Our first two, courageous volunteers are Jen Rawe and Ben Roach.

Jen Rawe's topic, as you know, is "The problem of small numbers of women who make partner in private practice, primarily because of they chose to have children, can be resolved in part by detailing the persuasive reasons for and benefits of making women partners."

Jen has assigned the following material:

http://www.rso.cornell.edu/prelaw/womenlaw.htm   [Laura Padin, "Women Lawyers: Has Their Situation Improved?"]

http://www.iwf.org/pubs/twq/wi95c.shtml   [Karen Selick, "Dispatch: Equal Pay for Less Work"]

http://www.womenlawyers.com/partners.htm   [Linda Bray Chanow, "Where Are All the Women Partners?"]

Ben Roach's topic is, "When individual law firms containing pre-paid legal service client bases encounter dual representation conflicts of interest, the solution is planning through contractual designation of an independant law firm."

He begins with a paper from last years seminar: http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/elp01/papersff/ddff1107.html   [Darren D. Driscoll, "A Critique of Legislative Reform of Prepaid Legal Services in Iowa"]

He says he thinks the best article describing a lawyer-run plan similar to what he advocates is:

http://www.flabar.org
From the main site, click on the "JOURNAL AND NEWS" icon near the top/center of the page
then click on "FLORIDA BAR JOURNAL"
next click on "PAST ISSUES"
scroll down and click on "NOVEMBER 1998"
finally, click on the first article [John Schaefer, "A New Day Has Dawned for Legal Services Plans in Florida"]

(Note: Although at one time on September 25 I couldn't get this link to bring up any more than the first few paragraphs, by that night it was working fine on either Netscape or Internet Explorer. If you have a problem contact Ben or me.  -- NJ)

For data regarding prepaid plan participation see, http://www.nrccls.org/Publications/census2002/2002census.html   [National Resource Center for Consumers of Legal Services, "2002 Legal Services Plan Census"]

To see attorney-provider agreements for traditional insurance-type plans see:
http://www.aarp.org/lsn/attorney/agreement.htm   [AARP Legal Services Network, "Participating Attorney Agreement"]

and

http://www.aarp.org/lsn/attorney/rules.htm  [AARP Legal Services Network, "Program Rules"]

and

http://www.legalplans.com/attorneys.html   ["Hyatt (A MetLife Company) Attorneys: Legal Plans"]

especially

http://www.legalplans.com/att-faqs.html   ["Hyatt (A MetLife Company) Attorneys: Frequently Asked Questions"]