If I was young and single TA would not have been appealing to me for many reasons. heh-heh there was something of a jerk factor about him for sure from my perspective too. Yes they both used each other and manipulated but JA did it to the EXTREME and kept at it after he was done.
Hi, Shelley921. Travis had been unlucky in life, but he had been lucky too. He was fortunate to get involved at the ground-level with Pre-Paid Legal, an organization that flourished on salesman's dreams. His speeches inspired men and women (probably including Jodi) to believe that they too could become affluent selling rudimentary legal help to mostly lower income people:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/business/13short.html?_r=0
To understand short sellers enthusiasm, consider Pre-Paid Legal, a public company that sells legal insurance through multilevel partnerships.
For about $26 a month, Pre-Paid Legal lets customers consult an affiliate lawyer on legal matters like speeding tickets or writing a will. In 2005, the companys nearly 500,000 sales representatives brought in revenue exceeding $423 million.
But like many multilevel marketing companies, Pre-Paid Legal suffers from high turnover. In 2005, the company replaced at least 50 percent of its active sales force, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Industrywide, multilevel marketing companies typically replace almost all of their sales representatives every year.
Short sellers are betting that the F.T.C.s proposed rules will make it harder for Pre-Paid Legal to replenish its ranks.
Under the rules, Pre-Paid Legal would have to tell prospects that fewer than a quarter of its sales representatives sold more than one insurance plan in 2005, something it disclosed to investors in a filing with the S.E.C. While Pre-Paids Web site tells prospects that if they market just five memberships per week, youll receive $500 per week! very few representatives have consistently sold five memberships a week.
Pre-Paid Legals promotional materials also make little mention of current litigation. But the proposed rules would probably force the company to disclose that in 1997, Pre-Paid Legal acknowledged misleading customers and consented to suspend sales of living trusts after an F.T.C. investigation.
The regulations would also require the company to tell potential sales representatives that last year a Mississippi jury awarded a Pre-Paid customer $9.9 million over claims of deceptive marketing. More than 400 other Mississippi plaintiffs filed suit against Pre-Paid Legal before it reached a settlement this year.
In 2004, over 29 separate lawsuits involving more than 250 plaintiffs were filed against the company in Alabama; all of them were settled or dismissed this year.