Plan offers HMO-style legal advice

Like dentists who say flossing each day will keep cavities away, some lawyers say a quick telephone call could keep courts at bay.

They call it preventive legal care, and it’s organized by Legal Service Plans Inc., run by a Meriden businessman and his son-in-law.  While the two are not lawyers, their small business links 80 lawyers statewide who advise and litigate cases for members of credit unions.

Drawing inspiration from health maintenance organizations that provide health care at reduced cost, the two businessmen created a similar umbrella organization to offer legal care to families.

Credit union members may join the legal plan for $75 a year.  They get free telephone access to a lawyer at any time and legal representation at $60 an hour, much lower than many private fees.

Robert F. Murtha, founder and president of the service plan, reasoned that the poor are assigned pubic defenders and the rich can afford their own attorneys.

“This plan is for the working man,” Murtha said.  “This is for Mr. Blue Collar America – a man who makes $10 or $12 dollars an hour and can’t afford to pay $175 an hour for an attorney.”

An electrician and union organizer who started a worker’s bank for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union, Murtha believes middle America’s workers are losing legal ground.

Nearly 10,000 credit union members in Connecticut belong to the legal plan, Murtha said.  Clients include Sikorsky Federal Credit Union, the Southern New England Telephone Federal Credit Union, the Central Connecticut Teachers Federal Credit Union, and the Connecticut Postal Federal Credit Union.

“They certainly have the major share in legal services for credit union members in Connecticut,” said John H. Parsons, chief operating officer of the League Services Corporation which provides financial services to credit unions and markets Murtha’s plan.

“The credit union market is about $1 million strong and we’re plugged into half of that,” said Kevin P. Heckman, vice president of Legal Services Plan Inc.

Some credit unions have declined to sign on.

The Meriden Connecticut School Employees Federal Credit Union has resisted numerous requests from the business.

:The board of directors is a little reluctant to lend our corporate name,” said Mark Pecorelli, credit union manager.  “It just looks like another way to get money out of our members.”

If a borrower is dissatisfied with the legal plan, “it reflects poorly on our corporate image,” Picorelli said.

On the second floor of a small stucco building in Meriden, Murth and Heckman stick red dots on a map of Connecticut.  The dots represent locations of lawyers with whom they have contracted.

Timothy Monyihan’s Waterbury firm was one of the first dots on the map.

“They didn’t look like they were making pancakes; they were not just interested in flipping dollars,” Moynihan said.

The 15 lawyers in Moynihand’s firm answer questions from members of the plan every day.  The firm is one of three in the state providing toll-free consultations to members.

Dozens of other firms are available to litigate cases.

“The time has come for these legal plans,” said Moynihan.  “We have to do something that is affordable, meaningful legal service in a quick, efficient way.”

The law firms are paid a fee based on the number of members in the plan.  Although the $60 per hour litigation rate is lower than the rate most firms charge, they make money because of the guaranteed client base and the retainer, Murtha said.

In June, Moynihan said, about 155 members called the firm for advice.

Bertha R. Woodward, 81, of Meriden, who has retired from Southern New England Telephone Co., is among those who have used the service.

“I had a question, I called and got an answer right away,” said Woodward.  A longtime member of the SNET Federal Credit Union, Woodward began to use the legal plan frequently when her husband died four years ago.

“I had to get myself together and they were so good to me,” Woodward said.

Shirley A. McCarthy Plue, a member of the Norwich-Pequot Teachers Federal Credit Union, probably would have endured her leaky roof without the legal plan.  A contractor had failed to fix the roof.  She called the legal plan.

A lawyer wrote a letter to the contractor, pursued the case in small claims court and persuaded the contractor to fix the roof.  If McCarthy Plue had been dissatisfied with the lawyer, under the plan she could have asked the firm to find her another one.

McCarthy Plue was a single mother at the time and had only praise for the plan.

“I probably would have dropped it,” she said of the roof dispute.  “It was a struggle for me.”

Her children have copies of the toll-free number and use the plan if they get a speeding ticket or face problems with rental leases, she said.

Murtha encourages people to call.  A telephone call will prevent “a lot of legal problems down the road,” he said.  Heckman remembered a member who received an old unpaid tax bill in the mail.

“You look at it and say ‘What will happen if I tear this thing up?’  So you do.  But eventually it will come back home.”

-Merredith Carlson, Hartford Courant

Sunday, August 12, 1990

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