Lawyers in Clark County are completing an evaluation of local judges and state Supreme Court justices.

The attorneys must complete the evaluations by Friday by logging onto a Web site and entering a personal password to rate the judges on job-related traits and recommend whether voters should retain the judge or elect somebody else.

The biennial survey is sponsored by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and is intended both to provide frank feedback to judges about their job performance and to provide voters a relatively objective measure of the judges' performance.

Traits on which judges are rated were selected by a joint committee of lawyers, judges and journalists.

Participating lawyers are pledged to rate only those judges with whom they have recent professional experience.

Since the survey began in 1992, a number of jurists who received poor evaluations have been replaced by voters, or have retired from their seats rather than face re-election.

Results of the survey should be published in early May before the filing deadline for elections later in the year.

Lawyers also are invited to submit anonymous comments explaining their reasons for rating judges highly or poorly.

A few of the comments are printed in the newspaper; the Review-Journal provides the rest to the specific judges about whom they were made.

Judges sometimes complain that some of the comments are unfair, but many also say they take the fair ones to heart and work to correct the behavior that inspired them.

Chief Justice Robert Rose, the highest jurist in Nevada, recently suggested the way the judges use the information may be the survey's most important effect and urged lawyers to participate for that reason.

"This is important for the feedback it provides to the judiciary, and the more lawyers who participate, the more valid that feedback is," Rose said.

Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell, who founded the survey in 1992, named two veterans of the survey to coordinate the tasks again this year.

Nancy Downey of Downey Research Associates manages the technical tasks of data collection and statistical analysis, as she has since the survey began.

"The special projects editor who organized the survey and ran it for the first several years, A.D. Hopkins, has returned to the position and will coordinate this year's coverage," Mitchell added.

Passwords, pin numbers, and the Web address required to participate in the survey were sent to all members of the Nevada State Bar who gave the bar Clark County addresses as their primary place of business.

Attorneys headquartered in Clark County who have not received these forms, or who have other questions about the survey, should contact Downey Research Associates at (702) 736-7400 and leave their name with a phone number, fax number or e-mail address.

The deadline to complete the online survey is midnight Friday.

Mitchell has often observed that attorneys are the only citizens with adequate experience with and exposure to judges to rate their job overall performance, and the survey gives voters the benefit of the lawyers' experience.

"I encourage attorneys to help serve the voters of Clark County and the state by rigorously and fairly evaluating our sitting judges. The judiciary performs a vital function, and those voters who seldom step foot inside a courtroom need honest information from the professionals inside the system to make judicial elections something more than a bidding war or a beauty contest," Mitchell said.