Subject: Uneasy About `Dial-a-Lawyer' Services, Attorneys Seek Cure to `Refer Madness' Date: Published: 1/2/91 (153 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Law: Uneasy About `Dial-a-Lawyer' Services, Attorneys Seek Cure to `Refer Madness' ---- By Amy Stevens Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal Good lawyers are hard to find, and some lawyer-referral companies make it harder. Across the country, dozens of these companies have started pitching their expertise to people who are in sudden legal trouble or who don't speak English. Touting themselves as free, public-oriented services, the~@often steer clients solely on the basis of ZIP Code to anyone who pays their sign-up fees. In many cases, nobody checks into the workers who do the recommending or the attorneys who accept the referrals. Critics say abuses are rife, and now lawmakers in several states have begun to crack down. One California legal publication called the problem "refer madness." Take Peace Lawyer Referral Service of Los Angeles. Its ads in Farsi-language newspapers depict a scale of justice and boast a roster of "the best attorneys." One Iranian-born woman says she wrote Peace a check for $285 to "pay a lawyer," but never saw or spoke to one. The woman claims that her case wasn't resolved and she continued to lose money. Owner Kiumars Shirvanbigy denies any wrongdoing. He says he arranged private arbitration for the woman and then had a lawyer do some work for him on her behalf. The American Bar Association worries that some for-profit lawyer referral firms may use misleading advertising and fail to direct people to the proper practitioner, according to Cindy A. Raisch, chair of the ABA's committee on lawyer referrals. But Ms. Raisch says that it has been almost impossible to monitor violators because unsophisticated consumers "don't know the pool of lawyers to which they could have been referred or other help they could hxxegotten." The organization, in a new set of recommendations, urges states to insist that attorneys who join referral panels carry malpractice insurance, and that lawyers who operate such companies be prohibited from making referrals to themselves. Florida and Texas have similar rules. In Michigan, a state bar committee has begun debating standards for lawyers who want to buy potential client names from private rosters. A bill pending in New York's Legislature would require private referral companies to vouch for the trial experience and disciplinary records of member attorneys. In California, companies can't even call themselves lawyer-referral services unless they obtain state bar certification based on minimum guidelines. Mr. Shirvanbigy didn't do this, but continues to advertise anyway. "We have applied for a license," he explains. The California bar, in response to criticism for lax enforcement, set up a task force a few weeks ago to investigate abuses by uncertified lawyer-referral companies. Harvey Saferstein, chairman of the state bar's Legal Services Committee, won't reveal any names or details, but says his organi? :ion will probably join with prosecutors early this year to bring "some type of litigation" for the first time against uncertified companies. Traditionally, lawyer-referral agencies were run by local bar associations and nonprofit groups. Most still are, like AIDS Legal Referral Panel in San Francisco and the Los Angeles County Bar Association's referral service, the nation's largest, which takes 165,000 calls a year and keeps 600 lawyers on its rotating roster. Most states, including New York, only allow attorneys to sign up with services that are "operated, sponsored or approved" by bar organizations. But in recent years, private firms have managed to skirt these rules by calling themselves "lawyers' marketing groups," suggesting in ads that they are law firms, or claiming that restrictions on their operations are unconstitutional. For example, there's Centro de Proteccion Legal, whose ads saturate the Spanish media in Southern California. When Silviano de Loza was fired from his job loading mushrooms at a packing plant, he called 222-2222. Centro referred him to a lawyer whom he paid $1,500. Hearing nothing for several weeks, Mr. de Loza called the company again. "I thought it was a law firm. They told me they were letting me speak to the chief of all the lawyers," he said. In fact, Centro simply gave him the name of another attorney, unconnected with the first, who told Mr. de Loza he had to start all over. This happened twice and part of the suit lapsed, he says. Mr. de Loza claims it was only much later that a friend suggested he complain to the state bar, which is now looking into the case. In response, George D. Dale, a lawyer who represents Centro, says the company "can't protect people from lawyers who commit malpractice." He denies that Centro is a referral service at all, describing it as a cooperative marketing program in which lawyers who aren't in business together purchase exclusive rights to receive calls based upon their office location and legal specialty. The state bar says that's just semantics. "They are in business to direct the public to lawyers. So they are in effect a lawyer-referral service, regardless of what they call themselves," says state bar President Charles S. Vogel. Another company, Personal Injury Trial Lawyers Association, broadcasts its toll-free number across the country. Lawyers pay a $375 initiation fee and $650 monthly payments for referrals from the telephone service. Pitla calls itself an advertising consortium, but critics say it, too, is a referral service in all but name. Recently an advisory committee of the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that lawyers in the state cannot participate in this type of marketing scheme. In California, Pitla was denied certification because it refused to provide the bar with names of its members and because it wanted to limit its roster of attorneys. Lawyers for the New Orleans-based company didn't return phone calls. Mr. Dale says private companies enable lawyers who couldn't otherwise afford television time to pool their resources. "We are the ones who have brought to the community information necessary to inform them of their rights," he says. Other would-be referral services mislead clients in different ways, bar groups claim. These outfits are solo lawyers or small law firms that bill themselves as expert "lawyer-referral companies" in order to elbow ahead of competitors listed simply as "lawyers" in the Yellow Pages. Gary Kleinman promotes his "Bankruptcy Hotline referral service" in the Los Angeles phone book. He says he serves all the callers his three-person law firm can help, and sends the rest to lawyers he knows. Does he worry that the ad may be deceptive? "I don't know what people think," Mr. Kleinman says. "And people can shop around." He says he is providing a service to consumers who don't know any attorneys, and doesn't "have the time" to apply for certification from the state bar. Mr. Kleinman says he doesn't charge lawyers for his work. But consumer advocates fear that companies like his, and those motivated by profit, don't screen calls for troubles that might better be handled by public or social service agencies. Bar-sponsored services refer the majority of their calls to such agencies. "What happens to the caller who doesn't fit the (private) company profile of what makes a good case?" asks Richard A. Zitrin, an expert on lawyer-referral services who teaches law at the University of San Francisco. "They are told, `We can't help you,' and that's the end of it." [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]