(ARA) - What are your rights if you're
fired? What do you need to know before selling a house? Nearly one out
of every five Americans faced a legal issue within the last year,
according to a new survey by the legal Web site FindLaw (www.findlaw.com).
Fortunately, help with legal issues nowadays is just a mouse click away.
The top five legal issues according to
the survey were:
21 percent: real estate (buying/selling, property disputes,
landlord-tenant disputes, etc.)
17 percent: family law (divorce, child custody, etc.)
12 percent: estate planning (wills, trust, settling of estates, etc.)
11 percent: personal injury
8 percent: traffic violations
"The
fact that one in five of us encounters a legal issue every year
vividly illustrates how frequently the law intersects with daily
life," said Stacy Stern, co-founder and vice president of FindLaw.
"Legal issues involve a myriad of matters, such as personal finance,
estate planning, contracts and employment, not just things like
lawsuits and criminal law. Many familiar situations, such as buying or
selling a house or writing a will, can be best handled with the right
legal information or the help of an attorney."
The growth of the Internet has made finding legal information and
qualified attorneys easier than ever. The emergence of useful legal
Web sites means helpful information is now literally at people's
fingertips. One such site is FindLaw, which recently revamped and
expanded the section of its Web site devoted to helping the public
understand and navigate legal issues. FindLaw For The Public (http://consumer.pub.findlaw.com)
added thousands of pages of information, including articles, guides,
forms and FAQ pages. The information is easy to understand and covers
areas of the law that people commonly encounter, including Cars &
Tickets, Consumer & Travel, Criminal Law, Education, Employment Law,
Family Issues, Immigration Law, The Internet, Money Matters, Personal
Injury, Real Estate, Retirement & Elder Care, and Wills & Estate
Planning.
Finding an attorney can
also be done online. FindLaw features the Internet's largest directory
of attorneys (http://directory.findlaw.com).
More than one million lawyers and legal professionals can be searched
by name, firm name practice area or location. A lawyer's credentials
and experience can be viewed, such as degrees, cases tried and
articles written.
Legal issues
can easily catch us unawares at any time. Online resources provide a
way for people to be better prepared to deal with legal issues when
they arise.
Courtesy of ARA Content, www.ARAcontent.com
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