The Law: Cut-Rate Counsel

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Many of the well-heeled lawyers who lounged in the sun and relaxed in posh hotel bars last month at the American Bar Association's annual convention in Honolulu were not sorry to miss their new president's opening speech. Proclaimed James D. Fellers of Oklahoma City: "I view the rendering of legal services to the almost totally neglected middle-class Americans to be the bar's largest and most important task of the immediate future."

Few lawyers enjoy being told whom to serve, especially when they already have a clientele that can afford their $40-to-$50 hourly fees. The middle-class Americans who worried Fellers are more accurately described as middle-income earners; they are ineligible for help from Government-supported legal aid services for the indigent, and only when they are in serious trouble are they likely to shell out high legal fees. They constitute a group that by and large tries to get along without lawyers.

Now a small but growing crew of public-minded lawyers are trying to change all that. Perhaps their most important innovation is prepaid legal insurance along the lines of Blue Shield. Already, some 2,500 organizations round the country are experimenting with group plans. Students at the University of Massachusetts, for example, pay an annual fee and are now eligible for legal help in handling problems ranging from marijuana busts to landlord-and-tenant quarrels. In Columbus, Ohio, members of Local 423 of the Laborers' International Union can get everything from divorces and wills to real estate closings paid for by union legal insurance. Shoppers at a large food cooperative in Berkeley, Calif., can climb to the second floor, put down a $25 annual premium and receive a limited number of cut-rate consultations with lawyers at the co-op's affiliate, Consumers' Group Legal Services.

Collective Bargaining. Until last year, the Taft-Hartley Act prevented private companies from joining with labor unions to offer legal insurance. Congress has now amended the law so that labor and management can both contribute to legal-insurance funds, as they have long been permitted to do with pension and health plans. As a result, Hugh Duffy, former chief counsel of the House Special Subcommittee on Labor, predicts: "Prepaid legal services will now be in the mainstream of collective bargaining." So far, some 25 labor unions have persuaded employers to help set up and contribute to legal insurance funds. Some legal experts estimate that in the next few years, 70% of all Americans and 50% of all lawyers will be involved in group-insurance plans.

Though they vary widely, most plans fall into one of two categories. So-called "open" plans permit a member to choose any lawyer and be reimbursed up to set limits. Members of the Laborers' International local in Shreveport, La., for example, pay a family premium of $40 annually and are entitled each year to $100 worth of legal consultation, $250 for office work and research and up to $325 for court cases. Policyholders use the plan most often for auto claims and for domestic problems such as divorce and child-custody contests. Under the second or "closed" type of plan, members consult lawyers who are under contract to their employer or union.