I have participated on forums such as AVVO and LawGuru in the past, and found they can be pretty useful most of the time. People are able 
to post general questions about legal issues (or potential legal issues) that might come up in daily life, and they usually get pretty good answers. Yes, you have to give your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend time to come and get their stuff from your house before throwing it out. No, you should not buy a car or house with your boyfriend or girlfriend. No, there is no magic way to get out of a loan you co-signed (never, ever co-sign a loan for anyone!!). The majority of responses from lawyers are helpful and straightforward, although not always the answer the poster wants to hear. Many lawyers, not surprisingly, seem incapable of answering the most simple questions without trying to lure the poster in the door for a consultation. For people who have questions about car accidents or falling somewhere (injured or not), a whirlpool is created with the number of personal injury lawyers telling them they absolutely have to see a lawyer immediately. Sometimes there is just no way around telling a poster that they need to see a lawyer, and this is especially true when people ask about Bankruptcy. There is simply no way to evaluate a case in the space of an online forum post. Which brings me to the topic of this post…
Online forums are not a substitute for your own lawyer. If you have a lawyer, he or she knows you and knows all about your case. Yet, every day I see posts on AVVO from people asking questions that either only their lawyer can answer, or only their lawyer should be answering. This morning, a poster wrote that she received a letter from her Bankruptcy lawyer stating that her case had been dismissed for failure to comply with the Chapter 13 plan, and she wanted to know what that meant and what to do. Yesterday, someone asked whether her two lawyers would be able to represent her in her Bankruptcy case. Another asked how long it would take for her former lawyer to box up her file and get it ready for her new lawyer. Another asked if they could get out of a personal injury settlement they told their lawyer they would agree to. Posters asking whether they should tell their lawyer something are too numerous to keep up with. I only see a small percentage of questions submitted to AVVO, so I would imagine there are dozens of similar questions every day. In each of these cases, and 99.7% of others posted by people with lawyers, the answer is that they need to speak with their lawyer immediately. As they are spending time searching and waiting for answers on the internet, from people who know nothing about their case, deadlines may be looming. A dismissed Chapter 13 might be reconsidered. The personal injury lawyer may not have conveyed the settlement agreement yet. Mainly, even well-meaning “advice” from lawyers who know nothing about a case can be completely wrong (and there are, unfortunately, many lawyers online who have no problem giving such advice, even knowing the poster has a lawyer). Your relationship with your lawyer is a very important one, and you need to be able to communicate. It works in both directions. Your lawyer cannot take action on your behalf if you are communicating on internet forums instead of him or her.