Legal information acquisition by the public: The role of personal and environmental factors

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Legal information acquisition by the public: The role of personal and environmental factors

O'Hare, Sheila / Erdelez, Sanda

This paper reports a portion of the results of a 2016 mixed methods study on the acquisition of legal information by members of the public. While information acquisition by health information seekers has been extensively studied, similar studies of legal consumers are almost nonexistent. Even less research has focused on incidental encounters with legal information. Based upon established models of human information behavior, and informed by numerous studies of health information acquisition by consumers, this study examined the relationship of personal, contextual, affective and environmental factors with frequency of legal information acquisition. In one phase of the study, an online survey was administered to 385 adults without formal legal training. Reported frequency of legal information searching and incidental encountering (IE) of legal information were assessed for significant relationships with personal characteristics and environmental factors. Age, income and previous experience with the legal system were associated with greater legal search frequency. Age, race and previous experience with the legal system were associated with greater frequency of legal IE. Exposure to multiple information sources and multiple mass media sources were associated with greater frequency of both legal search and IE. The study was exploratory in nature, but it serves as a first step in assessing civil legal information acquisition by American adults without specialized legal training. It also explicitly ties legal consciousness, and legal access, to information acquisition practices.