{"id":2706,"date":"2011-04-08T08:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T08:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/cost_of_legal_representation_too_high_for_many\/"},"modified":"2020-07-07T10:58:51","modified_gmt":"2020-07-07T10:58:51","slug":"cost_of_legal_representation_too_high_for_many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/cost_of_legal_representation_too_high_for_many\/","title":{"rendered":"Cost of legal representation too high for many &#8211; National Consumers League"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- content_before_flip_start --><strong>By NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As often happens when I\u2019m trying to get out of the office,\u00a0my phone rang on a recent late Friday afternoon. On the line was a woman who described\u00a0her difficult circumstances. She and her husband inherited his mother\u2019s condo after she died. They live in Alabama, and the condo is in South Carolina. They are both unemployed and can\u2019t pay the condo fees and the condominium association won\u2019t let them off the hook. I asked her whether she\u2019s considered hiring a lawyer to take on her case<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we can\u2019t pay the condo fees, then we sure can\u2019t afford a lawyer,\u201d she told me. I suggested she call the South Carolina Attorney General\u2019s office. \u201cWe already did that,\u201d she told me. \u201cThey said they couldn\u2019t help.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0She had tried everything. And my heart went out to her. I suggested she make a pact with the condo association that she\u2019ll put the condo on the market and pay the fees out of the money from the sale.<\/p>\n<p>The condo association wouldn\u2019t accept that compromise either. I have a lot of friends in the legal profession in law schools and cities around the country, including South Carolina. I can usually think of someone who can offer advice, if not actual help,\u00a0so I asked her to send me an email. But her circumstances reminded me that the average person in need of legal services usually cannot afford to pay the hefty prices too many lawyers charge. Recent articles in the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704071304576160362028728234.html?mod=ITP_marketplace_0\">Wall Street Journal show some superstar lawyers fees topping $1,000 an hour<\/a><\/em> and making well over $5 million\u00a0per\u00a0year.<\/p>\n<p>No one expects the average person to pay that kind of hourly fee, but nevertheless, when the top rung is getting ridiculous fees like this, it\u00a0creates fee creep among more average attorney fees.\u00a0We need a system that provides far more access to affordable civil legal services to average people,\u00a0the way the criminal justice system provides representation to those accused of committing a crime.<!-- content_before_flip_end --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg As often happens when I\u2019m trying to get out of the office,\u00a0my phone rang on a recent late Friday afternoon. On the line was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2706"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11053,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2706\/revisions\/11053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}