Part 3: The High and Unexpected Cost of Legal Help At the beginning of the Missing Piece Series, we stated that employee stress directly affected by personal legal crises and emergencies is an undiscussed factor of employee and financial wellness. In the second part , we examined the stress caused by the legal problem itself. In this part of the Missing Piece Series, we consider the factor of the high and unexpected cost of legal help for your employees. A fundamental stress producer inherent in the American legal system is high attorney fees and repeated delays that can cause legal expenses to skyrocket. This second challenge has three sub-parts: the lack of an emergency fund to pay for legal fees; the inherent and seemingly unnecessary delays that cause the legal bill to escalate; and the often unfounded but prevalent expectation the opposing party will pay all legal fees if the employee is not at fault in a lawsuit.