LegalZoom: Search as a revenue driver

Introduction

If the promise of the internet lies in democratizing information to all, then few companies in the legal space embody this vision as much as LegalZoom. Formed in 2001 in Los Angeles, California, LegalZoom aims to democratize law and make legal help accessible to all Americans by o!ering a variety of legal services online. The search experience on legalzoom.com is a key component in working towards this mission. Leading the company’s search e!orts are Mrinal Murari, Tools Team Lead / Senior Software Engineer, and Michael Siu, Senior Software Engineer on the Tools team.

Use case

SaaS

Headquarters

Glendale, California, United States

The challenge

1.
Surfacing the right content to the right user

The solution

1.
Search as a Revenue Driver

The challenge

The solution

The challenge

While search was always a part of the LegalZoom web experience, it was an area the team felt was underdeveloped, especially when it came to making information on their site more accessible. Their challenge was enabling users to more easily find content not directly featured on the homepage. Since the legal world is so complex, finding the right content quickly and reliably would be critical to helping consumers make informed decisions.

Seizing the Opportunity in Replacing Search The Legacy Challenge Search as a Revenue Driver The Tools team recognized they weren’t making the most of their search features and functionalities. They leveraged the need to find a new search vendor as an opportunity to refocus on search and make it core to both the customer experience and the business model.

The Tools team evaluated several vendors as they looked for a solution that would support their new search vision. Algolia's repertoire of successful enterprise customers gave the team confidence in the product’s capability of supporting scale that had never before been reached. One of Algolia’s most appealing features was its crawler: this product would eliminate the need for LegalZoom to index any of their data themselves, saving time and resources. The web crawler would help them get their search experience set up quickly so they could start seeing the results of their e!orts almost immediately.

The solution

With Algolia powering LegalZoom’s search experience, the Tools team is able to clearly measure search’s impact on revenue. This revelation is huge, as Mrinal says: “We realized that search should be a core competence of the LegalZoom enterprise, and we see Algolia as a revenue generating product.”

Mrinal Murari, Tools team lead and senior software engineer “Migrating to a new search solution was a prime opportunity to rethink search.” For example, if a user is searching for “attorney services,” they now find crucial products that complement those services, and are less likely to leave the platform to find those products elsewhere. Similarly, for those interested in forming a business, LegalZoom can now present a host of related products which enable entrepreneurs to get their business up and running quickly, creating more of a one-stop-shop experience. Thanks to this dynamic search experience, user abandonment rates are decreasing and search is having a positive impact on revenue.

LegalZoom is continuously iterating on their site search in order to provide a more tailored and interactive customer experience and see Algolia as key partners in this journey.