Are Pre-paid Services Worth the Money?
You may have proper coverage when it comes to health, life, car or home insurance… but what about your legal coverage?
The question is not that if you need a lawyer or not, but when: according to the American Bar Association (ABA) “Americans have come to view legal assistance as a necessity”. Yet, most of them have not availed the services of a lawyer more than once because of their high fee structure which is anywhere around $100 to $1000 per hour – and the trepidation involved in the search for legal services.
Prepaid legal insurance might just solve your problem with brilliance. The concept is very easy: for a limited period, you will get telephone advice from a lawyer. You just have to pay a fixed amount at the start of the month and you will be eligible to avail the services. These services cover lots of areas of law, which can range from monitoring a simple legal document to the crafting of wills to more comprehensive coverage of trials, divorce, and lots of other issues.
Pre-paid legal coverage is a very alluring option for people who don’t have enough money to retain a lawyer on a regular basis whenever they need any kind of help from them. Lots of attorneys are made available to you and you can use their services to seek preliminary advice about what the issues are and
how the procedures work whenever any legal matter arises in front of you. Services which are not included in the plan are made available to the customers for a discount on regular hourly rates or flat fees.
But a very hard fact is that lots of customers drop out their prepaid plan after their first year. One reason is that there are many members who do not require any legal assistance during their first year, so they drop the plan. Another reason is the limited amount of services offered which are basic
in nature. Most plans offer benefits only on maximum plan schedule. However, by virtue of simply calling around by yourself, there are chances that you may negotiate on lower rates as well.
Another problem with pre-paid legal plans is that there are chances that you might get assigned to a novice attorney. Because of low cost factor, many of the pre-paid companies assign trainee or inexperienced attorneys to handle phone consultation and for drafting documents. There are chances that you might not built build rapport or understanding with the attorney.