Everything on the Table: LSC Looks to ABA to Help Meet Legal Needs of the Poor (2012)

ABSTRACT & CITATION

This article reports that in fiscal year 2012, Congress followed its trend of cutting funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), which distributes federal grants to civil legal aid programs. In light of this challenge, the LSC has been working with the American Bar Association (ABA) to provide desperately needed legal services to people who would otherwise be too poor to afford them in matters like child custody, foreclosure, and veterans’ benefits disputes. This article describes a meeting between the LSC and ABA in October 2011 in which a number of proposals for increasing access to justice were explored, such as:  increasing access to technology; organizing pro bono efforts by lawyers; and assigning more legal aid cases to law students. A more radical idea considered at the meeting – and supported by LSC President James Sandman – was leaving certain legal aid tasks to nonlawyers. The ABA representatives responded cautiously to this suggestion, saying, “This is an issue that is far broader than legal services and legal aid for the poor. It’s a more general question that the ABA should address, and should be examined as part of a more general approach to how lawyers should work with nonlawyers.”

Zahorsky, Rachel. (2012). Everything on the Table: LSC Looks to ABA to Help Meet Legal Needs of the Poor. ABA Journal. 2012 (January)