Over 30 years ago, the Dallas Bar Association established the Lawyer Referral Service to assist those in the community seeking legal representation. This year LRS interviewers will answer over 40,000 phone calls from those in the community looking for legal help. About 16,000 of those callers will be referred to attorneys serving on the LRS panel. LRS Panel membership is open to all attorneys in good standing with the State Bar of Texas and who maintain professional liability insurance.
Membership is available to non-DBA members at a higher rate.
In an effort to make panel membership available to more attorneys, the LRS Committee invited the Texas Lawyer Insurance Exchange to develop a professional liability insurance package specifically for LRS panel members. Potential clients call the LRS and are interviewed over the phone by an LRS interviewer. The interviewer determines whether the client has an actual legal problem and then makes an attorney referral to the client on a rotating basis. If you choose to take the case, then you make your own arrangements with the client. The number of referrals a panel member receives varies widely depending on any number of factors.