Category: pre paid legal

Types of Legal Plans

A prepaid legal plan is a scheme based on the payment in advance of a set
fee to defray the cost of providing future legal services to the members
enrolled in the scheme. They vary in cost, scope of legal coverage provided
and how the legal services are provided. We will look at the different
types of pre-paid legal plans available in the United States and how to
enrol into them

An individual pre-paid legal plan is readily accessible to the general
public. There are two types of individual plans: access and comprehensive.
An access pre-paid legal plan is the most basic plan. It is designed to
give easy access to lawyer and a set of simple legal services for a low
cost. Basic services furnished include unlimited toll-free phone access to
your attorney for consultation and advice, letters written by the lawyer on
your behalf, brief office consultation and the drafting or review of simple
legal documents.

Complex legal issues not covered will be subject to an hourly or flat rate
negotiatable with your provider

The comprehensive plan goes beyond basic legal services, to offer more
complex and comprehensive coverage for a premium in cost. Generally, all
the benefits of an access plan are provided at no cost to you, plus a
broader range of services like drafting complicated legal documents,
negotiations with adverse parties, legal representation in court cases such
as divorce and child custody. They also cover all the costs involved in a
legal litigation. Comprehensive plans typically start at $300 per year and
are most beneficial to middle-class families.

A group legal plan is typically sponsored by an organization as a fringe
benefit to its members. The lawyer or law firm contracted provides free or
low-cost legal coverage to all members of the sponsoring organization.
Employers, labour unions and even universities are now increasingly
offering group legal plans to enhance the value of their benefits package
and reduce the cost of administrative burden. Law firms are contracted to
provide participating members telephone and office consultation for their
most frequently needed legal matters. These typically include: Preparation
of wills and trusts, document preparation and review, debt and real estate
matters and family law.

Additional legal coverage can be contracted according to a fee schedule
negotiable between the plan sponsor and provider, and publicised to
participating members.

(Word count: 390)

PPPPPPP

Benefits of Pre-paid legal plan for your company

Employers are on the hunt – researching benefit tools that are low-cost,
easily administered and satisfy their employees needs. One such tool is
pre-paid group insurance. We examine the benefits of having such a
work-benefit option from an employers perspective.

The first benefit employers expect from legal insurance plans is increased
productivity and efficiency. Todays employees are interested in a variety
of benefits to balance their work with their life requirements. Given that
most American household had an issue with law last year that might have led
them to hire a lawyer, its only normal that a legal benefit would increase
employees morale and efficiency.

Having legal benefit as part of a work-benefit package can help the company
recruit and retain the best employees. In this age of work-benefit
hysteria, many prospective employment candidates base their career choices
on the set of benefit package provided by employers.

Cost containment is another benefit. With less time and resources to be
used for personal matters, the company expects to make significant savings
on administrative costs.

(Word count: 173)

PPPPPP

Who regulates pre-paid legal plans?

Pre-paid legal service providers are required to provide either a written
agreement of the services provided in their plans, or at least a written
communication concerning the services covered, together with the fees to
be charged for services not covered in the written agreement of membership.

However, most people gloss over terms and conditions and just sign the
agreement assuming they are covered for most legal services. This usually
gives rise to frequent complaints about the service, fee disputes and
complaints about attorneys.

Generally, if you have any complaint with your service, you should first
address any such complaint with your service provider. Contact them to get
information regarding their in-house complaint process and settlement of
disputes. If you are unsatisfied, then it helps to know who regulates your
kind of legal insurance.

Your states Department of consumer affairs licenses and regulates all
pre-paid legal plans. Prepaid legal service companies are required to
register with the department prior to commencing business and appoint a
sales representative. Further regulation can be provided by your local bar
association.
(Word count: 175)

PPPPP

Limitations of Pre-Paid Legal Services

Pre-paid legal plans are promoted under the promise of cheap legal
coverage, an attractive alternative to the high fees charged by regular
attorneys and law practices. But under the gloss of accessible legal
services for the general public, lie a number of limitations.

First, there is a limit on the scope of the legal services provided. Most
of what is provided on an unlimited-basis is phone based: calls to your
attorney for advice and consultation on legal matters, or phone calls made
on your behalf to third parties. Other benefits bundled in the plan are
limited: regular visits to your attorneys office is restricted to a dozen
or so hours per month, the wills you want drafted or sample contracts
reviewed will be carried out on two or three copies per year. More complex
legal matters involving more time and effort on the part of your attorney
are not provided outright. If you need representation in a court for a
lawsuit on the recovery of damages, or a complex lease contract reviewed
and approved, then you have to pay regular lawyer fees. Some discounts of
up to 25% apply, but you could get the same discounts if not better by
the simple virtue of simple negotiations and clever comparison shopping.

Second is the restriction on your choice of attorney and the quality of
legal work provided. Although you are free to choose your own attorney,
client-lawyer relationship and the building of rapport are harder to come
by in this scheme.
Pre-paid legal plans are fraught with the rookie syndrome: the providers
usually resort to employing newly-licensed or trainee attorneys in a
cost-cutting exercise. Someone who does mostly wills, trusts and sample
contracts is probably not a good fit for a more complex legal issue like
the custody of children. In this day of age of increasing specialisation,
it is better to ask someone with specialised knowledge and years of
experience then it is to rely on a novice with a limited professional
track-record.
If you go down the traditional way, then there is restricted pool of
attorneys you can choose from. Your research will be easier and a lot
more comprehensive. You can set up interviews with lawyers, ask for
referrals from friends, previous customers or check your local bar
association. You are more likely to get a top-notch lawyer with who to
build rapport get competent advice and trust the judgement.

(Word count: 402)

PPPPPP

Group Legal plans benefits for employer and employee

A properly developed group legal insurance plan can be the perfect
complement to any employers work life initiative. Considering that many
employees are nowadays increasingly swayed by benefit options when making
career decisions, Legal insurance is a viable product for many employers.

However, there is no single fit-for-all group legal plan for all
organizations. For a start, each organization has a distinct list of
requirements when contracting for legal insurance. A requirement built on
the premise of reduced administrative costs will require a different set
of legal services than requirements built on enhancing a benefits package
or protect against liability.
Legal plans also vary in what they offer: the quality of their customer
service, flexibility of plan design and finally the experience and
professional track record of their panel of attorneys.

In order to minimize the risk of poor service and plummeting employer
satisfaction, an employer should conduct both requirements analysis
amongst its employee base to cover for their difference needs, and a due
research to select the most appropriate legal plan to fit those
requirements based on experience, integrity and track record.

(Word count: 183)

PPPPPP

Pre-paid legal: Are you really going to use it?

Are you enrolled in a pre-paid legal plan and worried your provider is
simply tallying up your tab for a service youll never get to use? Read on
as we explain the chances of using pre-paid legal services in legal
challenges you may be faced with.

In their lifetime, people are most likely to use legal services that fall
into four categories: civil defence, civil plaintiffs, criminal defence and
legal help that involves a variety of transactional or business law.

Your liability insurances already covers you for the legal pertaining to
civil defence. Your insurer hires the lawyer who will defend you and have
every incentive to defend your well since they are the ones who bear your
legal costs irrespective of the final outcome. In that respect, you already
have pre-paid legal coverage in place and a legal plan wouldnt add much
to the coverage.

Civil plaintiff attorneys in the Unites States work on a no win no fee
basis. This means that they will not charge you unless they win you damages
in an insurance claim or lawsuit against someone who caused you physical
injury. Their contingency fees are calculated as a commission on any
money won, so there is every incentive for your plaintiff lawyer to defend
you and defend you well: the more you win, the more he wins. There is no
need to pre-pay for a service where you stand to lose nothing, and where
advice is readily available to you from plaintiff lawyers eager to work on
your case.

On the rare occasion you need to bring criminal charges if youre involved
in a serious accident or defend yourself against criminal charges brought
against you, lining up a lawyer to represent you in advance is not the best
of decisions. In these situations, client-lawyer rapport is crucial: you
need someone whom you trust, build a rapport with and competent enough to
defend you in a court of law. You rarely get the chance to talk to your
attorney face-to-face in a pre-paid legal plan, and most of the attorneys
in the network do not do criminal defence work.

Transactional and business law is the area where you will most probably
find pre-paid legal services most effective. If you frequently need to
someone to draft your wills, review simple contracts and set up advance
health-directives or simply want competent legal advice at your disposal,
then going pre-paid will save you the trouble of searching for an attorney
and paying a la carte.

(Word count: 417)

PPPPP

Pre-paid legal plans promote preventive law.

Many people believe they need the services of a lawyer, under a pre-paid
legal service scheme, to solve a legal problem or resolve an intricate
situation. Often, your lawyers most valuable help could be before you
get involved in legal trouble.

When you sign up for a pre-paid legal plan, you have the right to unlimited
toll-free telephone access to your attorney. The sound advice and
consultation given to you by your lawyer will help you take the necessary
steps to detect and resolve any potential legal problems before they take
more dangerous proportions. This is called in legal jargon therapeutic
jurisprudence or preventive law. Just as preventive medicine helps
prevent disease by detecting their symptoms, preventive law helps prevent
serious legal consequences by detecting early problems. In an increasingly
litigious society, there is real concern that assets you have worked long
and hard to accumulate may be attacked by creditors and litigants, through
no fault of your own. By the time a potential claim or liability is
identified, it is too late to act.
A competent attorneys advice is your best option to minimize your exposure
to potential risks and protect yourself from legal problems getting out of
hand.

(Word count: 200)

PPPPPPP

Legal plans: An Intro

What if you could pick up the phone and call an attorney to get advice
about any and all legal matters of interest to you? The attorney would
draft your will, review it and update it for every other year, make phone
calls and write letters on your behalf negotiate your contracts and
represent you in court. If you are traveling in another state and need any
form of legal advice, he will refer you to a competent attorney in that
state for no extra cost to you.

This all seems great on paper, but the mere thought of paying hundreds of
dollars an hour to put an attorney on retainer is enough to persuade most
people not to seek legal coverage.

You will be surprised to know that such coverage does indeed exist under
an arrangement similar to your health or insurance plan. Pre-paid legal
plans offer you access to all these legal services, for a monthly charge
of $10 to $25. If you are employed, you may incur no charge if your
employer provides legal services as a fringe benefit.

(Word count: 182)

PPPPPP

How to enrol for a legal plan?

Are you thinking of getting on the pre-paid bandwagon? Choosing a
particular enrolment method can be very important in determining the
benefits, costs and conditions of coverage of your legal plan.

A voluntary enrolment refers to a membership of a legal plan where people
voluntarily subscribe to a pre-paid legal service in response to a direct
email offer, during an employers open enrolment period or during
individual sales representations. In this arrangement, you pay the prepaid
charge, get the standard discounts open to all other members of the plan
and get the coverage as per the terms and conditions of the plan.

In a group plan, all members are automatically included in the plan because
of their status as a group. For instance, many employees enjoy a 100%
participation in legal plans sponsored by their employers. They do not have
to pay any pre-paid charge or premium, as legal coverage in the work place
is now regarded as an employee fringe-benefit.
Some universities also provide legal coverage for their students, financing
the plans from their general tuition fees.

(Word count: 178)

PPPPPP

Group legal plans

Group legal plans in the workplace have experienced rapid growth recently
because of their usefulness to both employer and employee alike.

For the employee, a group legal plan is a cheap way to get legal coverage
in much the same way as other traditional benefits. For as little as $20
per month deducted from payroll, an employee is put in touch with an
attorney who can draft his will, buy or refinance a home, adopt a child
and plan an estate. Unlimited legal advice is offered at no cost to the
employee.

The benefits for the employer include increased efficiency and
productivity from their workforce, and reduced administration costs to
handle personal matters. Another very attractive benefit is the very low
cost involved in researching and implementing a group legal plan. In fact,
such plans cost employers very little in terms of time and investment.
Group plans are structured on a voluntary basis, paid for through payroll
deductions from the workforce. Additionally, the carrier handles all the
claims, redundant paperwork and customer service related to the plan.

(Word count: 177)

PPPPP