Category: pre paid legal

Look before you take the leap into pre-paid legal services

Choosing a pre-paid legal plan is a good way to save big bucks, but
choosing a plan you need and a provider you can trust is a different
matter. Here is a number of things to look for in a legal plan from the
very start:

Look for whats covered: Legal plans are offered in different models and
differ in the specifics of what they cover. While phone consultation and
simple drafting and reviewing of simple contracts are included across the
board, more elaborate and complicated legal matters are not covered.
Its best to review your own legal needs before you choose a legal plan.
Ask which legal services will you need most and then choose a plan that
provides the best coverage given those needs. For instance, if you are a
business owner, lawsuits, lease and contract negotiations could be high on
your list and you would be looking for a legal plan that provides coverage
accordingly.

Know what legal coverage you already have Dont pay for coverage twice! If
you have car insurance, then you are covered for liability and medical
protection, home insurance covers you for injuries sustained on your
property Your existing insurance policies already cover some of your
legal costs and there is no need to pay for that coverage when you select
with a legal plan.

Does the company have an in-house procedure to handle complaints? One of
the stumbling blocks of pre-paid legal services is quality of service.
Newly-licensed attorneys, phone calls not getting answered and that
ointment on any client lawyer relationship: fee disputes, typically
involving bills made to your credit car to cover for services not included
in your contract This is just a specimen of the many problems people face
with their plan providers.
Make sure you select a plan that has clear guidelines as to how to settle
dispute when they arise. A company that has a good in-house mechanism to
handle complaints will generally assign a senior attorney with the
authority to handle customer complaints of and disputes with any attorneys
in the network. Secondary sources of resolution may include your state
insurance department or bar association. Check their outlet for complaints
against pre-paid services.

Checking out the business youll need to do some homework before you
select your legal provider. Ask these questions: Whats the firms
reputation in my area? How many years have they been in business? Have they
been operating in my local area for at least a year without complaints? How
skilled are they attorneys? Do they cover the locale where my business
operates? Some good places to start your background research are your state
bar association, the Better Business Bureau and the Consumer Affairs
Office.

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Are Pre-paid services worth the money?

You may be covered when it comes to health, life, car or home insurance
but what about legal coverage?

The question is not if you’ll need a lawyer, but when: according to the
American Bar Association (ABA) Americans have come to view legal
assistance as a necessity. Yet, most Americans have not used a lawyer
more than once due to the sky high attorney fees anywhere from $100 to
$1000 per hour and the trepidation involved in the search for legal
services.

Prepaid legal insurance might just be the answer you have been looking
for. The concept is simple: for a fixed monthly subscription, you get
telephone access to advice from a lawyer. You pay a fixed amount in
advance each month to defray the cost of legal services furnished in the
future. These services span various areas of the law, anywhere from reviews
of simple legal documents and the writing of a simple will to more
comprehensive coverage of trials, divorce, bankruptcy and real estate
issues.

Pre-paid legal coverage is a very attractive proposition for people who
dont have the resources to retain a lawyer on a regular basis whenever
they need assistance. You effectively have a network of attorneys you can
use as retainer to seek preliminary advice about what the issues are and
how the procedures work whenever legal matters arise. Services not covered
by the plan are available to members for a discount on regular hourly rates
or flat fees.

A hard fact, however, is that more than half of new subscribers drop out of
a prepaid
plan after their first year. One reason could be that many members do not
require any legal assistance during their first year, so opt out. Another
reason is the scope of services offered, which are very basic and limited
in nature. Most plans have certain caps or maximums as far as benefits
provided are concerned, and purport to offer discount on standard attorney
fees instead. However, by virtue of simply calling around by yourself you
could probably negotiate a lower rate.
Another problem with pre-paid legal plans is the likelihood of getting
assigned to a novice attorney. Because of cost considerations, many of the
companies behind per-paid services assign trainee or inexperienced
attorneys to handle phone consultation and drafting of simple legal
documents. You are also less likely to build rapport and understanding,
two of the most important attributes of choosing a good attorney, as over
90% of the work is done over the phone.

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How to choose an attorney?

Throughout the course of your legal problems, you will have to make some
tough decisions If you were involved in an accident then you have to
choose between bringing criminal damages or press with a plaintiff case, if
you have a small business and you were involved in a deal, then you have to
decide whether to sign it or let it pass. There is no clear-cut answer in
many of these dilemmas, and getting the right lawyer is crucial to you. We
examine the perks of choosing a lawyer in a pre-paid legal plan as opposed
to hiring your own lawyer, and some simple steps you can take to choose a
good attorney.

The number one criterion has to do with a lawyers legal ability: someone
who lays the law down for you, present you with options, explain the
ramifications of each decision you make and give you recommendations on the
best course of action. In this day and age of complicated legal matters,
many lawyers are increasingly specialised and you stand to get better
information from someone with a practice focus in a particular area of the
law than a generalist who deals with a broad spectrum of legal issues.
Building rapport is also very important: your relationship with your lawyer
can make or break your case. You need a lawyer who gives you candid advice
and council you can trust, someone with enough perspective to step back
from an issue and look at it from all perspectives.

Client-lawyer relationships are very limited within a pre-paid legal plan.
Because of preventive nature of most plans, your contact with your
lawyer will be limited on many occasions. You seldom get to talk to your
lawyer face-to-face as most of the consultation is done over the phone
and even when you get to talk to them, its difficult to build rapport
when your office consultations are limited to a dozen hours a year.

The good news, however, is you still have some options left. When you sign
up for a legal plan, you get to choose your lawyer and there is a number of
steps you can take to increase the likelihood of getting a good lawyer.
First, you need to ask for referrals from previous clients. Ask around
about good attorneys in the network. Once you get a few names, check their
educational background, their qualifications and their professional track
record with your states bar association.
After you receive your referrals, dont shy away from setting up interviews
with attorneys in the network. Most dont mind receiving enquiries about
what they do and how able there are. |Ask tough questions: How long have
they been in practice? How satisfied are their previous clients? How many
legal problems of interest to you have they taken recently?

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Pre-paid legal plans? You can get them for free!

They say the best things in life are free. In the case of pre-paid legal
plans, this may just hold true.

Pre-paid legal plans offer a range of legal services on-call for a fixed
monthly charge of up to $25 per month. With such a low monthly payment,
most people are only too happy to get a legal coverage they wouldnt have
otherwise dreamt of in the stultifying, money-grabbing world of lawyers…
But did you know, you could get all of that coverage free of charge?

In a bid to cut on administration costs, employers, labor unions and
universities are now providing legal services at discounted or no cost
altogether to their members. Employers are increasingly sponsoring legal
plans to their employees as a fringe benefit, as part of their Employee
Assistance Program (EAP). Labor unions fund plans offered as member
benefit, or under a collective bargaining scheme, in which case new members
are eligible to huge discounts. Universities are equally as involved with
legal plans offered to students and staff.

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The access legal plan

Pre-paid legal plans come in a variety of types depending on the scope of
legal coverage they provide.

The most basic pre-paid plan is designed to make the simple legal services
readily available to the general public at low cost. These plans typically
cost between $10 and $30 per month, billed in advance.
You get unrestricted toll-free number telephone access to a lawyer for
legal advice and consultation. You can also make brief office consultations
to talk to your lawyer about any legal problems you may be encountering.
Your lawyer can also write to letters or make phone calls on your behalf.
This can help resolve many problems before they escalate further.
Other services provided are not overly time-consuming: the drafting of your
will to distribute your property after your death, review of your trust and
any other simple legal document.

If you require any other service beyond the scope of a basic plan, then you
can either pay discounts on regular lawyer fees or pay a premium to upgrade
to a more comprehensive plan.

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