Its like a legal HMO, never heard of it until my CCW instructor gave me a flyer this past weekend.

For 26 dollars a month they will do all sorts of nice little legal things for you, but most important is that if you are arrested, you dial their 1-800 number and they will send you council immediately and give you emergancy advice over the phone.

You get 75 hours of FREE attorney time for trial defense the first year-and every year you go without having to use any trial time they ADD another 65 hours. And anything over the free hours is 25% off the attorneys normal rate.

And they will help you in all 50 states and apparently Canada as well.

Website is here [url]www.pplsi.com[/url] and they are a NYSE company.

Now that I am going to have a CCW, having legal help a phone call away would be a nice thing to have. However, I had never heard of a plan like this before. Are their any others like it out there? Is this a good deal or are their others out there that might be better?

I know that their CEO, Harland Stonecipher, is a first-class piece of shit who managed to get himself appointed to the Oklahoma Wildlife Commission. He has neither a scientific nor biological background and makes rulings based on his emotions rather than science. That's all I know about them (that and the SEC has been hot on his trail for the last couple of years trying to build a case against him for pyramid schemes with his Prepaid Legal stuff).

That reminds me of an episode of "Wings" when Lowell was getting a divorce.

"Lowell, why are you keeping this attorney?"

"Oh, he's THE BEST!"

"Who said that?"

"It says so in his yellow pages ad."

Is there another way that would insure that you got a attorney that was experienced in self defense shootings that a normal person can afford?

They were under investigation a while back for overstaing earnings.  I have a buddy that has been there since the opening.  I've attended one of their siminars.  It's a sceam pyramid like business.  I would stay far away from them.

ArmdLbrl,
I see that you're in AZ.  If you in the Phoenix area (or even if you're not) look into Victor & Hall.  [url]http://www.victorandhall.com[/url]

They do a lot of work in civil rights & criminal defense & are good folks.

Years ago, I had a prepaid legal service call me a couple of times on behalf of truckers charged with traffic offenses in my area.  I refused to accept the cases because the rate of pay they were offering was ridiculously low.  If they found a lawyer to accept what they were paying, then those truckers had to be getting some awfully low rent representation.

I know a couple of lawyers that work for them that are great guys.  They each took a job working for them for much less money so they could, as one worded it, get back to helping people and away from harassing people.



Now, we might be hitting a snag.  I know both of these guys are very anti-gun, and neither know a damn thing about either state or federal gun laws.  I've asked them questions before, and both admitted to having never read the any firearms laws.  You might want to ask beforehand if they have someone on staff locally that does deal with firearms law.  Neither of those two guys, while nice guys, would I trust with defending myself against a firearms charge.z

I don't know much about the organization, except what I've been told by a few people.  My aunt is an exceptionally awesome trial lawyer.  She has argued about 50 major cases and has lost only one, her first.  She has worked both sides of the fence, both as a public defender and a prosecuter, before starting her own law firm.  She has been recognized by many legal organizations for her work.

This is her advice.  She has no faith in organizations like this, and say that the representation will be local lawyers who are either green or can't get their own gigs or both, and are very unreliable.  What every person who decides that they are going to use a gun for self-defense should do is find a lawyer now, before TSHTF, and keep him/her on a retainer.  This person should be connected and on good terms with the local prosecutors and the police.  This is so that if/when you are brought to the police station for "questioning", and/or god-forbid you are actually arrested, this person can make a few calls and get you out that night.  You want them knowing you and on retainer so that they will actually TAKE your 2:00 AM call. If you use your gun for self-defense, this will most likely happen at night, and Murphy's law predicts that you will shoot an aggressor at 2 AM on a Friday night when your 50 year old lawyer is tipsy and having sex with the only hot blonde 22 year old he has ever attracted, and she's going back to Tulsa the next day.  IF YOU WANT HIM TO LEAVE THE BLONDE AND GET YOU THE HELL OUT OF JAIL, KEEP HIM ON RETAINER!  [:)]

Pre-Paid Legal is set up just like an Amway pyramid.  They have people who sign up to be a salesperson, and they make their money doing two things....signing people up for the plan, and getting new people to sign up to be salespeople.  I knew a girl who was a Pre-Paid Legal rep, and she was one of the most pathetic people I knew.  She tried to throw Pre-Paid legal sign up parties, just like Amway people.  I would never trust my freedom to a pyramid corporation like this.

What IS a reasonable retainer fee for a criminal defense lawyer? And is it by month or year?

The program is inhumane.  It takes food out of the mouths of the poor, hungry underprivileged lawyers. [>Q]

A retainer doesn't necessarily cost much.  We are not talking a whole bunch of money, on average less than $50.  Often lawyers will not cash that retainer, but will hold onto the check or authorization to pay and will cash it if you ever need their services.  My aunt is kept on a more costly retainer for clients such as bounty hunters who, in the course of their regular job, can and do find themselves in shady areas of the law and come into contact with law enforcement, where a lawyer's connections are certainly helpful.  Basically, the retainer is not much for some regular person who just wants some insurance against the unlikely event.  In this world, money talks!  A lawyer who does not know you from Jack will work for you if they decide to take you on as a client, but it is guaranteed that that person WILL go the extra mile for you if he/she knows you personally.  

By the extra mile, I mean that they will call their contacts at 2 in the morning to get you out of jail, instead of waiting until the morning.  When you hire a lawyer for a prickly case such as a self-defense shooting, you are hiring their connections as much as you are hiring them.  If your lawyer is not family or a close friend, they will NOT rattle those connections for you at 2 in the morning if they haven't been paid yet, if you think that they will, then you are dreaming.  If they have those connections, they do not NEED to jump for someone they do not know.  If they have a retainer check from you, they will be more willing to make those calls, because they already know that you are good for it, and MONEY TALKS.  Their contacts will not like being woken up at 2 in the morning just to help them get someone they do not know, someone who just shot a person, out of jail.  That lawyer will owe their contacts for that service, and you will have to pay for that debt.  

Personally, I would rather pay $50 now to make sure that if I ever need to shoot someone and get arrested for it, I'm not going to be spending a night in jail.  I imagine that after being attacked, jail is the last place that I will be wanting to spend the night.  A good, well connected lawyer can make sure that even after being arrested, you can get out on your own recognizance without having to spend a night in jail and/or coughing up bail, this is NOT how I want to spend the first hours after being involved in a shooting.  

Is this service worth a little retainer?  In my mind, absolutely.  Also, I live in CA, Southern California to be exact, where a person is much more likely to be arrested in connection with a self-defense shooting.  Even if they think that it was justified, they seem to prefer to arrest now and ask questions later, they'll sort it all out down at the precinct.  This makes it doubly important to make sure that you have a good lawyer on your side if you decide to bring a gun into the home to protect yourself.

My brother got into some Federal trouble a few years ago (Federal court is someplace you do [b]NOT[/b] want to be as a defendant). The attorney who represented him charged $12K and plea bargained it down to a misdemeanor (as in he didn't get off scot-free). A former co-worker used the same attorney for two counts of vehicular manslaughter (very prominent local attorney, he represented Michael Fortier in the OKC bombing). I believe the first year of representation (the case went for a little over two years) cost him about $40K (that's what he told us at work). He eventually pled out to 5 years.

Of course these aren't examples of retainer fees, but it might give you an idea of what a good attorney will set you back.