BUSINESS OF LAW
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/wal-mart_law_firms_are_already_in_the_us/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=navigation&utm_campaign=most_readLaw firms are already inside some
US Wal-Marts
POSTED JUN 21, 2016 01:15 PM CDT
When Evan Kaine, a personal injury attorney in Atlanta read a story in the May 2016 issue of the ABA Journal about Axess Law opening up offices in Wal-Mart in Canada, he remembered reading a line about whether these firms would soon be in your backyard.
“My reaction was: ‘Yes it is going to be in your backyard,’” Kaine says. “In fact, it already is.”
His firm, Kaine Law, has offices inside three Atlanta-area Wal-Marts. Kaine says that he opened his first Wal-Mart office in 2012 before expanding to two additional stores last year.
Like many lawyers, Kaine had seen the statistic about how 80 percent of all low-income Americans have unmet civil legal needs. To that end, he came up with the idea to set up shop in an area where most of those underrepresented people shop.
Kaine says his offices are full-service, although he emphasizes that he has built up relationships with a number of other local firms that specialize in different areas of the law and often refers work to them. In fact, he estimates that he only keeps about 20 percent of the cases that come into the Wal-Mart offices. Kaine says the Wal-Mart offices operate on a fixed-fee basis and even offer a number of free services, including a basic last will and testament and notary public services.
“It’s about being able to offer a service to the community,” he says. “We have to minimize the stigma of expensive attorneys.”
There’s a reason why Kaine’s Wal-Mart offices have received very little publicity. “We kept it quiet for a number of reasons,” he says. “The legal industry does not welcome change, and we wanted to make sure our model was sustainable before we went public with it.” Indeed, he’s kept such a low profile that when The Law Store opened offices inside Wal-Marts in Joplin and Neosho, Missouri, on June 1, they believed that they were the first firm in America to do it.................
