Call to the Bar : Dial-a-Lawyer Firm Offers Services by Phone--at $2 a Minute

The pay-as-you-go telephone industry has brought us the $2 surf report, $50 sexual fantasies and 50-cent-a-call “vote-ins” on presidential debates.

Now a Huntington Beach attorney plans to use the increasingly popular “900” lines to bring the might of a full-size law firm as close as your home, business or--for cellular phone users--car, boat or airplane.

Beginning Thursday, callers from throughout California can dial the special 900 line for Tele-Lawyer to get legal advice from practicing attorneys, from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. daily.

The bill will be $2 a minute, or $120 an hour, for the rest of this month, going up to $3 a minute, or $180 an hour, on Nov. 1.

But most clients are expected to complete their business in well under an hour, said Michael Cane, founder and president of Tele-Lawyer, 1978 graduate of the USC School of Law and former University of Hawaii law teacher.

Cane, 35, practiced law briefly in both Honolulu and Newport Beach before “burning out because of the pressure to come up with 220 billable hours every month.” He said the idea for a telephone legal advice service came from his friends and relatives.

“Over the years, I got an awful lot of legal questions from them and I wondered if there wasn’t someplace else for these people to go. I checked around and found out there really wasn’t,” he said.

Most attorneys, Cane said, “won’t handle the kinds of things we’ll do, because they don’t take much time. But they are important to the people who need the help.”

What Tele-Lawyer isn’t, he said, is a legal referral service. “We won’t just refer you to a law firm, like most legal help lines do. We are a law firm.”

As he gets ready for the official launch of the business, Cane said he has six full-time attorneys on staff with two more slated to come aboard in several weeks.

The firm, located on Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach but not generally open to walk-in business, also has three legal researchers and several telephone receptionists to take calls and refer them to the attorney with the right specialty.

That last item is important because on a 900 call, the clock starts running as soon as the phone is answered.

Cane said that his staff attorneys have an average of 10 years’ experience. Most are either retired or, “like me, are burn-outs who don’t want that pressure.”

If the attorneys have signed on so they can make money with less pressure, a fair question is what do they deliver to the paying customer?

The answer, Cane said, “is preventive law at affordable rates. We are going to do something that no one else is really doing, offering legal advice and help, often before a situation erupts into a lawsuit or court case.

“The 900 number makes billing possible by keeping strict tabs on the time, and our computer system makes it possible to deliver the advice promptly, accurately and affordably because we have already done a lot of the research and aren’t charging each client for reinventing the wheel.”

When a client calls in, Cane said, the call is routed to an attorney with the proper background who first does a computer search to make sure there is no conflict of interest with other clients or cases.

“After that, we access the data base which lists the different categories of law. We have 11 major categories and dozens of subcategories. . . . The attorney calls up the proper area and gets the applicable California law on the subject and then can advise the client.”

And if the data base is blank and the attorney doesn’t know the answer?

“We ask the client to call back at a specified time and the charges stop. Then one of our researchers looks up the information and puts it into the data base, at no charge to the client. When the client calls back, we have the answer or advice.”

Referral Services

Callers to Tele-Lawyer also can get referrals to a variety of services, including most state and private social services, hospitals, crisis clinics, child care and all state government and court offices, Cane said.

“So if a woman calls and says she was beaten by her husband, we not only tell her how to go about getting a TRO (temporary restraining order) against him, we refer her to a nearby center for battered women.”

In addition, Crane said, Tele-Lawyer will mail or send a facsimile of a sample motion for a TRO to the client to help her fill out her own.

The firm also will fax or mail clients prepared samples of appropriate legal forms and letters, including wills, contracts and deeds.