For about a year I have been working with a company called Legal Access Plans.  They sometimes operate under the name Legal Ease.  It's a form of legal insurance, but their business model seems very strange to me.  They collect a fee from employers to provide free or discounted legal services to the company's employees.  The part that seems strange is how they work with attorneys.  Once a covered employee wants to use a benefit under the plan, the company looks to find an attorney who will provide that benefit at a rate that is just a fraction of what the going rate is for the service.   I know other legal service plans like Prepaid Legal do something similar, but I am under the impression those other plans already have attorneys on contract when the employee call comes in.  From my experience with Legal Access Plans, when the employee calls their company to make a will, the company then looks around for an attorney who will do it.  Seems to me that they should have the attorney lined up beforehand.  What do they do if they can't find an attorney willing to work at such cheap rates?

In our area, Legal Access Plans covers a lot of the local hospitals and emergency services, so I've been happy to take a few cases a month to help out local firefighters, EMTs  and health care workers.  It's my own small contribution to something like Wills For Heroes.  If there were more than two or three a month, though, it just would not be sustainable.  I can't provide quality legal services at the rates these companies provide.

Unfortunately, Legal Access Plans has become difficult to deal with recently.  They've always been slow to pay the paltry sum they offer to attorneys.  Now I can't get them to communicate with me over concerns I have about some of the cases they have sent me.  I guess I'll have to look elsewhere to do my part to make estate planning available to those who do so much for others.