ABA-approved lawyer referral services provide basic legal information, explain what lawyers do, help the client understand whether a problem is actually a legal problem, and help identify the right legal resource to respond to legal problems through a telephone hotline and internet communications. These clients include people who do not qualify for free legal services, or who have legal needs that are not served by free legal aid. Many callers have no previous experience with lawyers. Others had disappointing experiences with lawyers and seek a recommendation from a reliable source. The referrals can be to attorneys in private practice who specialize in addressing a particular legal issue, government and private agencies, or various pro bono programs depending on a person's ability to pay.

This chapter focuses on the work of New York City's Legal Referral Service (LRS) program, one of the oldest programs in the country. To accomplish this, the referral service develops selective attorney qualification standards and procedures that help provide the public with competent, ethical, and responsive legal service. This chapter describes the types of legal needs that LRS responds to, the legal fees collected by these cases over a period of 10 years, and the process for selecting attorneys for its approved attorney panel.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LRS

In 1946 two leaders of the New York legal profession, Harrison Tweed, president of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York (the City Bar), and Joseph Proskauer, president of the New York County Lawyers’ Association, joined forces to create the Legal Referral Bureau (now the Legal Referral Service) in New York City.