There are around a dozen providers of prepaid legal service plans. They do provide access to some excellent legal services. But, you should check all their promises to see if you actually need those services. Furthermore, you need to grasp the limits of those services that are included in a prepaid legal plan.
Common to many plans is ready phone access to your lawyer. You may call your attorney about concerns about potential legal difficulties you face and get an expert opinion and recommendations as to how to proceed. If you did not have a family lawyer and had to find an attorney to get your questions resolved you’d most likely never ask a lawyer.
Also standard to most plans are the drafting of a will, the review of common legal documents and writing of standard letters. If you are preparing to buy or sell your house, you could get an expert analysis of the papers because of your prepaid plan. If you were overcharged for an item a letter from your lawyer to the merchant is usually covered.
Often more involved legal situations have limitations spelled out in the plan. If you are involved in a lawsuit the time your lawyer spends that is covered by your plan will probably have limits for both the pre-trial research and the time the attorney spends at trial. Additional time will be billed to you, normally at a discount.
While the cost reduction sounds like a good deal, you probably could ask a few attorneys for their rates for the legal effort you are involved in. Like any commercial relationship, you will get different rates from different attorneys. So, in reality, the reduced rate may not truly be such a great deal.
An additional consideration you should consider is the options you have for your attorney under a prepaid legal plan. You ought to be concerned about the quality of legal effort your attorney will produce and the relationship or rapport you could have with your attorney.
Since the prepaid legal plan is a limited service for a fixed price arrangement, some plan administrators make agreements with recently licensed lawyers who are just getting started. Like any business, your plan administrator often desires to limit costs and may locate the least expensive legal firms to bring into the plan.
Although if you are just interested in having a will set up or reviewing a real estate closing statement, most any lawyer will do. But, attorneys specialize, exactly like surgeons. Consequently, if you require specialized guidance for a business or a child custody case, you should evaluate the attorneys for that specialty before you sign up for a plan. The complicated nature of the law means you will obtain higher quality advice from an expert than from a generalist.
If you decide not to use the prepaid legal plan, your choices of an attorney are wide open. You can select any attorney with whom you can build a relationship of trust. You will give up some benefits of a prepaid legal plan, but you will have an attorney who concentrates in the sphere of law that is most critical to your circumstances.
No matter what choice you make, you can set up some interviews with the lawyers, ask for references from past clients, talk with friends who have made use of that attorney, and check with your local bar association. Get the best attorney you can to receive the most effective results.
