--- title: "Board-certified lawyers by state (data) | Probative Growth" url: https://probativegrowth.com/data/certified-specialists/ lang: en-US alternate: https://probativegrowth.com/es/datos/especialistas-certificados/ source: the same page, converted from its HTML at build time --- 1. [Home](https://probativegrowth.com/) 2. [Data](https://probativegrowth.com/data/) 3. Board-certified lawyers Data · Board-certified lawyers # Board-certified lawyers by practice area and state How many lawyers hold a board certification in each practice area, state by state. The counts come from the official lists that Tennessee and Minnesota publish, and they are counts only: no lawyer is named. Checked October 31, 2026 · CC BY 4.0 · Not legal advice Board-certified lawyers by practice area, Tennessee and Minnesota together, certifications, latest count. Top: Civil trial 226; Real property 224; Labor and employment law 86. Chart drawn from this dataset’s data. Reuse it with credit to Probative Growth (CC BY 4.0). [Open the image](https://probativegrowth.com/charts/data-certified-specialists.svg) ## What is in this dataset? {#what-h} How many lawyers hold a board certification in each practice area, state by state, counted from the official lists of certified specialists that Tennessee's Commission on Continuing Legal Education and Minnesota's Board of Legal Certification publish. Each row is a state, a practice area and a certifying body, with the number of certified specialists. Minnesota's rows run by year; Tennessee's are the roll as read on the date shown. Counts only: no names or personal details. Use it to see how thin or crowded the board-certified tier is in a practice area and state, as context for how a firm positions a certification, how many certified competitors it faces in a market and which areas have few specialists. Agents can look up a state, compare several, or search by practice area or year. **Records** 115 **Look up by** 2 state **Primary-source records** 115 The letters are explained in [what P, S, D and U mean](https://probativegrowth.com/data/#status-codes). ## Where does the data come from? {#from-h} Each state's official list is read as a count per practice area and nothing else. Tennessee's Commission publishes its roll on a page whose own Expand All control lists the attorneys under each area; the build counts them in memory and keeps no names, then checks each area against the size of the same area on the collapsed page. Minnesota's Board of Legal Certification prints a table of certified specialists by certifying body and area each year; the build checks that the rows add to the report's own total and to its sentences for each body. A gate re-reads both sources and compares every count. **Period covered** December 31, 2019 to October 31, 2026 **Places** States **How often we refresh it** Every quarter **Records read** October 31, 2026 ### Official sources - [Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Education](https://cle.tncourts.gov/about-us-main/specialists/), by official web pages. An official list published by the Tennessee courts on a public page with no login; only counts per practice area are used. - [Minnesota Board of Legal Certification](https://blc.mn.gov/about/annual-reports/), by official PDF files. A state board's annual report, published as a public PDF with no login; only the counts are used. ### The sources the records cite most - [Tennessee Commission on CLE, roll of certified legal specialists](https://mclesystem.cle.tncourts.gov/Specialists.aspx): 17 records - [Minnesota Board of Legal Certification, 2025 annual report, Number of Certified Specialists (2019)](https://blc.mn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BLC-2025-Annual-Report.pdf): 14 records - [Minnesota Board of Legal Certification, 2025 annual report, Number of Certified Specialists (2020)](https://blc.mn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BLC-2025-Annual-Report.pdf): 14 records - [Minnesota Board of Legal Certification, 2025 annual report, Number of Certified Specialists (2021)](https://blc.mn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BLC-2025-Annual-Report.pdf): 14 records - [Minnesota Board of Legal Certification, 2025 annual report, Number of Certified Specialists (2022)](https://blc.mn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BLC-2025-Annual-Report.pdf): 14 records ## What does a record look like? {#sample-h} Minnesota, 2019: 3 certifications in consumer bankruptcy through American Board of Certification. Status P · checked October 31, 2026 · source: [Minnesota Board of Legal Certification, 2025 annual report, Number of Certified Specialists (2019)](https://blc.mn.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BLC-2025-Annual-Report.pdf) Tennessee, 2026: 6 certifications in business bankruptcy on the Commission's roll. Status P · checked October 31, 2026 · source: [Tennessee Commission on CLE, roll of certified legal specialists](https://mclesystem.cle.tncourts.gov/Specialists.aspx) The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below. **What each of the 10 main columns means** **`jurisdiction`** Two-letter state code **`level`** practice (one practice area and certifying body) or state (all areas together) **`year`** Year of the count: Minnesota's year end, Tennessee's read date **`practice`** Our practice-area id (all-areas on state rows) **`practiceLabel`** Practice area in plain words **`specialty`** The area as the source words it **`certifier`** The certifying body, as the source names it **`status`** P: the official list's own figure **`value`** Certified specialists (certifications held) **`unit`** What value counts ## How do I use it in my own tools? {#api-h} Ask an AI assistant: add `https://probativegrowth.com/mcp/certified-specialists` as an MCP connector (no sign-in), or the main server `https://probativegrowth.com/mcp` for every dataset. Setup for each app is on [the API and MCP page](https://probativegrowth.com/resources/rules-api/). **`specialists_lookup`** For one two-letter state code: the number of board-certified specialists by practice area and certifying body, and the state total, for each year the official list gives. **`specialists_compare`** The records of up to 10 states side by side: certified specialists by practice area. **`specialists_search`** Records whose text matches the words given, such as a practice area ("civil trial") or a year ("2025"). Or read the static files, with no key and no usage cap: - [Index and endpoints](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/index.json) `/data/v1/certified-specialists/index.json` - [One state (MN shown)](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/jurisdictions/MN.json) `/data/v1/certified-specialists/jurisdictions/{jurisdiction}.json` - [Confirmed changes](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/changes.json) `/data/v1/certified-specialists/changes.json` - [OpenAPI description](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/openapi.json) `/data/v1/certified-specialists/openapi.json` - [API reference, every file](https://probativegrowth.com/resources/rules-api/reference/) `/resources/rules-api/reference/` ## How to cite this dataset {#cite-h} You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source. **Version** 1.0.0, released November 1, 2026 **DOI** [10.5281/zenodo.23850651](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23850651) **Every version** [10.5281/zenodo.23850650](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23850650) (always points to the newest) **License** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Download the data - [CSV: certified-specialists.csv](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/certified-specialists.csv) 70 KB · one row per record (columns in README.txt) - [JSON: certified-specialists.json](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/certified-specialists.json) 147 KB · every record with its sources Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and [Zenodo](https://zenodo.org/records/23850651), a public research archive. Suggested citation Probative. (2026). Board-certified lawyers by practice area and state: specialist counts from official state lists (Tennessee and Minnesota) (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23850651 Credit line for a chart, table or article Source: Probative, Board-certified lawyers by practice area and state: specialist counts from official state lists (Tennessee and Minnesota), version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23850651, licensed CC BY 4.0. Add to a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote) - [RIS (EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley)](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/cite.ris) - [BibTeX (LaTeX)](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/cite.bib) - [CITATION.cff (GitHub, Zenodo)](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/CITATION.cff) - [codemeta.json](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/codemeta.json) - [SVG badge with the DOI](https://probativegrowth.com/data/badge/certified-specialists.svg) Not legal advice. Not a recommendation of any lawyer. These are counts of certifications on official state lists, as the lists stood on the dates shown; a lawyer can hold more than one certification, and certification is voluntary, so the counts say nothing about the quality of lawyers who are not certified. ## What changed recently? {#chg-h} - **2026-10-31** · Counts of board-certified lawyers by practice area from official state lists: Tennessee (239 certifications on the Commission's roll) and Minnesota (560 at the end of 2025). ([source](https://blc.mn.gov/about/annual-reports/)) The full log is in [changes.json](https://probativegrowth.com/data/v1/certified-specialists/changes.json). ## What are the limits? {#limits-h} - This table covers Tennessee and Minnesota, whose official lists are public and countable by practice area. - Each row counts certifications. A lawyer who is certified in two areas is counted once in each. - Certification is voluntary and each certifying body sets its own standards, so a count is not a measure of how many good lawyers work in an area. - Minnesota's counts are the Board's year-end figures for each year; Tennessee's are the roll as read on the date shown. Areas appear when they have at least one certified specialist. - Records older than 200 days since their last check are marked `stale` in the files until we re-check them. Every confirmed error we fix is listed in the [data corrections log](https://probativegrowth.com/data/corrections/). **Not legal advice.** Not a recommendation of any lawyer. These are counts of certifications on official state lists, as the lists stood on the dates shown; a lawyer can hold more than one certification, and certification is voluntary, so the counts say nothing about the quality of lawyers who are not certified. Probative is a marketing firm, not a law firm. Found a wrong value? [Report an error](https://probativegrowth.com/data/corrections/#report) with the record id and the source that shows the right value. 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The full list is in the [data catalog](https://probativegrowth.com/data/). Running a firm? You don’t need the raw data: we handle your state’s ad rules for you. See where your firm stands first. From Probative, the agency Probative is a marketing agency, and we check the board-certified specialist counts when we plan a firm's ads and search work. See [how we market criminal defense firms](https://probativegrowth.com/practice-areas/criminal-defense/), [how criminal defense firms appear in search and AI answers](https://probativegrowth.com/practice-areas/criminal-defense/seo/) and [how we market estate planning firms](https://probativegrowth.com/practice-areas/estate-planning/). Published by Probative Growth, a marketing agency for law firms. See our [services](https://probativegrowth.com/services/) and [pricing](https://probativegrowth.com/pricing/). Free ## Get your free review. {#end-h} Send us your firm’s website. Probative Growth records a 90-second video of what clients see when they look you up, and emails it with a one-page summary within 2 business days. No logins, no call needed. [Not sure where to start? Answer 7 questions](https://probativegrowth.com/law-firm-marketing-checklist/) [Ready to talk? Talk to us](https://probativegrowth.com/contact/#consult) [Or see what AI says about your firm](https://probativegrowth.com/ai-check/) **Your free review:** It covers your Google listing, website, phone and ads, from public information. [See every price](https://probativegrowth.com/pricing/) Practice areas We file the data on this page under the practice areas [criminal defense](https://probativegrowth.com/practice-areas/criminal-defense/), [estate planning](https://probativegrowth.com/practice-areas/estate-planning/) and [bankruptcy](https://probativegrowth.com/practice-areas/bankruptcy/). From Probative, the agency Want to act on the board-certified specialist counts? 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