When people ventured to find a lawyer in the past, they relied upon referral services or directories to help them.

They then began to realize that those methods were not efficient, informative or cost-effective.

Discouraged by the process of finding a lawyer, people entered the legal dark ages of avoiding or settling legal disputes they could have otherwise won with representation. In need of a beacon, attorney-client matching services brought forth the idea of using the Internet as a place to connect consumers with quality lawyers, and a new era of law began.

Attorney-client matching services can cut down the amount of search time a consumer spends looking for a qualified lawyer by encouraging lawyers to be proactive instead of waiting for a referral service or a directory to deliver results. The process starts with potential clients filing their claims on the site by indicating the legal field, geographic area and the specific legal issue - similar to a client-lawyer introductory meeting.

Consumers can trust that attorney-client matching lawyers are qualified because the lawyers with the service have already gone through a selection process before having access to the service. Good matching services interview the lawyer, check the lawyer's bar record for any disciplinary history and review their legal background before deciding if the lawyer is a comparable match for the service.

Once the client has submitted their legal issue, the claim is filtered to a lawyer that matches the criteria. The lawyer, who is contacted about the potential case via an e-mail to their computer or a text message to their mobile device, then contacts the client.

Perhaps the most appealing aspect about attorney-client matching is that it makes the search for a lawyer less expensive and more efficient for the consumer. If a consumer uses a referral process to find an attorney and wanted to compare attorneys, he/she would be charged at least twice. The consumer would pay once for the initial referral and then again for the second referral to compare the first one to.

The Federal Trade Commission released "Comments on a Request for Ethics Opinion Regarding Online Attorney Matching Programs" on May 26, 2006 that supports the consumer use of attorney-client matching services. It stated that, "by lowering consumers' costs of obtaining information about price and quality of legal services, online legal matching services are likely to allow consumers who use them to pay lower prices and/or obtain higher quality legal services than they would have had they used their next best alternative means for identifying a legal service provider." These services are not only seen as beneficial for consumers, but lawyers rave about the services as well. Attorney-client matching services take a particular interest in seeing to it that lawyers receive clients, which allows lawyers to spend less time outside of their practice advertising and marketing.

Research shows that attorney-client matching services are becoming highly regarded by consumers and lawyers alike. The legal industry in the United States generates more than $200 billion in revenue, and that elevated amount of capital reveals that there exists a great demand for lawyers.

Currently, four million people go online to seek legal services per month, and that number is projected to rise to 9 million people per month in 2007 according to an analysis by Reuters. Of those millions, there are 400,000 to 450,000 unique visits of individuals actually seeking attorneys that turn to attorney-client matching services.

Adrienne Pope is originally from Chicago. She attended college at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. where she studied English Literature. After college, she taught elementary school in Houston. Currently, she serves as the marketing communications specialist for matching service LegalFish LLC in Chicago.