Popular LegalMatch Law Library Pages

As my previous post mentioned, the recent popularity of many of the subjects that LegalMatch users seek on our Law Library appears to be a product of our economic situation.

While the bloodletting of private-sector jobs appears to be fueling interest in wrongful termination claims, the popularity of other high-ranking categories can be similarly explained.

For example, the article dealing with unemployment insurance is quite popular, drawing over 2,000 visitors so far in 2009.  In addition, articles on wage garnishment and eviction are also regularly ranking highly. Generally, people only seek lawyers on issues such as this when they’re in a bad financial situation. Given the relative popularity of articles dealing with these subjects, it’s safe to say that “Main Street” is still feeling the effects of the recession, despite official reports that it has technically ended, and the economy is once again growing.

Of course, we all hope that this is true, and time will tell, one way or another. However, it’s also well known that employment numbers tend to lag behind other economic indicators quite a bit. This makes sense, as it takes time for increasing consumer demand for goods and services to translate into demand for employees by the companies and individuals who produce them.

While none of this is news, it is interesting to note how the economy apparently affects what type of lawyers people are looking for. Of course, this could also simply be an indication of the type of legal issues that ordinary people are most likely to face. After all, there probably aren’t too many ordinary people who need to hire Big Fancy Law Firm™ to negotiate a multibillion dollar merger and acquisition.

There is, however, one article whose popularity seems to pretty unambiguously show that a lot of people have hit on hard times: free legal services.