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There are hundreds of reasons you may be needing to search out a lawyer. Whether you're getting divorced, hoping to negotiate child support, looking for criminal defense, facing bankruptcy, trying to dispute a business arrangement, or protecting your intellectual property, it's good to have someone on your side. The list of specialties a lawyer may be able to help with goes on and on, making their services an integral part of our society.
Since there are thousands of lawyers practicing in every state, you'll require some assistance in narrowing down the one that will give you the highest odds of success in your case. You'll want to find someone who has a high win rate in court, is well-liked by clients, practices near you, charges a reasonable amount, and has a reputable background. It's an exhaustive list! There are plenty of online resources to help you find the right legal services, but where do you begin?
Friday, April 18th
Justia is a fantastic resource that offers everything you might be looking for in a legal service. It doesn't cost a thing to use their site and they offer a comprehensive lawyer directory, in-depth legal guides, a code and law library, and the option to ask state-specific questions to lawyers. Justia has an "A+” rating from the Better Business Bureau and good reports of reliability from users, making this is our top choice for legal services.
LegalShield is a service that connects people to a lawyer in their area. Starting at $26.95 per month, LegalShield will choose a lawyer for you and they will talk you through the next steps in your legal journey. You can message them with an unlimited number of concerns. LegalShield has an "A+” rating from the Better Business Bureau and has been an excellent solution for thousands of people who want affordable help from an attorney, earning the #3 spot on our list of providers of legal services.
Lawyers connects individuals with lawyers in their local area and provides unfiltered client reviews along with helpful background information about them. Their free legal articles and Q&A forums of lawyer-answered questions are a valuable resource. Not many people have rated Lawyers, but you'll enjoy diving into their free online tools. Lawyers is a legal services platform that earns one of our top ratings.
LegalZoom is a great resource for people who need to create legal-specific documents as an individual or small business. Each service comes with its own cost, but it's far cheaper than hiring your own lawyer. You can get step-by-step guidance in creating legal documents or pay for upgrades where an attorney reviews your work and you can talk with them on the phone. LegalZoom is highly rated by users and has long been a professional and reliable legal service - it's a fantastic option that gets a big thumbs up from us.
FindLaw is a platform where you can search for lawyers in a specific area of expertise in your local area and see their unfiltered client ratings. You can also search through court cases for free and research codes and cases to get a better understanding of your own situation. Information here is straightforward and easy to access, making it a great resource for finding reputable lawyers and learning more about them. Clients have good things to say about the up-to-date and accurate information here, so we recommend using FindLaw as a resource for getting legal services.
Rocket Lawyer is a highly-rated platform that specializes in helping users create legal documents. For a monthly fee, you can make unlimited documents that would hold up in court like living wills, business contracts, intent to purchase real estate, divorce settlement agreements, and more. Through Rocket Lawyer you can submit questions for lawyers to answer as well, but this is the extent of the interaction with a lawyer or attorney that you'll gain from using this platform. If you simply need to make a legal document, go straight to Rocket Lawyer. For any other type of legal services, a higher-ranking site on our list will be more effective.
Expertise is a platform that doesn't specialize in connecting you with legal services, but rather with hundreds of different types of professionals. They do have numerous lawyers and firms listed on their site that are vetted through a 5-step process to ensure they're well-liked, in good standing with the bar, and match some basic criteria you set with your search. It's free to explore the professionals listed on Expertise, so when you discover a lawyer or firm you're interested in, it's up to you to contact them and gather extensive information from there. For getting access to a basic list of legal professionals and their ratings from clients, Expertise is a good resource, but not the most comprehensive way to find a lawyer.
Best Lawyers gives awards to lawyers who have been nominated by their firms or peers as being a top choice in their specialty. Lawyers who receive these awards do not pay for them and cannot nominate themselves. We like the idea of being able to quickly identify the best lawyers in an area, but you have to pay $200 for full access to this site. Even then, not all lawyers around you will be listed, so we found Best Lawyers to be somewhat limiting. There are little to no reviews from clients about the effectiveness of Best Lawyers, so it isn't a top choice of ours.
JustAnswer is a platform where users can pay a monthly fee and ask unlimited legal questions to an attorney 24/7. Once you connect with an attorney, you can chat with them through text or email. JustAnswer doesn't go into depth about the qualifications of their attorneys, how intensive of questions/issues they will work with you on, or how long you can carry on a continuous conversation with an attorney, so it's hard to tell if this is a great solution to your legal concerns. However, for some basic questions, it's not a bad place to turn before paying the hefty fees for a lawyer on retainer. But, JustAnswer has mixed reviews from users, so we'd recommend using other legal services first.
You can easily search hundreds of thousands of US lawyers through Avvo by specialty and topic. They provide a lot of information about their background to help you select a good lawyer to do a consultation with. Unfortunately, Avvo has an "F” rating from the Better Business Bureau and many people claim that their reviews are not reliable, so it leaves people with bad experiences. On the bright side, Avvo has a free Q&A section where you can search thousands of legal questions to get information and read legal guides that could give you a jumpstart on your legal journey. However, for connecting with lawyers, Avvo has earned a lower than average rating.
Super Lawyers says that they take lawyer nominations and do in-depth evaluations on them to create lists of the top 5% of lawyers for people to refer to in their directory. Unfortunately, not many people believe that this is actually a high honor and we found the legal directory to be a dismal resource that lacked photos and contact information for the attorneys. There are few ratings for Super Lawyers and their best service is the legal articles they've published (which you can usually find a lot of other places too), so Super Lawyers has earned one of our lowest ratings.
Thumbtack is a resource for individuals needing to hire a professional from a wide variety of fields. You can look up the service you need, your zip code, and see a list of pros for hire. There aren't as many lawyers here as you'd find with a legal-specific directory, but their profiles have good client reviews and helpful background information. Reviews about Thumbtack aren't great, though, and it seems that lawyers don't love paying to be listed here. You'll have better luck finding a long list of qualified lawyers from a different site instead.
Some online guides will provide you with easily searchable lists of lawyers in your area who focus on your area of concern. You can read their bios, see reviews from clients, jump to their website, and see how much they charge for a consultation. We recommend utilizing a couple of different online legal services to verify the legitimacy and reliability of a particular lawyer on each platform. This protects you from fake reviews or inconsistent information about an attorney.
Once you've identified a lawyer you're interested in hiring, you can book a consultation to discuss your situation and learn how they would proceed from that point. These consultations are usually around 30 minutes long and are often free to you.
Some of these referral sites cost nothing to use, while others charge a fee for full access to their database of information. We've thoroughly explored the top legal services to identify the ones that are worth paying for (or not). You have a lot to consider, but with this comprehensive list of legal services, you shouldn't have to spend too much time finding a lawyer or firm that will benefit you.
Take these criteria into consideration as you're evaluating which legal services are best for your case:
The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have researched the best legal services available to you. Our hope is that you'll find a professional, reliable representative that will successfully guide you through your legal situation and leave you satisfied with the results.
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