cases?

Next we focus specifically on auto accident cases handled by the firm.  We assess each firm’s ability to evaluate the facts obtained from police reports and statements.  Out of that information we review what types of strategies would be used in different realistic scenarios.

We then look into an attorney’s ability to deal with class action lawsuits.  Is the lawyer equipped to handle the complexities of a class-action suit?  What is the firm’s record when representing these types of lawsuits?

Our fourth criterion analyzes the attorney’s handling of personal injury cases. How does the firm work to understand the liability involved with a personal injury case?   What types of investigation are employed to gain background information and other important information for the case?

The final focus is on the attorney’s ability to handle product liability or recall suits.  How often does a lawyer work on this type of case? How does the lawyer link the facts of the case together to determine the probable cause of the incident and ultimately who is liable for damages?

Now I ask ya (and here, you may imagine me using my best Marisa-Tomei-in-the-deer-scene-in-My-Cousin-Vinny voice): how did the site do all this for lawyers who don’t even practice injury law?