LOCAL LAWYER HEADS BAR COMMITTEE FOR RESOLVING DISPUTES OVER FEES

When it comes to settling fee disputes with clients, most lawyers would rather not go to court.

The Missouri Bar Association has had a mediation and arbitration program in place since October 1991 that works to resolve fee disputes between lawyers and clients outside of court.

"It has been a very successful program," said Joe Buerkle, a Cape Girardeau County lawyer who has been named chairman of the bar association's Fee Dispute Resolution Committee.

Buerkle is a member of the Jackson law firm of Buerkle, Beeson, Ludwig, Wilson and Jackson.

Buerkle has served on the fee-dispute committee since its inception.

The committee of four lawyers and three non-lawyers helps oversee the statewide program. The program involves more than 80 lawyers and non-lawyers who volunteer their time to investigate, mediate and arbitrate fee disputes.

The program is offered free of charge.

Clients can request mediation or arbitration or proceed from mediation to arbitration, Buerkle said.

Lawyers whose fees are being questioned don't have to participate in such efforts, but they generally do, he said.

In about 90 percent of the cases, lawyers agree to participate in the dispute-resolution efforts.

The program handles about 50 to 60 cases a year in outstate Missouri. The metropolitan bar associations in St. Louis and Kansas City have their own dispute-resolution programs.

"The smallest dispute we have ever had was $25 and the highest was $66,000," said the Missouri Bar Association's Linda Oligschlaeger. Most of the disputes are in the $1,500 to $3,000 range.

Buerkle said there have been few such disputes in Southeast Missouri. Most cases, he said, have been favorably resolved outside of court.

Buerkle said the system helps both the client and the lawyer resolve their disputes.

Before this system was set up, lawyers had few options. "They either wrote it off or sued a client," Buerkle said.

"The whole idea is that the law is supposed to be a profession and it was demeaning for a lawyer to have to sue someone who was a former client," he said.

Buerkle said many fee disputes result from poor communication by the lawyers.

Oligschlaeger said the bar doesn't keep statistics on who wins the fee disputes. But she estimated it runs about even between clients and lawyers.

In many cases, the parties settle on an amount in the middle, she said.

A mediation team generally has both a lawyer and a non-lawyer. In arbitration, there is a panel of two lawyers and a non-lawyer.

Oligschlaeger said lawyers who volunteer their time to resolve disputes take great pains to see that the clients are heard.

"I would venture to say the lawyers are harder on the lawyer being complained about than the non-lawyer sometimes," she said.