We’ve covered some huge sites in previous installments of Clearway Investigates but Nolo.com is among the most comprehensive, in terms of the services to both lawyers and law firms and the public.

If you’re trying to decide the best place to invest your hard-earned dollars toward developing your online presence, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve done the homework, so you don’t have to. As usual, we’ve done a deep dive into our research across the web, uncovering the consensus opinion on Nolo.com’s selection of services. We’ve scoured online review blogs and read through Reddit threads on our journey to discover the full truth.

Let’s take a deep dive into the breadth of services offered by Nolo.com so you can decide if it’s worth it for you.

What is Nolo.com?

Nolo.com is just the tip of the iceberg in the Martindale-Nolo network of legal websites that includes alllaw.com, divorcenet.com, and criminaldefenselawyer.com among others.

Similar to the other legal directory websites we’ve covered, Nolo.com’s ultimate goal is to be your go-to resource for legal help, with its familiar legal directory, self-help legal reference material, and marketing support.

There is one key difference that distinguishes Nolo.com – it’s online store and a cadre of available branded products. 

Through its online store, the public can buy legal self-help books, as well as forms and software that effectively negate the need for a lawyer altogether for the more routine, basic legal tasks.

While Nolo.com offers plenty in the way of services and resources for lawyers and law firms, its stated goal and primary purpose are to make the law more accessible and comprehensible to the public at large, not just the elite of the legal community.

Hence the big emphasis on providing self-help books, forms, and software.

The Nolo.com Story

The Nolo.com origin story can be traced way back to 1971. A pre-internet Nolo started out as a publisher of do-it-yourself legal books. The company’s founders were frustrated by the lack of legal assistance available to those that didn’t qualify for free legal aid, yet couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer.

The name “Nolo” comes from the Latin word for “I don’t choose to”. The name came from the founder’s inability to find a willing publisher for their self-help law books, so they were left with no choice but to publish themselves. 

The rest is history.

This self-help ethos stayed with them as technology evolved. In the 1980s, the company created some of the first consumer legal software and created some of the first legal websites to grace the internet in the late 90s.

Today the massive Nolo Network encompasses more than 50 websites.

What is the main focus of Nolo.com?

The self-help resources are front and center on Nolo.com. The site’s primary search bar allows you to search by legal issue through the three main sections of the website:

• Products
• Lawyer Directory
• Articles

For example, a search for child custody would bring up a sampling of products related to child custody law (self-help books, forms, etc.), lawyers from the directory specializing in that area of law, and finally, a number of articles related to that subject.

Compared to other websites that feature legal directories, their eCommerce products/store takes up a lot of prime real estate on their homepage. The law directory is only linked directly in the top navigation. 

The site is set up to encourage you to fill out a form with your personal information and legal issues. The site will then recommend a number of lawyers/law firms that specialize in that area of law for you to choose from. 

It’s a much more closed process for displaying lawyer profiles than many other sites around, likely designed so they can sell the information they’ve collected to lawyers as part of their pay-per-lead service

But more on that later.

What kind of products does Nolo.com offer?

The products offered on the website run the gamut of potential legal issues you might run into, from handy desktop guides on criminal law to ebooks on estate planning. The products fall into three main categories, all with the intention of providing an affordable legal solution to those that can’t afford a lawyer.

These categories include:

• Books
• Forms
• Software

Nolo has a long history of publishing legal guides and DIY manuals going back to the company’s inception. There’s plenty to choose from here – from desktop reference books to step-by-step how-to guides.

NoloCloud is the company’s legal form service. The service is based on an annual subscription and you can download as many copies of different forms from many different devices as you need. Forms included are for things like estate planning, real estate, employment agreements, and more.

Nolo’s available software is designed to guide you through everyday legal processes. Many of these programs can create documents and provide signing instructions based on your state and unique use cases.

Is the legal directory worth it?

Unlike many other legal directories out there, Nolo.com doesn’t appear to offer a free profile option, so it’s all in or nothing.

But investing in a paid directory profile places you on every one of the Nolo Network websites that features the law directory. As we’ve mentioned above, that’s a good number of websites.

As an example, according to SemRush, Nolo.com itself boasts a pretty incredible 2-3 million organic visitors per month, earning an authority score of 72 – and that’s just the one website. It’s important to note that many users may not be accessing Nolo.com for its legal directory specifically, but instead for its product catalogue or legal encyclopedia.

Other websites in the Nolo Network may not reach that level necessarily but they do pretty well, for example:

• Divorcenet.com – 300K+ monthly organic visitors
• Alllaw.com – 200K+ monthly organic visitors
• Lawyers.com – 150K+ monthly organic visitors

And the list goes on. Especially for new lawyers or law firms just getting established, this service offers a quick way to get your name on a lot of websites across the web.

The directory profiles themselves are pretty basic, featuring the basic information entered through their self-service profile system. There doesn’t appear to be any kind of ranking system on the Nolo.com lawyer directory itself, and no space to leave or read reviews from past clients. These are all the basic website elements that web users have come to expect. I also found that many profile features were not fully filled out and lacked even a profile picture.

The lack of features of the profiles themselves is a little disappointing, but the breadth and amount of traffic offered by the Nolo Network are likely enough to make it worth it if you can afford it.

Lead Generation Services

Nolo.com’s most popular (or notorious) service for lawyers is likely its lead generation services. The company lays claim to being the leading provider of leads to law firms and lawyers.

The leads provided to lawyers through this service are submitted through the Nolo network of websites and sent right to an inbox or CRM. Detailed forms filled out across the company’s network of sites allow the leads to be filtered to the specialty and service area required.

The service is designed to replace your firm’s entire marketing efforts by sending pre-qualified, gift-wrapped leads directly to you – replacing the need to create your own website, build your online presence / SEO, etc.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Is the lead generation service any good?

Real, qualified legal leads handed to you on a silver platter sound too good to be true, but is it?

Unfortunately, it likely is too good to be true. We’ve read over reviews on Sitejabber, Yelp, and the Better Business Bureau and they all point to a pretty low overall satisfaction rate for Nolo’s lead generation services. The customer reviews speak for themselves:

• Sitejabber.com
• Yelp.com
• Better Business Bureau

The number one complaint seems to be completely irrelevant leads or leads from outside of the area where the firm/lawyer practices law. And although Nolo assures clients that leads that are irrelevant or outside of the firm’s service area will be refunded fully, Nolo.com’s customer service also scores consistently low reviews.

In other words, if the leads are quality leads for your area and specialty – great. If not, good luck getting that refund that’s been promised you.

A similar result can be found by searching relevant threads on Reddit. There are numerous horror stories that recount experiences with poor leads from the service. The same for their customer service. Part of the service’s advertising promises reimbursement in the event of low-quality/irrelevant leads, but there are plenty of stories of this being hard to come by.

Nolo.com’s Legal Encyclopedia

Nolo has garnered quite a positive reputation for its cadre of legal publications and software, designed to make the law more approachable and affordable, but its other saving grace is likely its legal encyclopedia.

The third segment of Nolo.com is also the source of most of its positive reviews. This collection of articles, guides, and FAQs is extremely comprehensive and a good legal resource and reference. 

This section of the website contains literally thousands of articles written by real law pros across the many different legal specialties.

The article section of Nolo.com features plenty of information broken down by different legal issues. Each broader segment of the law is broken down further, allowing web users to easily zero in on the exact information they are looking for.

All of this valuable legal information is also fully searchable through the website’s primary search, as we pointed out above.

How does Nolo.com stack up in the search?

SEO naturally has to be one of the biggest deciding factors in choosing between different platforms. So, how does Nolo.com stack up against some of the other directories we’ve reviewed? 

Well, let’s see.

The above is only one example, but it’s a pretty good representation of what we’ve found across a number of different searches, for different legal specialties in different geographic areas across the nation.

We found pretty consistently that findlaw.com, Superlawyers, and justia.com showed up pretty prominently no matter the search. Nolo.com itself, not so much.

It’s worth mentioning that the Nolo Network encompasses directories across numerous websites, but the fact that Superlawyers.com, etc. is so well represented so often, suggests that your hard-earned marketing dollars would be better spent there.

Nolo.com: Final Thoughts

Nolo.com’s ethos and driving force from the very beginning have been offering the public a viable and affordable alternative to hiring a lawyer for basic, everyday legal needs. This philosophy is clearly laid out on its website, where self-help resources for the public are highlighted over legal services.

The site offers a directory of legal professionals and law firms but almost as an afterthought after self-help DIY avenues have been exhausted.

The areas of the site that really shine are its online store, full of self-help legal books, forms, and software, and its amazingly comprehensive encyclopedia of legal information, running the gamut of legal specialties, written by the pros.

Nolo.com’s lawyer-facing resources and marketing support are its weak points. The legal directories themselves offer basic-looking profiles without ranking information or the customer reviews that consumers look for. And its marketing services offer something to be desired, particularly its pay-per-lead service.

Is Nolo.com worth adding to your marketing toolkit?

Depending on your market, subscribing to a premium directory profile could be a good choice. Nolo.com gets a healthy amount of organic web traffic each month, albeit most of it is likely looking for self-help products and legal articles.

The Nolo Network is quite extensive though and signing up for the premium directory profile places your business on a lot of websites across the web. This is particularly helpful if you are just starting out and have yet to create a sizable online presence.

If its extensive online reviews are to be believed, Nolo.com’s pay-per-lead service should be avoided at all costs.