Why Lawyer Jokes Are No Laughing Matter

What's the difference between a lawyer and a boxing referee? A boxing referee doesn't get paid more for a longer fight.

Okay, we get it—lawyers make easy targets for jokes. They are expensive, seeming at times to care more about billing than taking care of people. Forbes even writes, “It’s OK to hate lawyers.”

Accessibility & affordability issues

Consider this: The New York Times cites a recent global study that ranked the United States as the 65th in the world for the accessibility and affordability of its civil justice (tied with Botswana, Pakistan and Uzbekistan). The Washington Post recently reported that “in 70 to 98 percent of cases in America’s civil courts today, one or both parties are not represented by a lawyer.”

The challenge is not that we need fewer lawyers in the world, but cheaper ones. That’s no laughing matter.“To address this failure, LegalShield has disrupted the legal industry through the power of collaborative consumption,” states Jeff Bell, CEO of LegalShield. “LegalShield has united 1.5 million households in North America to collectively pay for legal services for the entire group. When any individual member calls an attorney, they are treated the way that they should be: like the most important client at the firm.”

That is a feeling that Larry Smith knows very well. A former corporate president over the U.S. division of a global firm, Smith had only used an attorney once before joining LegalShield and said he “did not like the experience.” However, since joining, Smith has used his attorney dozens of times over the past two decades. He now loves to refer prospective members to the “101 reasons to use LegalShield.”

“Right after I joined LegalShield, I took a ring to a jeweler and he ruined it. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with an attorney, she made a call to the jeweler, and the same day I picked up a check for over two thousand dollars,” Smith says.

Resolve legal matters efficiently

Smith has used LegalShield to do everything from fighting a fraudulent lien placed on his house, to securing a reimbursement for clothes destroyed by a dry cleaner, to defending himself against a false collection notice, to securing a better rate on his cell phone service. In almost every instance, Smith just needed to have a brief conversation with his LegalShield provider law firm and they would send a letter on his behalf. And almost every time, that was all that was needed to resolve his legal matter.

Smith estimates that over the years, his LegalShield lawyers have helped him recover tens of thousands of dollars.“ At $250 per hour, I am not going to make the call to a lawyer. But at $20 per month, I won't hesitate to call,” says Smith.

“The reason people don't use attorneys is they think they are too expensive. It's not that they don't need it, it's that they can't afford it. ”Bell argues, by offering an affordable monthly membership, LegalShield “enables our members to access attorneys without worrying about the clock. This aligns both our provider law firms and our members around the same goal: finding a fast, efficient, and effective resolution to legal matters.”LegalShield is not only disrupting the legal field, it is rewriting the attorney joke book.