Abstract
Although lots of questions and answers related to law reciprocated in Q & A sites such as Yahoo! Answers, it is not obvious how people consult their troubles or law related problems in the Web, and what kind of functions Q & A sites have in people’s daily life. Therefore, to examine the function of Q & A sites for law, in this research with 928 law-related-questions in Yahoo! Answers, we conducted four analyses; categorization on trouble type (Analysis 1), abductive inference on patterns of questions (Analysis 2), categorization on “Best answer” to questions (Analysis 3), and abductive inference on patterns of comments from questioner (Analysis 4). Results showed that the Q & A sites had the following functions: substitute for legal experts, venue for asking delicate questions (small, ashamed, or fearful), means for distinguishing legal from illegal matters, tool for checking the responses after claiming his/her own opinion and platform to gather thoughts and information from lots of people or the people who experienced similar problems. These results indicated that the functions of Q & A sites were different from ones of consulting legal professions or other advice seeking behavior.
https://ror.org/04qdzzb42 
