Directories
Highly searchable directories of Lawyers and legal Professionals to find the right resource that fits your needs
Our Directories offer a unique and comprehensive profile for each legal professional with information that will help you select the right one for your needs. The profiles tell you about their experience, education, fees, and perhaps most importantly, their general philosophy of practicing law.
Our Directories contain only those confirmed with valid licenses and are in good standing with their bar association or other authorizing authority.
Detailed Searches go bond other sites location and practice area searches and allows you to select many parameters to narrow down the list of potential lawyers that could represent you.
Lawyer
Selecting the Lawyer Who's Best for You and Your Legal Needs
Selecting a lawyer is one of the most important decisions that you can make in the successful resolution of your legal matter. Not all lawyers are created equal; there's more to picking an attorney than flipping through a phone book or choosing the first name on Google's search results. Lawyers have different levels of competence and different areas of expertise.
Most lawyers specialize in certain areas, and even a so-called "general practitioner" may not know that much about the particular area of your concern. For example, of the almost one million lawyers in America today, probably fewer than 50,000 possess sufficient training and experience in small business law to be of real help to an aspiring entrepreneur.
Other considerations are the convenience of the lawyer’s office location, fees charged, and the length of time a case may take.
Beware of Over-Relying on Word of Mouth
People tend to hire lawyers about whom they hear good things from friends and family. In the right circumstances, this can be a smart method for finding a lawyer.
However, you should be cautious about relying too much on word of mouth. Your Aunt Annie may have used a lawyer once and told you he was excellent, but maybe Aunt Annie had different legal needs from you. Perhaps the lawyer she used was an excellent criminal defense attorney, but will be out of his depth if he tries to negotiate your employment agreement.
Not every legal case is the same. A personal recommendation is an excellent place to start, but it's only a place to start.
Professionals
To win a legal case requires more than just an attorney. If you plan to handle your own case or just expand your chances of winning, there are several different types of legal professionals, who can help you in different ways.
Alternative Dispute Resolution
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) refers to a variety of processes that help parties resolve disputes without a trial. Typical ADR processes include
mediation, arbitration,
neutral evaluation, and collaborative law. These processes are generally confidential, less formal, and less stressful than traditional court proceedings.
Bail Bondsman
A bail bondsman is any individual or agency that will act as a guarantor and pledge money or assets as bail for the appearance of an accused criminal defendant in court.
Court Reporter
A court reporter or court stenographer, also called steno-type operator, shorthand reporter or law reporter, is a person whose occupation is to transcribe spoken or recorded speech into written form, using shorthand, machine shorthand or voice writing equipment to produce official transcripts of court hearings, depositions and other official proceedings.
Document Preparation
A legal document assistant (LDA, also commonly known as "document technician," "legal document preparer," "legal technician," "online legal document provider" and "legal document clerk") in the United States is a non-lawyer authorized to assist with the preparation of legal instruments.
Document Translation
Legal translation is the translation of texts within the field of law. As law is a culture-dependent subject field, the work of legal translation and its products are not necessarily linguistically transparent.
Expert
An expert witness, professional witness or judicial expert is a witness, who by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have expertise and specialized knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially and legally rely upon the witness's specialized (scientific, technical or other) opinion about an evidence or fact issue within the scope of his expertise, referred to as the expert opinion, as an assistance to the fact-finder.
Interpreter
Interpreters and translators convert information from one language into another language. Interpreters work in spoken or sign language; translators work in written language.
Investigator
A private investigator (often abbreviated to PI and informally called a private eye), a private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases
Paralegal
A paralegal is a person trained in legal matters who performs tasks requiring knowledge of the law and legal procedures. A paralegal, like a lawyer, can be employed by a law office or work freelance at a company or law office. Paralegals are not allowed to offer legal services directly to the public on their own and must perform their legal work under an attorney or law firm (except in Ontario Canada).
Process Server
Service of process is the procedure by which a party to a lawsuit gives an appropriate notice of initial legal action to another party (such as a defendant), court, or administrative body in an effort to exercise jurisdiction over that person so as to enable that person to respond to the proceeding before the court, body, or other tribunal. Notice is furnished by delivering a set of court documents (called "process") to the person to be served.
Public Defender
A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who cannot afford to hire an attorney. The 1963 US Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright held that the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel provision requires the government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases. Different jurisdictions, however, use different approaches in providing legal counsel for criminal defendants who can't afford private attorneys. Under the federal system and some states is through a publicly funded public defender office.
Disadvantages of a Public Defender
One downside of being represented by a public defender is that these government-paid lawyers often have a huge overload of cases, and cannot devote a lot of time to any one case. As a result, you may have little or no access to your lawyer except during actual court hearings.
Public defenders also often lack office equipment and adequate research access, and can’t afford to hire investigators to properly flesh out your case.
Public defenders are often young and inexperienced, and are “cutting their teeth” on high-volume misdemeanor cases such as DWIs.
A public defender also won’t be able to assist you with related civil law or administrative matters (such as driver’s license revocation hearings in a DWI case). You’ll need to hire a separate attorney to help you with these concerns.
Advantages of a Public Defender
Public defenders work with the same judges and prosecutors day in and day out, and get to know their personal quirks, peeves and tolerances. They also see the same police officers testifying, and know who’s likely to be a bad (and good) witness.
Public defenders usually work in “niche” areas of legal specialty, such as DWI or domestic violence defense. So they tend to be up-to-date on new law and legal theories in their area of specialty.
A public defender is likely to be very efficient at sizing up your case and presenting an acceptable plea bargain deal to the prosecutor and judge. As a result, you may be done with the criminal process and on with the rest of your life sooner than if you were represented by a private attorney.
Second Guessing Your Public Defender
Once you’ve been appointed a public defender, it’s often very difficult, if not impossible, to have your attorney replaced with another public defender.
If you’re having doubts about advice your public defender gives you, make an appointment for a “second opinion” consultation with a private criminal defense attorney. Most lawyers are willing to consult for a small fee, and you’ll have the peace of mind of knowing your public defender is on track.
Communications
Communicate directly with legal resources
Feel confident that you can discuss your case with lawyers and legal professionals without leaving the comfort of your home securely. Saving time in traveling to and from your lawyers location
- Video Conference
- CHAT - with automatic translation
- Skype integration
- Share documents electronically with legal professionals
Legal Information
In-depth database of legal information that is highly searchable and easy to navigate
Learn The System and Research the law
This section is intended to help persons with a legal problem find legal laws, codes and rules that can resolve or prevent conflict.
Our Legal Information, with more than 625,000 documents, is a major research resource, featuring comprehensive coverage of United States primary legal materials: reported decisions of federal and state courts, current and retrospective collections of federal and state codes and session laws, and regulatory and administrative materials, all accessible electronically and in print.
Our extensive and continuously-expanding collection of legal treatises covers all areas of law, as well as history, economics, government and other disciplines with strong intersections to law.
In addition to its Anglo-American holdings, the Legal Information section contains substantial research collections in foreign, comparative and international law. The foreign and comparative law collection is extensive in coverage, with long-standing concentrations in European law and business law materials, and growing collections in Asian and Latin American law.
The international law collection provides primary source and treatise material on both private and public international law topics.
Learn the steps in a Criminal Case from arrest to appeal
This section walks you through every key step in a typical criminal case, and lets you know what to expect from making bail after an arrest to plea bargain strategies and sentencing guidelines.
- Going into and getting out of jail
- Early stages of criminal case
- Plea bargains
- Criminal trials
- Sentencing calculator
Learn about the prison system and facilities
This section allows you to research what to expect if you or someone you know is convicted and sentenced to a prison.
- Communicating with an Inmate
- Sending and receiving mail
- Putting money on an inmates "books"
- Visitation
Learn about what to expect after prison
This section allows you to research what to expect after being released from prision and what obsticals your conveiction holds for you.
- Halfway House
- Finding employment
- Background checks
Directories
Communications
Legal Information
Legal Forms