by Ken Lopez
Founder/CEO
A2L Consulting

In 2011 we launched this publication, The Litigation Consulting Report blog, and began an experiment whose results continue to surprise me. What started with a handful of readers just three years ago now has 4,700 subscribers and sees close to 20,000 visits every month. Currently, 5 new people are subscribing every day.

Recently, the Litigation Consulting Report was honored by the American Bar Association as one of the top 100 blogs in the entire legal industry. This honor and others such as being voted the best jury consultants and the best litigation graphics firm by readers of a number of legal publications has brought a lot of attention to A2L and to The Litigation Consulting Report.

Periodically, I like to look at the profiles of our visitors. By keeping an eye on what our readers are downloading and what articles they read most, I can help guide what content will be most valuable to our readers going forward.

To get a better sense of our readership, I looked at the profiles of several thousand readers who visited our site in 2014. For most publications, this information would be confidential and proprietary. However, at the Litigation Consulting Report, our goals are to improve the way cases are tried and to improve the lives of those trying them. In that spirit, I think there is some valuable data here that would be of interest to our readers.

Here are 10 facts that surprised me about our readership.

1. On average, for those readers who have downloaded one of our litigation e-books or watched one of our litigation webinars, they have done so at least three times. Here is a recent list of our top 15 free litigation e-books and free litigation webinars.
    
2. Our average reader has visited 6 pages on A2L's site, and the highest number of unique pages read so far by a non-A2L person is 408. Here's a list of our 30 very best litigation articles.
    
3. In the United States, 15% of our readers come from California, 8% are from New York, 8% are from Texas, 5% are from Illinois, 5% are from Florida, 4% are each from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 3% are each from Georgia, Virginia, Colorado, Ohio Massachusetts, Arizona and D.C.
    
4. 19% of our readers are from outside of the U.S. Of those readers, 13% are from Australia, 12% are from India, 10% are from Canada, 10% are from the United Kingdom, 6% are from South Africa.
    
5. For those who specified their title, 40% are partners/shareholders at a law firm, 18% are paralegals and trial support, 14% are associates, 7% are students and 6% are in-house counsel.
    
6. So far, only 1.1% of our individual visitors this year are A2L clients. However, a whopping 42% of visitors plan to use a litigation consultant in the next 12 months. Wow.
   
   
7. 47% of our visitors have used a litigation consulting firm before similar to A2L (i.e. jury consultants, litigation graphics consultants or trial technology consultants).
   
   
8. 55% identify their biggest fear about using litigation consultants is that they "cost too much." For those of you who feel this way, I really encourage you to read these articles:
    
• 11 Small Projects You Probably Don't Think Litigation Consultants Do
• 12 Alternative Fee Arrangements We Use and You Could Too
• 17 Tips for Great Preferred Vendor Programs
• Download: Our latest ebook focuses on pricing, value and the overall ROI from using litigation consultants and it's free.
   
9. 41% say that the biggest benefit of using litigation consultants is a "fresh set of eyes" while 18% say litigation consultants "help me be a better lawyer." We agree and encourage everyone to subscribe free to this publication.
   
   
10. 29% of visitors say their primary work focus is complex civil litigation, 21% says it is litigation support, 8% are in patent litigation, 8% say it is criminal cases, 2% environmental and 2% securities. 28% say they do something else.

It is an interesting litigation industry snapshot. Some of my takeaways are that both associates and in-house counsel need to spend more time on getting educated about how best to try cases by relying on resources like The Litigation Consulting Report and other blogs. In that spirit, here is a list of top litigation industry blogs I would recommend reading.