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Legal Help After 9/11
October
8, 2004
Letter to the Editor By TODD SMITH and RICHARD BIEDER
New York Times
To the Editor:
Re
"Lawyers for 9/11 Families Must Explain Unusual
Fees" (news article, Oct. 1):
Courts
have inherent rights to review fee agreements. At
the same time, the public should know that more
than half the families that sought redress from
the Victim Compensation Fund were represented at
no charge by volunteer lawyers as part of Trial
Lawyers Care, organized by the Association of Trial
Lawyers of America and state trial lawyer associations.
More
than 1,100 trial lawyers from every state in the
country, Canada, Mexico, Britain and Australia helped
more than 1,700 families, with lawyers contributing
a total of more than 100 years of professional time.
As
Leo V. Boyle, a former president of the Association
of Trial Lawyers of America, put it, "If a
firefighter can rush into a burning building and
lose his life for someone he doesn't even know,
the least I can do as a trial lawyer is go in and
represent his children for free."
Todd
Smith
Richard Bieder
Washington, Oct. 5, 2004
The writers are, respectively, president of the
Association of Trial Lawyers of America and president
of Trial Lawyers Care.
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