scholarly journals The Role of the Legal Services Corporation in Improving Access to Justice

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Sandman
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Wage Theft ◽  
Legal Services Corporation ◽  
Mortgage Foreclosures ◽  
Aid Programs

The Legal Services Corporation is the United States' largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans. The LSC funds legal-aid programs that serve households with annual incomes at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline. Legal-aid clients face a wide variety of civil legal problems: wrongful evictions, mortgage foreclosures, domestic violence, wage theft, child custody and child support issues, and denial of essential benefits. This vital work is badly underfunded. The shortfall between the civil legal needs of low-income Americans and the resources available to address those needs is daunting. Federal funding is necessary because support for civil legal aid varies widely from state to state. The LSC uses the “justice gap” metaphor to describe the shortfall between legal needs and legal services. Narrowing the gap is central to the LSC's mission.

scholarly journals Optimism, Skepticism, and Access to Justice

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 495-513
Author(s):  
David Luban
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Legal Services Corporation ◽  
Bar Association ◽  
The U.S ◽  
People Today

It has been more than twenty years since the American Bar Association published its pioneering study of the legal needs of low-income Americans. The bottom lines of this study are often cited: first, that each year, half of low-income people faced legal needs, defined as “situations, events, or difficulties any member of the household faced . . . . [that] raised legal issues.” Second, 70% of the legal needs of lowincome people went unmet. Twenty years later, it appears that nothing has changed, except for the worse. For one thing, the budget of the Legal Services Corporation (“LSC”) is 40% smaller today—in constant dollars—than it was when the Legal Needs Study appeared. In fact, the LSC’s 2015 budget was 10% lower than it was just four years earlier. Today there are about 4,300 LSC-funded lawyers—about the same as in 1994, the year of the ABA’s legal needs survey. This actually improved over the intervening years, when the number of LSC-funded lawyers dropped significantly. But the number of people eligible for legal aid has grown by 11 million since 1994 to a rather staggering 61 million people today, almost a fifth of the U.S. population.

scholarly journals Pro Bono Work vs. Legal Aid: Approaches to Ensuring Access to Justice and the Social Responsibility of the Attorney

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edita Gruodytė ◽  
Stefan Kirchner
Keyword(s):  
Social Responsibility ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Assistance ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
The Social ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Right

ABSTRACT In many jurisdictions middle- and low-income individuals obtain only a relatively modest share of lawyers’ services. In a society ruled by law, every person should be able to expect key principles of justice to apply. Among the most important dimensions of a right to a fair trial is the right to equal access to an attorney. After all, the attorney is not merely a commercial actor but also represents the legal system. Access to an attorney is a key step in providing justice in practice. Many states have developed programs of legal aid which aim at providing those who are in need of legal assistance but cannot afford to pay for legal services with a way to receive legal services. Scientific literature distinguishes various forms and instruments of legal aid: the court appointment of lawyers, free or low cost legal aid provided by public agencies and charitable and fraternal organizations, sometimes mixed with legal expenses insurance, contingency fee and the free services of lawyers who are serving probono publico. From the perspective of practicing attorneys, this article presents and compares existing systems of legal assistance in Lithuania and Germany, and their availability and effectiveness, in order to answer the question whether the social responsibility of attorneys and access to justice is obtained.

scholarly journals Addressing Access to Justice Through New Legal Service Providers

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-579
Author(s):  
Alice Woolley ◽  
Trevor Farrow
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Service ◽  
Legal Assistance ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Legal Processes

Most informed observers of the Canadian and American legal systems accept the existence of a significant crisis in access to justice. Evidence shows growing numbers of self-represented litigants, inadequate support for legal aid, far more reported legal issues than there is access to affordable legal assistance, and costly legal services and legal processes out of reach of most middle- and low-income citizens. Bridging this “justice gap” has become the focus of modern access to justice reform efforts.

scholarly journals Leprosy and the Plague: State Surveillance of Low-Income Fathers

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Child Support Enforcement ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Surveillance

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.

scholarly journals Executive Branch Support for Civil Legal Aid

Daedalus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-170
Author(s):  
Karen A. Lash
Keyword(s):  
State Government ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Supportive Services ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Branch Support ◽  
Work Done

For government, access to justice is about more than legal justice. Legal services are essential tools to enable government programs to achieve a wide range of goals that help to provide an orderly, prosperous, and safe country. Recent efforts have transformed how some federal and state government officials think about and use civil legal aid to get their work done. Key in convincing them has been empirical evidence about the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of including legal services alongside other supportive services.

The Conceptualisation of Pro Bono in Singapore

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 97-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Whalen-Bridge
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Pro Bono ◽  
Over Time

Abstract“Pro bono” is a familiar phrase in North American jurisdictions that generally refers to a lawyer’s provision of free legal services to indigent persons. The phrase “pro bono” has also come to imply a particular approach to a lawyer’s relationship to indigent persons, one that stresses the obligatory as opposed to the charitable nature of the services provided. To what extent has this phrase, and its conceptualisation of a lawyer’s role, been used in Asian jurisdictions? This article examines how one Asian jurisdiction, Singapore, conceptualises a lawyer’s relationship to indigent persons by examining newspaper usage of phrases describing legal services for indigent persons. The article argues that changes in usage over time, from free legal services and legal aid to inclusion of pro bono, coupled with increased discussions of access to justice, represent a shift to a more obligatory concept of indigent legal services. An obligatory conceptualisation potentially exerts greater pressure on lawyers to provide indigent legal services, but can also exert pressure to revise the historical lack of broad-based government funded criminal legal aid in Singapore.

scholarly journals The Role of Child Support Insurance in Antipoverty Policy

1985 ◽  
Vol 479 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
IRWIN GARFINKEL
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Current System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Single Parent ◽  
Single Parent Families ◽  
Welfare Dependence ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article describes existing child support practice in the United States, giving attention to the establishment and enforcement of parental child support obligations as well as to publicly provided child support benefits. Effects of the current system on alleviating poverty are assessed. The article addresses several questions. Should low-income absent parents be excused from the obligation to support their children? Can child support provide more generous benefits to single-parent families while minimizing incentives for the formation of single-parent families? Should children in single-parent families be aided by a welfare program? What are the problems with the current child support system? Finally, a proposal for a new child support insurance system is described, along with estimates of the costs of the system and its effects on poverty and welfare dependence. The relationship of estimated benefits to costs is promising enough to warrant trying out the new system in selected jurisdictions.

10. Funding legal services

2019 ◽  
pp. 279-306
Author(s):  
Martin Partington
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
The Poor ◽  
New Ideas

This chapter focuses on how legal services, in particular litigation, to the less well-off and the poor are paid for. It considers first the radically changed shape of legal aid and publicly funded legal services. It discusses developments designed to control the costs of litigation. It summarizes new ideas that have been developing for the funding of litigation and improving access to justice. Finally it asks whether other processes—alternatives to courts—might be better at providing cost effective and proportionate dispute resolution services.

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