PRESS RELEASE
LegalMatch and Pine Tree Legal Assistance Amicably Agree to Settlement
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (March 21st, 2006) - LegalMatch, a national provider of online legal services, and Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a nonprofit company that provides legal services for Maine's poor, have reached an amicable settlement in a legal dispute that Legal Match calls, “More of a misunderstanding than a lawsuit.”
According to the original suit, advertisements from California-based LegalMatch appeared when a computer user typed "Pine Tree Legal Assistance" into Web search engines including Yahoo!, MSN, and Google. The suit, filed on February 28, 2006 in U.S. District Court on behalf of Pine Tree Legal Assistance, has now been settled with no monies changing hands.
According to Don Keane, Vice President of Marketing for LegalMatch, “We [LegalMatch] are working with the nation’s major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN, to make sure non-profits are not part of our multi-million dollar search engine marketing program. We have the greatest respect for non-profit agencies that service people’s legal needs,” says Keane. LegalMatch is a free online legal matching service based in San Francisco, California, and Pine Tree Legal Assistance is a non-profit provider of free legal services to people in need and serving the State of Maine.
About LegalMatch
Established in 1999, with a formal site-launch in 2000, LegalMatch is the nation’s largest provider of online legal services. Corporate offices are located in San Francisco and Los Angeles. For more information regarding the company, please contact Don Keane, Vice-President of Marketing at (415) 946-0855.
About Pine Tree Legal Assistance Service
Pine Tree Legal Assistance is a nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) status established in 1966 by private attorneys in Maine to meet the need for legal assistance by low-income residents. Over the past 35 years, Pine Tree has become a recognized part of the justice system in Maine, providing help to over 350,000 Maine people since its doors first opened.
