Reduces Search Time for Users

(November 9, 2000) -- FindLaw has announced that it has redesigned its Web site, "making it faster and easier for legal professionals and others to conduct legal research, obtain legal services and connect to members of the legal community," according to the company.

FindLaw has divided the homepage into four discreet "channels" representing the site's four main user groups—legal professionals, law students, businesses and the public. Each "channel" contains links to the entirety of FindLaw's resources, but the links are now arranged in differing orders, dependent on the interests and needs of each specific user group. Within each channel, users can search FindLaw’s offerings by jurisdiction, by legal subject or by using a primary or secondary materials distinction.

I like the new design because it lets you scroll down the home page and scan all the material listed in each of the four channels very quickly. With the site’s new format, it took less time for me to get to FindLaw features that I find especially useful, such as Law Office and Practice and the FindLaw Newsletters.

According to Findlaw, search times have dropped dramatically with the site’s new design. “This redesign offers a logical navigational system that makes legal research quicker, easier and more understandable,” says FindLaw Librarian Cicely Wilson, leader of the redesign team. “Its purpose is consistent with FindLaw’s purpose: to help make legal information, services and communities easy to find and use. The redesign takes the navigational preferences of each major user group into account without any loss of user resources.”

The new format includes two navigational bars at the top of FindLaw’s home page. “For some time, we have been acutely aware of just how much information we have on the FindLaw site, and we have been consumed with meeting the challenge of making all of this information available to everyone,” says FindLaw Vice President of Sales Steven Drace. “The redesign lets legal professionals quickly locate documents and forms within their channel without having to wade through material more likely to be of interest to nonspecialists.”

FindLaw can be found on the Internet at http://www.findlaw.com.

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