Effort Underway To Lower Cost Of Legal Help For New Jersey's Middle Class

By David Madden

TRENTON, N.J. (CBS) -- The New Jersey State Bar Association is working on a way to make legal services affordable for the middle class.

The group has begun studying methods to hook up those who can't afford the traditional retainer for a lawyer with attorneys in their price range.

"We should be able to bring these two groups together to serve both of their needs," says Paris Eliades, president of the New Jersey State Bar Association. "This group of moderate income people need their legal problems resolved with lawyers, young lawyers, who need to cut their teeth, so to speak."

Paris Eliades, president of the New Jersey State Bar Association. (credit: Paris Eliades)

There's a highly successful program already in place involving the Rutgers Law School.

"It's working phenomenally well," Eliades says. "The idea is can we replicate it and can we take it out of -- necessarily -- the law school context and do it in such a way that we have a commercially viable business model."

A blue ribbon panel that includes a pair of retired state Supreme Court Justices will look to create a commercially-viable model of that program, with elder lawyers supervising younger ones.

Eliades hopes to have some suggestions in hand within six months time.