To resolve a legal dispute, the first thing many do is try to hire a lawyer. Too often, that is easier said than done.

Now, an online service offers crowdsourcing to hire a lawyer, an effort that if broadly adopted could make it easier for people trying to cope with turmoil like divorce and personal injury.

Matt Panzino started looking for a lawyer when his former employer accused him of violating a noncompete provision in his employment contract.

Panzino, 41, had moved to Phoenix earlier this year with a new job selling medical devices. When his former employer threatened legal action in Chicago, he quickly realised that he needed an advocate to defend him.

Friends told him about Legal Services Link, an online service that connects those needing legal services with lawyers willing to render them. He signed up online, then posted an anonymous summary of his legal dispute.

"Within a matter of a day or two," Panzino said, "I had four or five different attorneys who responded, describing their professional qualifications and background." He ultimately settled his case with the help of one of the lawyers who replied.

Others like Panzino want to circumvent the conventional and often inefficient routes of checking lawyer directories, searching online for legal specialists or asking friends or family for referrals.

State bar associations have so many requests for lawyer aid that some are seeking to move beyond offering lawyer referral lists and considering online platforms.

The State Bar of Arizona, for example, is exploring such technology, citing a huge demand for lawyers in situations like closing the sale of a house, fighting for child custody or pursuing redress for an injury.

"There is a huge gap between those who need legal services and those who can get them," said John F. Phelps, chief executive of the State Bar of Arizona, a nonprofit group that regulates lawyers. "We have an online directory, but we get thousands of calls."

To hasten delivery of legal services, the bar association is taking several measures, including partnering with Legal Services Link to better help those who either represent themselves or go without legal advice.

Legal Services Link was founded by Matthew W. Horn, a lawyer at Chicago firm SmithAmundsen, who got the idea for a platform while searching for a practitioner to help him with estate planning after he and his wife had a child.

"I asked friends, made calls and sent out emails," he said. "But I couldn't tell whether the attorneys were interested. It seemed like a lot of wasted time on both sides."

He decided to see if crowdsourcing could apply to legal services, using a method similar to Uber's ride-hailing service, which connects a consumer to a crowd of suppliers.

Other online legal services, like Avvo, provide directories of lawyers who are rated by consumers, on-demand legal advice and fixed-price legal services.

Legal Services Link, which began in May 2015, creates a marketplace where a person can list a legal need to available lawyers. The site has 700 lawyers, many in the Chicago area but not all who pay $US250 a year to be listed with their areas of expertise.

Clients post summaries of legal disputes, list their geographic location and select a payment preference. The choices are hourly, a fixed fee or contingency, which is a portion of whatever is recovered in a successful lawsuit. There is no cost for posting.

Lawyers can then respond, providing their name, practice specialties, experience and a cost or a range of prices for the legal service being sought. The lawyer also states what a problem of that type can cost. The client can compare the responses and decide whether to contact any of the lawyers for more specifics and, possibly, to hire one.

Horn, together with his partner, Ryan Caltagirone, operates and monitors the platform to make sure only licensed lawyers use the site and handle complaints that arise.

There is no guarantee that a client will find an affordable lawyer a consumer may find that a legal service is too costly but the online platform helps pinpoint possible lawyers and allows the consumer to compare prices.

So far, the online service has had 600 clients and 500 legal needs posted. There have been about 300 matches where clients found a lawyer usually one who practices individually or in a small or medium-size firm.

While state bar associations offer lawyer referral lists, a recent study, "Report on the Future of Legal Services in the United States," found they were not working well. Most poor people and a majority of moderate-income individuals lack "basic civil legal assistance," including help on "evictions, mortgage foreclosures, child custody disputes, child support proceedings and debt collection cases," the American Bar Association report said.

State bar associations, according to the report, need to expand their online offerings and marketplaces "for the public to find needed legal help." There are a number of suggested improvements, among them panels where needy individuals are matched with lawyers to help them with essential legal matters.

Another way to connect clients with appropriate legal assistance is online crowdsource matching. Legal Services Link, Horn said, already draws "a lot of clients of modest means who may qualify for pro bono services but do not want to go through the process necessary to receive them."

Those with a low income must prove they qualify for free civil legal services, but it is time consuming to gather all the forms and other information. Horn says he is working to help Arizona offer an online option to streamline the verification process there.

One way Arizona hopes to make people more aware of their rights to counsel and to encourage greater use of lawyers in vital civil disputes is through mobile technology, Phelps of the state bar said.

"About 80 per cent or so of the state's population has smartphones with access to the internet and mobile applications," he noted.

That can help bridge the lack of connectivity between clients and lawyers who rely on existing methods of referrals, he noted. The partnership with Legal Services Link also could help expand the number of lawyers willing to take on specific cases pro bono.

Horn said he hoped that the result would be "to help all clients, even those of no means, connect with the perfect service provider for them be it an attorney in private practice or a pro bono organisation."