Legal Information Deserts

My journey finding legal blogs has led me across the world. From New York to California, from Africa to the UK. I found that searching for legal blogs by geographic location is a great way to begin my search. By narrowing my search down by location, I give myself a starting point to sort through the endless amount of results. This still provides a broad enough search to find legal blogs on all different types of topics and from different types of organizations. However, it became immediately clear that certain geographical regions lack legal blogs entirely or lack quality legal blogs.

Through my searching, I realized that:

• Certain geographical areas lack legal blogs entirely 
• City-specific legal blogs tend to be spam blogs
• Smaller firms in smaller cities blog about criminal law, personal injury law, bankruptcy, and family law (which are often self-promotional or do not provide legal insight)

These findings reminded me of the concept of the food desert, “geographical areas where residents have few to no convenient options for securing affordable and healthy foods” (Annie E. Casey Foundation). In a legal information desert, a person searching for “DUI help in Omaha” may be more likely to end up on a spam blog page filled with advertisements with no real legal insight. This prevents people from specific populations from finding good quality legal resources in moments of need. 

I hope that through gathering more data about where credible legal blogs are located, I can pinpoint areas to prove a need for legal professionals to educate and provide insight within their own communities.