Lawyers for the People

...Finally, unions are cognizant of the organizing potential of providing "cradle to the grave" benefits to members...

...While there is an absence of any significant data documenting this estimate, two acute observers of the legal profession—Quintin Johnstone and Dan Hopson, Jr.—in their recent book, Lawyers and Their Work, have observed: "[A] deficiency in American legal services is that quality is often lower than it should be...

...Similarly, since the legal problems of the middle and working class tend on the whole to be repetitive, a GLS office handling a large volume of landlord-tenant disputes, garnishment, small claims, workmen's compensation, adoption, and other routine matters would be able to program its caseload so as to reduce substantially the average cost of handling any given case...

...While the attitude of the organized bar toward GLS will be crucial in determining its development, probably the most influential institutional force in accelerating the movement toward GLS will be the American trade union movement...

...While the problems of the middle and working class in dealing with government bureaucracies are somewhat different from those of the indigent, the assistance of a lawyer can serve a valuable purpose...

...Thus, unions are beginning to take advantage of the tremendous purchasing power of union families to bring about improvements in the quality of consumer products and services...

...With Justice Hugo Black writing the opinion, the Court reversed the Illinois Supreme Court which had held that by employing the lawyer the union had engaged in unauthorized legal practice...

...therefore many have turned of late toward "quality control" and hard bargaining in the purchase of health care by unionsponsored health and welfare plans as a means of stretching the workers' dollars while upgrading the quality of the services received...

...A substitute proposal introduced by the ABA Special Committee, which was generally considered to be more favorable toward GLS, was overwhelmingly defeated...

...The entire amount of a settlement or a Commission award was paid directly to the injured member, without any deduction for attorneys' fees...

...An important reason for this is that law". . . the existing method of distributing legal services is woefully inadequate...

...The term "group legal services" commonly has been used to identify a program through which organized groups such as unions or professional or fraternal organizations provide legal assistance as a benefit of membership...

...The legal profession can be a prime mover in the development of group legal services...

...But, while the changes which American society has undergone in the last thirty-five years have intensified the need for an adequate response from the legal profession, the community at large has yet to receive a satisfactory reply...

...and How to Avoid Lawyers...

...But in a GLS program, where representation is provided on a prepaid basis, an otherwise "uneconomic" appeal might be taken with the objective of establishing a precedent that in the long run would benefit many members of the group...

...Therefore, they may be inclined to see the possibility of providing union-supplied counsel to members at the real estate closings of their suburban homesteads as a helpful incentive in recruiting even the most status conscious engineers, scientists, and white collar workers into the union ranks...

...and a few experimental GLS programs have been tried...

...Among them are How to Avoid Probate (which sold more than 800,000 copies since its publication in 1967) ; How to Settle Your Own Insurance Claim...

...Whatever form GLS takes, it clearly offers an enormous potential for giving millions of Americans, who otherwise could not afford it, the legal service they need...

...In October 1968, hearings on the Committee's report were held at ABA headquarters in Chicago...

...Some evidence that the public is deeply disturbed with the existing situation is indicated by the popularity of several recent books which provide "do-it-yourself" legal advice...

...The lawyers rendered assistance to 3,461 employes in 1944, and the company estimated the operation of the program saved 15,364 man-hours during that year...

...Another aspect of this problem is that many lawyers are too willing to accept work for which they are not suited...

...whether the attorneys involved were salaried employes of the group or private practitioners who provided services to members...

...JULES BERNSTEIN is associate counsel of the Laborer's International Union of North America, AFL-CIO...

...Under the OEO Neighborhood Legal Services programs, highly effective representation of the poor has been achieved before governmental agencies concerning welfare, public housing, Medicaid, and similar matters...

...Between 1964 and 1966, the Hotel Trades Council in New York, consisting of affiliates of ten AFL-CIO unions, provided legal services to their members in connection with personal legal problems...

...GLS programs have promising cost implications for industry, too...

...But, generally, the weight of judicial opinion viewed GLS as violating the canons of legal ethics prohibiting advertising and solicitation of business by attorneys, and enjoining the control or exploitation of lawyers by lay agencies...

...Of much of the bar's opposition, the Committee perceptively commented: ". . . One basis of concern is the frank fear that an increase in groups offering to their members the services of a lawyer will result in a shift in the economics of the profession—that law business now enjoyed by some private practitioners may go to other lawyers retained or employed by groups...

...Such an approach has already yielded a rich harvest of novel precedents under the Neighborhood Legal Services program, including the U.S...

...The Illinois State Bar Association, for example, took the position that if GLS were adopted, "the days of the private practitioner . . . will be numbered...

...There are indications that unions are about to seize the initiative in promoting GLS on a large scale through the collective bargaining process...

...yers are insufficiently visible to those in need of their services...

...Recently, for example, the Laborers' Union in Shreveport, Louisiana, negotiated a two cents per hour legal service fringe benefit for a unit of approximately 1,000 construction workers...

...If a settlement was not achieved, the claim was tried before the State Industrial Commission...

...In one frequently cited case, a World War II California defense contractor hired attorneys to provide limited legal assistance to employes...

...In the conventional lawyerclient situation, the lawyer must consider the client's ability to afford his services against the chance and size of possible recovery...

...In so ruling, the Court declared that "the freedom of speech, assembly, and petition guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments gives [the union] the right to hire attorneys on a salary basis to assist its members in the assertion of their legal rights...

...However, in recent years the judicial climate concerning these issues has been changing...

...While highly successful, the program came under assault from the organized bar and was discontinued...

...The system which an increasing number of lawyers and union leaders believe might provide an improved means of distributing legal assistance—¦ perhaps in the form of a collectively bargained fringe benefit—is "group legal services" (GLS...

...The door appears to have been opened to GLS by a Supreme Court decision in 1967 in a case involving the United Mine Workers...

...Without the plan, the injured employe would have had to pay a lawyer up to twenty per cent of his settlement or award, while under the plan the entire recovery was paid to the member...

...But most of these efforts have withered under attacks from bar associations which have argued that such ventures violate the traditional canons of professional ethics...

...But such plans met powerful opposition from state and local bar associations, and their operations were short-lived...

...S t i l l another advantage of GLS is the opportunity it can provide for fostering law reform through appellate litigation...

...From 19611967 he was a member of the legal staff of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters...

...Because of these obvious advantages, there have been numerous efforts in the past to institute GLS programs...

...Distinctions among the few GLS programs established in the past turned on whether the services included matters unrelated to the basic objectives of the group...

...Another such short-lived program was implemented by the Hotel and Restaurant Employes Union in Los Angeles in the late 1950s under a collectively-bargained trust agreement which required employers to make contributions to a legal aid trust fund...

...Such services as family, vocational, or marriage counseling are not commonly available in the conventional lawyer-client setting...

...In November, 1969, a major conference on GLS was conducted by the UCLA School of Law and its Institute of Industrial Relations which attracted many bar and union leaders...

...The Committee recommended that the ABA adopt a policy endorsing GLS under stringent safeguards against abuse...

...No greater threat yet has been proposed to the independence and integrity of the bar...

...If a portion of a privately practicing lawyer's clientele having enjoyed the benefits of that lawyer's services freely chooses to associate itself with a group arrangement because of the better quality or greater economy or easier accessibility of the legal services to be obtained through the group, then that benefit to the public cannot properly be opposed by the Bar...

...Discussing the high price of legal services, Archibald Cox, of the Harvard Law School, has commented: ". . . Paying even modest legal fees puts an almost unbearable burden not only upon the poverty-stricken who obviously cannot bear the cost but also upon millions in low and middle income groups, unless the case happens to be one in which the potential recovery is large enough to merit a contingent fee...

...at the underlying aim of all GLF programs is the same—to provide members of the group with legal assistance of a quality and at a pricj which would not be available to *nem as individuals...

...Several recent events, however, offer hope that movement toward a more rational, efficient, and economical system of legal representation is on the horizon...

...In the early 1930s, they were provided as a benefit of membership in automobile clubs...

...The object of the plan, from the employer's point of view, was to promote employe efficiency and productivity by reducing absenteeism caused by employes' legal problems...

...and whr-'.ier services were offered on an in'-.red or some other financial basis...

...While there is still uncertainty as to which of these two directions GLS will take, there is no question that legal insurance will find more favor with the organized bar...

...Even under the "minimum fee" schedules of many local bar associations, recommended hourly fee rates are usually no lower than $25 per hour, and the suggested minimum for a simple, uncontested divorce (without child custody or property settlement) is $250...

...When this cumulative legal fund is large enough, it will provide GLS help for the union members...

...Of the 8,500 members of the Mine Workers covered by the plan, 487 claims were handled in one recent year and a total of $528,000 was recovered...

...A similar program is in operation in West Virginia in which every AFL-CIO member in the state is entitled to union-provided counsel, without cost, in the handling of workmen's compensation and unemployment compensation claims...

...To a significant extent, the unmet need for legal services is tied to costs...

...These economies presumably would permit a larger allocation of GLS resources to representation areas—such as courtroom appearances—requiring more specialized attention...

...While each of these identities is beset with legal implications, too often they are undertaken without any legal advice...

...Another advantage of GLS is its potential for providing educational and social services as a complement to legal aid...

...More particularly, consumers of legal services are often unaware of the specialties and relative expertise of available lawyers and find it hard to select intelligently a lawyer suited to their requirements...

...Often lawyers are well qualified to perform some legal services but are given work they cannot do well...

...The advantages of GLS over conventional legal representation are many...

...Under the UMW program, which dates back to 1912, the union's attorney determined what he believed each workmen's compensation claim to be worth and attempted to reach a settlement with the insurance carriers...

...If agreement was reached, the lawyer recommended acceptance of the settlement to the injured member...

...Lawyers for the People by JULES BERNSTEIN Back in 1934, a perceptive professor of law asked why individuals band together "to provide themselves with cheaper insurance, cheaper groceries, higher wages, better prices, easier credit, lower taxes, better health— everything except better, cheaper legal advice and service...

...Such a result is, of course, possible...

...According to Miles Stanley, president of the West Virginia State AFL-CIO, "the program has been enormously popular with union members and we feel it has been a great success...

...The average cost to the UMW of handling each case has been less than $30...

...Opponents of GLS within the organized bar were present in force...

...Any attempt by the Bar to protect the economic interests of a particular lawyer when the public would have it otherwise, is unworthy of the Bar...

...Nor are "blue collar" unions unaware of the potential benefits of GLS programs...

...This economic segment of society taken as a class, however, can afford to, and should therefore, pay for legal services if some way can be found of spreading and sharing the costs...

...Further, union leaders recognize that union members and their families represent a vast army of consumers of medical services, automobiles and auto insurance, food, and housing...

...But already, fringe benefit consultants, actuaries, lawyers, and union leaders all over the country are drafting plans and programs to meet the many legal and technical problems involved...

...The possibility that GLS may have substantial efficiency potential probably would make it an attractive fringe benefit from the employers' point of view...

...Particularly in the health care area, unions have watched while increased health insurance premiums have been eaten up by increased costs...

...Too much work goes to those incompetent to do it...

...For to the extent that unions participate in deciding whether employe compensation is channeled into workers' pay envelopes for random spending or is aggregated into trust funds for "group purchases" of health care, insurance, legal service, education, training, and the like, the unions can have a substantial influence upon the movement of private sector resources toward more socially desirable goals...

...and that while the quantity of goods and services consumed has increased as a result of collective bargaining efforts, their quality has suffered in the course of the mass production-consumption revolution of the last twenty-five years...

...Professor Preble Stolz, of the University of California School of Law at Berkeley, recently observed: "Some of the professional hostility towards group legal services is doubtless rooted in fear of the competitive consequences if group legal services become common...

...The bulk of the bar is in individual or small firm practice, and if large blocks of the public had their legal problems channeled to group service lawyers, the competitive consequences might be devastating...

...There is a growing recognition that the collective bargaining process is an important lever through which labor can help allocate community resources so as to maximize social utility and improvement...

...GLS is oy no means a novel concept...

...In one instance, the Massachusetts Supreme Court affirmed the issuance of an injunction against the operation of the legal representation program of an auto club on the ground that it was "utterly at variance with the standards of the legal profession, where the fee . . . is fixed by the nature of the work performed, the skill required, and the benefit accruing to the client...

...First, the labor movement has recently come to realize that its Gompersian demand for "more" has become increasingly ineffective against the mounting tide of inflation...

...Because of the legal profession's increased recognition of these problems, there have been stirrings over GLS lately within the 138,000-member American Bar Association...

...Legal insurance would have much less serious consequences because people would still be picking their own lawyers, and it might well improve the financial position of individual and small firm practitioners to the extent that people used lawyers more often and paid them more regularly...

...Nevertheless, the recent revival of interest in GLS can be traced to a mounting concern over both the quality and cost of legal services as now provided the public, as well as to a dramatic shift in the judicial climate regarding the canons...

...Whether it will give meaningful support to GLS—or renew its opposition—has yet to be determined...

...At its August, 1969, meeting, the ABA House of Delegates gave grudging acceptance to the GLS idea when it adopted a new Code of Professional Responsibility to replace its sixty-year-old Canons of Ethics...

...The need arises suddenly, the cost is disproportionate to income and no savings have been accumulated against the contingency...

...Much remains to be done before GLS can become a large-scale, national reality...

...First, GLS spreads the cost of legal representation among all members of the group...

...Group Legal Services "offers an enormous potential for giving millions of Americans . . . the legal services they need...

...Such programs as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans' benefits frequently give rise to highly complex questions of statutory interpretation concerning which legal assistance is often crucial...

...Locals of many unions throughout the country traditionally have made attorneys available for private consultation with union members...

...No lawyer, however, has a vested right to retain his clientele or any particular part of it...

...Another difficulty in legal assistance today is that too often it is of poor quality...

...But a unionsponsored GLS program could combine with union educational and counseling facilities designed to aid members in dealing with developing legal and related problems well in advance of their reaching crisis proportions...

...the existing method of distributing legal services is woefully inadequate...

...In 1968, a Special ABA Committee on the Availability of Legal Services reported its conclusions to the ABA's governing House of Delegates that group legal services "may substantially enhance the availability to the public of competent legal services...

...But despite the opposition to GLS programs, the ABA Committee stood firm in its recommendation that the ABA endorse the GLS concept...

...The suit was brought by the Illinois Bar Association, which complained that the employment by the UMW of an attorney to represent its members in their workmen's compensation claims before the Illinois Industrial Commission violated the Canons of Ethics...

...Supreme Court's recent ruling declaring one-year state residence requirements for welfare benefits to be unconstitutional...

...Under the new Code, a lawyer may participate in a GLS program "only in those instances and to the extent that controlling constitutional interpretation at the time of the rendition of services requires the allowance of such legal services activities...

...The major policy question to be resolved is whether GLS can best be operated on a staff lawyer basis, as is the case with Neighborhood Legal Services in which salaried attorneys are hired to represent members of the group exclusively, or whether GLS should function under the principle of "legal insurance" in which members choose their own private lawyers and are reimbursed for their legal expenses in accordance with a schedule of benefits, as is the practice under most medical insurance programs...

...It has become apparent that for the majority of Americans—not only the perceptible poor— Today's ordinary citizen is cast in a variety of roles, including that of consumer, taxpayer, voter, employe, parent, investor, lessee, as well as accident victim or cause...

...For years, the law reviews have discussed its implications for the practice oi law and the administration of justice...