Law: Supermarketing Legal Services

Buying advice like frozen yogurt or barbecue

"I'm horrified," says California Attorney Max Goodman. "It just sounds cheap," huffs another prominent member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Still another calls it a "crime."

What has aroused these and other members of the bar association is a small retail emporium known as The Law Store, which has been open for business since the spring in Los Angeles' Sherman Oaks, next to Mogo's Mongolian Barbecue and a subpoena's throw from Super Cow's Soft Frozen Yogurt. The Law Store customers pay $9.95 to pick up a store telephone and consult with one of eight part-time attorneys in the West Los Angeles offices of Group Legal Services, Inc., owner of the store. For an additional $10, attorneys will write routine letters or make simple phone calls for customers. Sold also are a variety of "packages," telephone advice and preparation of forms used for simple wills ($30), changes of name ($75) and uncontested divorces ($125). These and step-parent adoptions ($75) are the hottest sale items.

"What people need," says one of The Law Store's founders, Attorney Stuart Baron, 40, "is accessibility, an attorney to talk to, the ability to pick up the phone and call somebody." Indeed, according to a recent American Bar Foundation study, 36% of Americans have never used an attorney. In 1973, with that untapped market in mind, Baron and his partner, Attorney Blair Melvin, 44, founded Group Legal Services. Today the firm offers round-the-clock legal consultations by phone to 20,000 California families for annual fees ranging from $35 to $60. For Baron and Melvin, The Law Store seemed a logical next step, and two additional stores will be opened soon.

So far so good. Yet many lawyers are concerned that the dignity of their profession, as well as the quality of legal services generally, will suffer if fast-food techniques are applied to the law. As Goodman, a trustee of the Los Angeles County Bar, notes: "In a fast-food operation, every hamburger is alike. But in law, every case is not. When you walk in and order a hamburger, they don't tell you, 'Try yogurt, it's healthier.' They just serve you the hamburger that everybody else gets." Several local attorneys simply fear The Law Store's competition. "I sure hope they don't make it," says a lone practitioner in Los Angeles.

In rebuttal, Baron points out that The Law Store customers receive high quality individual advice from the attorneys they consult. "For the most part," he says, "we handle cases that would never get to an attorney without a service like ours." In the first four months of operation, 805 clients had generated $20,000 in fees for The Law Store, whose monthly overhead is $2,000, not counting attorneys' salaries that are currently being paid by Group Legal Services. To attract more customers, local advertising in newspapers, on radio and TV is planned for the end of the year.