Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When a 31-year-old manufacturing-company executive moved out of his rented home in Oregon, the landlady kept $125 of his $325 security deposit. That sort of thing happens often enough. When it does, tenants usually consider the morass of paper work and legal fees likely to result from bringing suit and glumly drop the whole thing. But this executive and his employer had each been contributing just over $1 per week to a group legal insurance plan, underwritten by Midwest Mutual Insurance Co. and sponsored by the Oregon State Bar Association. The tenant simply consulted...
Some 2 million American families, largely blue-collar or middle-income, are now enrolled in prepaid legal plans similar to the group insurance plans in medicine. A few plans offer a full range of services, including counsel for criminal offenses; most are limited to routine procedures?divorces, wills, house closings, landlord-tenant problems. While the plans have not grown as quickly as consumer advocates had expected, they are considered the likeliest means of giving the middle class legal protections now enjoyed by increasing numbers of the poor (through legal aid programs) and the rich (who can afford...
Consumer hesitancy about legal insurance, however, is still high. Even in the litigious U.S., few people think future legal disputes are as inevitable as medical problems. "If you have a tooth cavity and don't take care of it, eventually it will get worse," notes California Law Professor Preble Stolz. "With legal problems, that's not always so clear." Although a few insurance companies sell group legal insurance, some major companies have tested the legal market but are holding off waiting for larger public demand. Labor negotiators have begun to focus on legal plans as a fringe benefit. Such coverage...
Most subscribers express happiness with their new legal protection. An early pilot program for a laborers' union in Shreveport, La., sponsored by the A.B.A. with assistance from the Ford Foundation, was funded from dues even before the experimental period ended, and the plan went forward on its own in January 1974. In Alaska, the teamsters' and the laborers' unions have negotiated legal insurance plans. Employers paid 130, then 150 to 200 an hour per worker for protection that includes even expensive criminal-offense work. While the Alaska plans can cost employers up to $400 or more per worker yearly, most...
Some observers are afraid that growth of prepaid legal services will lead to skyrocketing costs or abuse by some attorneys. "If you think doctors are bad, wait until you see us operate," chuckles one lawyer. There is a shortage of doctors in a number of areas, but many lawyers are underemployed...