Lawyers on call 24/7

This post comes from Lynn Mucken at MSN Money.

It may not be an idea whose time has come, but it's here anyway.

A New England businessman has co-founded LawyerUp, which promises that for a monthly fee of $4.95 -- or $9.95 for a family plan -- or a one-time charge of $100, you can have yourself an attorney inside 15 minutes.

This is, of course, a service for the little people; organized-crime figures, big businessmen and politicians have their legal help on retainer. But if you have the misfortune of being caught robbing a convenience store at 1:30 a.m. or driving drunk at 4 a.m., it can be mighty handy.  Post continues after video. 

When a client calls LawyerUp's toll-free line or punches an app that is available on Android and is coming soon to iPhones, a company representative will immediately bill him or her $250 for an hour's worth of legal assistance. Within 15 minutes, a lawyer will contact the client, discuss the situation, give advice and possibly arrange bail. When the hour expires, it is up to the client and lawyer to negotiate for further services.

The lawyers pay no fees to be on the call list, so the service does not violate the profession's ethics code. Nonetheless, Ralph Monaco, president of the Connecticut Bar Association, was wary in an interview with The New York Times. He called the company's name "so tasteless" and said he was concerned that the quickie referrals might create a relationship that an unethical lawyer could use to take advantage of the new client.

Monaco might also have been put off by comparisons being made by LawyerUp co-founder Chris Miles.

"If I want a pizza, I can get a pizza in 15 minutes," Miles told the NYT. "I can get a plumber in the middle of the night. Why can't I get a lawyer?"

Miles told the newspaper that the qualifications of the lawyers on his list have been checked thoroughly. "There has got to be something more fair than a pay phone and a phone book in a police station somewhere," he said. "I'd hire any one of these attorneys to represent me or my family."

LawyerUp began full operations this month in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and a company official told WPRI-TV in Providence, R.I., that about 1,000 clients have signed up, but that no one in Rhode Island has actually used the service yet. Miles told the NYT that "a handful" of people in the three states had called for a lawyer.

LawyerUp might just be taking awhile to catch on, or it might be a case of supply exceeding demand.

The American Bar Association says there were 1,180,386 lawyers in the U.S. in 2008. Slate magazine says the nation's 200 law schools have granted about 43,500 new law degrees each year since then, even while the number of lawyer jobs has dropped 7.8%.

So maybe sitting home at night waiting for some perp to call is not a bad idea. It sure beats delivering pizza.