Word: prepaid
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...might have stashed away in her modest row house. Someone guessed $35,000. Someone guessed more. There was even talk of a hoard of $45 million. None of this was true either-her only income is her monthly $247 Social Security check, and her only saving consists of a prepaid burial-but when the rumors started spreading last week, a crowd of 300 curiosity seekers gathered in front of her house. So did 100 police, on horses and in riot gear, assigned to protect the house from vandalism. Said one skeptical youth: "If there is no money in there...
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...
...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, says Claude Lilly, director of an American Bar Association study of prepaid plans, may be "just as common ten to 15 years from now as prepaid medical is today...
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...
Many lawyers may enjoy less prestige, less interesting work and only modestly robust pay scales in the future. Trends in specialization, prepaid group legal plans, storefront legal clinics and advertising may well make for greater competition, lower fees and more of a supermarket approach to the law. The days of the independent, prosperous general practitioner are numbered. For some time to come, however, the top half of the classes graduating from the best law schools (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan and Berkeley) are likely to do very well indeed. These are the young lawyers who will be asked...