An "AV" rating is the highest rating an attorney can receive.
William P. Fanciullo has, since 1997, received an "AV" rating from his peers, which means that he was and is deemed to have very high professional ethics and pre-eminent legal ability.
Only lawyers with the highest ethical standards and exceptional qualifications receive a Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating.
Martindale-Hubbell Ratings were created in 1887 as an objective tool that would attest to a lawyer's ability and professional ethics, based on the confidential opinions of other lawyers and judges who have worked with the lawyer they are evaluating. The Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings have remained the most prestigious and widely respected lawyer rating system in the world for the past 119 years.
Martindale-Hubbell's exclusive Peer Review Lawyer Rating System evaluates attorneys and law firms in the U.S. and Canada with its independent peer review process. To determine a rating, Martindale-Hubbell sends confidential questionnaires to other lawyers and judges within the same geographic location as the attorney under evaluation. Martindale-Hubbell staff also participates in the review process by conducting personal interviews with members of the bar who may be able to shed some light on the credentials of a specific attorney. Information obtained during the interviews is then combined with the geographic surveys.
Opinions are solicited from peers with direct, professional knowledge of the lawyers under review. All of the review materials are strictly confidential, enabling participants to provide completely candid assessments of their colleagues. On average, Martindale-Hubbell contacts hundreds of thousands of attorneys each year to establish or confirm ratings. To ensure impartiality, no single law firm can submit more than two evaluations for a particular lawyer. The number of attorneys rated annually varies depending on how many meet the high standards in a given year.
The confidentiality, objectivity and complete independence of the ratings process is what has made it a unique and credible evaluation tool for members of the legal profession. The legal community values the accuracy of attorney ratings because they are determined by their peers-- the people who are best suited to assess the legal ability and professional ethics of their colleagues.
In the quest for legal services, the Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating is often one of the only means to differentiate lawyers. This is important on a variety of levels: from individual clients seeking the right lawyer for a particular case or matter, to the the in-house counsel trying to determine which outside lawyer should be assigned a new matter, to the private practice attorney seeking to refer a case to another lawyer with the appropriate expertise in a specific area of practice.
A Martindale-Hubbell rating can be one of the most important criteria that lawyers and clients use to evaluate an attorney when retaining a lawyer, or simply researching the background of co-counsel or opposing counsel. When referring matters to colleagues with specific expertise or looking for counsel in another jurisdiction, lawyers want to have confidence in the individual attorney under consideration. By reviewing the ratings, they can be guided to an attorney with very high ethics as well as the appropriate level of professional experience
William Fanciullo is very proud of this recognition from his peers.