New Legal Referral Service (Building Practices & Benefiting TALS)

Nonprofit Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS), which supports the work of legal aid state wide, is starting a new referral service for recent grads and attorneys in solo and small firm practices called Law Search. Law Search Pro is a lawyer referral service that matches paying clients with local qualified lawyers. TALS will be in Memphis on June 8 for a coffee at the MBA from 8:30-9:30am, and at Bank Tennessee in Germantown for a lunch to tell interested lawyers how this service can help them build their practice. It is a traditional referral service model where lawyers pay $200 annually to participate on subject matter rosters, and lawyers practicing less than 5 years pay $100 annually. When someone contacts TALS needing to hire an attorney, TALS screens them to triage their issue and make sure they are a good fit for the Law Search Pro service, then they are matched with a qualified local lawyer to meet with. If they can’t afford to hire a lawyer, a TALS staff attorney provides free brief advice and refers them to other services where appropriate. The client pays TALS a $25 participation fee and gets up to 30 mins as a free consultation with the lawyer to decide if they want to hire that lawyer. The lawyer and client strike their own engagement agreement. Lawyers remit 15% of fees collected after the first $200. TALS will invest the proceeds from Law Search Pro into its free services for low income Tennesseans.