TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

Are you enrolled in a pre-paid legal plan and worried your provider is simply tallying up your tab for a service you'll 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 wouldn't 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 you're 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".

TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

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 what's 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. It's 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 Don't 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 you'll need to do some homework before you select your legal provider. Ask these questions: What's the firm's 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.

TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

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.

TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

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 attorney's 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.

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 employer's 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.

TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

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 lawyer's 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, it's 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 state's bar association.

After you receive your referrals, don't shy away from setting up interviews with attorneys in the network. Most don't 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?

TheWeblogZone.com - A blog about Blogging and Online Marketing highly recommends Thesis Wordpress Theme for your blog!

A properly developed group legal insurance plan can be the perfect complement to any employer's 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.