Legal Plans: How Your Employees Could Benefit

Studies reveal that employees suffering from legal problems are typically absent from work five times more than average. These absences harm their productivity. Group legal plans can alleviate stress and reduce the time it takes for employees to resolve legal issues, enabling them to focus on their jobs.

What are legal plan benefits?

Group legal plans are voluntary benefits employers can offer to give their employees better access to legal services. Employees pay into the program through payroll deductions so that when they need legal assistance, they have access to an attorney to help them, without the usual high cost of legal fees.

Legal plan benefits can help employees in a variety of situations, from phone consultations to courtroom appearances. Common service categories used by employees with group legal plans include:

telephone advice and office consultations with an attorney;
estate planning documents, including wills, trusts, living wills and powers of attorney;
real estate matters, including a home purchase, sale and refinancing;
financial matters, such as hiring a debt collection defense attorney or dealing with contractors;
leasing or purchasing an automobile;
traffic offenses; and
criminal matters.

For any legal plan, certain specified legal services will be covered and non-covered matters will often be provided at a reduced rate from the attorney’s normal charges.

How do legal plan benefits work?

Your company can contract with a legal plan provider to give your employees access to this voluntary benefit. Offering a group legal plan comes at no cost to the employer because it is a voluntary benefit that is paid for through payroll deduction by participating employees. When employees need to use this benefit they communicate directly with the legal plan provider to access services.

Why offer legal plan benefits?

Legal plan voluntary benefits are widely applicable because there are many reasons why an employee might seek legal counsel. Offering a group legal plan can help reduce employee stress, time away from work and work time used for personal legal issues. Productivity may improve as employees spend less work time worrying about and resolving legal problems. In some cases, having access to an attorney through a legal plan could bring about a faster resolution to the problem.

Contact HANYS Benefit Services’ team of experts to learn more about offering a group legal plan as part of your voluntary benefits package or to review your current employee benefits plan to see if a legal plan makes sense for your organization.

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