How do people use the Internet for legal services?

I have been working over the past few months on a research paper about how people use the Internet for legal help. I’ve been doing online questionnaires to develop insights into who legal users are — what a core typology of user types are, what their mental models are when searching for legal help for a problem in their lives, and what their preferences are for how to find and comprehend legal help.

I’ve followed those up with task analyses — having users use different legal websites to try to find information & see how they fare and react to various types of website designs.

Though writing is taking me longer than I wish it would, the results are truly fascinating & I’m excited to get them published in the near future. In the meanwhile, here are some of my notebook sketches from my initial plans of what my study would look like.

If you’re also interested in this topic, or have reading suggestions or thoughts for me — pass them along!