In a Legal Bind? Lawyer Up

It’s 2:45 a.m. and the toilet’s clogged and overflowing. You don’t know anything about plumbing, so you flip through the yellow pages, find a plumber and he answers your call and bails you out in the middle of the night.

It’s January and it’s freezing. You’re not quite sure how, but you’ve run out of oil and you’re worried your young children might get sick or even worse because of the frigid temperatures. You call your gas company, and someone comes and bails you out in the middle of the night.

So what if you’re arrested — or what if one of your college students are arrested — late at night? They’re given one phone call. What if you’re sleeping and you miss the call? What if the lawyer they might choose to call doesn’t pick up?

Why aren’t lawyers as easily accessible as plumbers and the gasman?

Eastonite Chris Miles is working to solve that problem.

In June, Miles launched LawyerUp, an organization which he calls “America’s first urgent legal dispatch service.”

“Most of your life, if you want help right away, you can get it,” Miles told Patch. “But if you’re arrested and need a lawyer, that’s not always the case.” When you make your one phone call, “there’s no way to know if someone will answer the phone.”

Miles’ company currently offers customers 24/7 access to lawyers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Rather than gambling on where to make your phone call — your loved ones or friends may be asleep and miss the call — customers call LawyerUp and an operator answers, accesses your personal information and within 15 minutes, a lawyer’s working for you. The operator will then call your family and emergency contacts.

“You don’t think it’s going to happen to you, getting arrested,” Miles said. But “a third of Americans have an arrest record. It’s not uncommon. Every year, there’s more arrests than car crashes.”

Miles, who previously worked for AIG in risk management, said when you’re taken into custody and booked, you don’t have your wallet, you don’t have your keys and you don’t have access to your cell phone.

“If you’re lucky, you might get a phone book,” he said. “From this, you’re supposed to work your way out of a legal predicament.”

A good chunk of the customers Miles aims to attract are college students and their parents.

“I started hearing stories about people around this area, about their kids especially when they’re in college find themselves in trouble with law enforcement,” he said.  “From a parent’s perspective, if a kid calls late at night and they’re asleep — being able to have an attorney to tell you what kind of trouble you’re in and what happens next [is important] — [the minutes following the arrest] are really critical moments. They can change the whole course of the case.”

Miles said it’s a fact that young people are more likely to be arrested than older people, and that the peak ages to get arrested are between 16 and 25. While drinking beer is often associated with being in college, the fact remains it’s illegal to drink alcohol until you’re 21.

“We have made illegal things that we still expect our children to do,” he said. “Kids can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and not having the right advice to make a good decision.”

LawyerUp currently has about 20 lawyers on board and the company’s goal is to become national.

“You’ve got to start small and build up,” Miles said.

The company offers three plans: personal insurance for $4.95 per month, a family plan for $9.95 a month and a pay in a pinch plan, where customers don’t pay unless they need the service, then they pay $100. All three plans do not include the up to $250 lawyer consultation fee which covers a lawyer’s service for an hour.

LawyerUp also boasts an Android app and is working on an iPhone app.

Miles said he doesn’t understand why people wouldn’t want to have a lawyer in their arsenal immediately.

“As far as I know, there’s nothing in the world that does what we do,” Miles said. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been done before.”

For more information, log on to lawyerupnow.com.