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United States — Lawyers and Legal Advice
Reviewed 15 September 2013 E-mail: Administrator@LawSource.com

Finding an Attorney

If you are looking for an attorney, please bear in mind that LawSource, Inc., the operator of this site, does not provide any kind of referral service. Do not send an e-mail request to the webmaster asking for assistance in finding an attorney; you will not receive a responsive reply. See the American Bar Association’s web site, “Consumers’ Guide to Legal Help,” which includes information on finding free help (for persons who cannot afford to pay normal legal fees). Also try these sources:

  • Your local telephone directory

  • A bar association in your city or county (look in the telephone directory) or the state/provincial bar association
    NOTE: Many local and state/provincial bar associations have web sites. Links to these are provided at the ALSO! site on the state/province pages.

  • A legal directory (ask at your local public library or a nearby law library); on the internet you can use (among many others):
  • Martindale-Hubbell “Find a Lawyer” (a consumer-oriented service that enables a search based on the area of law in which an attorney or a firm specializes; see also information on the professionally oriented Martindale-Hubbell Lawyer Locator
  • West’s Lawyer Directory (now at the FindLaw web site)
  • Open Directory Project: Lawyers and Law Firms
  • Yahoo! Index: Law
  • Canadian directories:
  • Canadian Law List (equivalent to the West and Martindale-Hubbell directories)
  • Law Firms in Canada
  • A commercial web site that includes an attorney-finding aid or feature (there are several hundred such sites for North America). To find such sites, try a search engine, below.

  • A web search engine (search for “attorneys” or “lawyers” or “lawyer referral service”); links to many can be found in a Wikipedia article.

  • Complaints About Lawyers and Judges

    If you are in the United States and want to contact the attorney disciplinary agency for your state or the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or a territory, see a list of addresses and telephone numbers for state and territorial high courts and attorney disciplinary agencies that is maintained on a web site by a Massachusetts law firm.

    Also available, from the American Judicature Society, is a list of the state organizations that investigate complaints of misconduct against judges.



    Getting Legal Advice or Answers to Legal Questions

    If you are looking for legal advice relating to a particular case or situation, please bear in mind that LawSource, Inc., is not engaged in the practice of law and cannot provide such advice. If you want the answer to a question about the law, please bear in mind that LawSource, Inc., is not prepared to do research on particular questions for visitors to this web site. Do not send an e-mail request to the webmaster asking for legal advice or for the answer to a legal question; you will not receive a responsive reply. Try these sources:

  • A series of helpful guides by the American Association of Law Libraries, Legal Information Service to the Public (LISP):
  • How to Research a Legal Problem: A Guide for Non-Lawyers
  • How to Find Legal Material if You Already Have a Citation
  • Making Sure You Have the Most Current Information
  • A local attorney (see above)

  • LEXIS Law Publishing’s www.lawyers.com web site, which offers legal topics (“Understand Your Legal Issues”) and “Ask a Lawyer.”

  • Web sites that offer legal advice, or access to sources of legal advice, such as (without any implicit recommendation):
  • Sites maintained by state and local bar associations, which often provide reliable and understandable information on the legal aspects of common situations (such as divorce, estate planning, vehicle accidents, and so forth).
  • LawEasy.com, a site maintained by an attorney in New Jersey.
  • DivorceInteractive.com, a site maintained by a New York certified financial planner, which presents collections of links to internet resources that may be useful to individuals who are dealing with divorce.
  • Sites linked in the Open Directory Project’s web directory.
  • Self-help resources; for example (without any implicit recommendation):
  • Nolo Press … This California publisher sells books, software, and forms for self-help use in a large number of legal matters.
  • Identity Theft Self-Protection Kit … [Washington Research Associates] — This is a short self-help guide, offered free.
  • Self-help resources on web sites linked in the Open Directory Project’s web directory:
  • Self-Help Products (categories)
  • Do-it-yourself kits … Some of the linked sites are general, others are specific to an area of law such as bankruptcy, credit repair, divorce, estate planning, immigration, intellectual property, name change, and premarital agreements.
  • Forms
  • Self-help resources linked on the American Judicature Society’s Pro Se Forum
  • A web search engine (see links to some, above).

  • Newsgroups such as:
  • can.legal (Canada)
  • us.legal (United States)
  • misc.legal and misc.legal.moderated
  •  


    “The essence of legal research in two words . . . see ALSO!

    Copyright © 1995– by LawSource, Inc. All rights reserved. Copying and use are restricted. See the copyright notice, statement of purpose, and DISCLAIMER on the Welcome to ALSO!  page. Citation formats generally follow The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (17th ed., Harvard L. Rev. Ass'n 2000). For a practical discussion based on the current edition of that guide, see Martin, Introduction to Basic Legal Citation (2013). See also a Wikipedia article.
    Revised 15 September 2013
    Send comments to Administrator@LawSource.com.

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