WASHINGTON (By Evelyn Nieves,
Washington Post) October 15, 2006
At least 80 percent of
low-income Americans who need civil legal assistance do not receive any, in
part because legal aid offices in this country are so stretched that they
routinely turn away qualified prospective clients, a new study shows.
Roughly 1 million cases per year are
being rejected because legal aid programs lack the resources to handle them,
according to the study, "Documenting the Justice Gap in America," by the
Legal Services Corp. (LSC), which funds 143 legal aid programs across the
country.
The 1 million cases do not include
the many qualified people who do not ask a legal aid program for help
because they do not know the programs exist, they do not know they qualify
or they assume that the help is not available to them, the study shows. Nor
does the figure include people who received some service including simple
advice but not the level of service that they actually need, the study
found.
Nationally, on average, low-income
households experienced approximately one civil legal need per year. These
legal needs arise out of the everyday problems of poor people matters
relating to family law, housing, employment, government benefits or consumer
problems, according to the LSC.
Left unresolved, these problems can
affect and cost society much more than the expense of legal services to
address them, LSC President Helaine M. Barnett said.
But only 1 in 5 or less of all
problems identified is addressed, either with the help of a private (paid or
pro bono) or legal aid lawyer, the study found. For every client served by
an LSC-funded program, at least one person seeking help will be turned down.
Poor people also have few options
when it comes to legal help. The study determined that there is one legal
aid lawyer per 6,861 low-income clients vs. one lawyer for every 525 persons
in the general population.
Legal aid programs served slightly
fewer than 1 million people in 2004, with family problems representing the
largest category of cases (383,484). Family problems including domestic
violence and abuse, custody issues, and problems involving social service
agencies also represented the largest number of documented unmet cases
(504,312). Housing problems were second, while income issues were third on
the list of cases met and fifth on the list of problems that were unmet,
after consumer issues and miscellaneous legal problems.
The LSC report was the culmination of
a year-long study concluded in August 2005. As such, it does not reflect any
of the increased need for legal assistance that will result from the impact
of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, not only in the states where the hurricanes
struck but also in states across the nation where evacuees have relocated,
Barnett said in a statement.
The LSC, which is funded entirely by
Congress, requested about $363 million in its 2006 budget request, compared
to $352.4 million requested for fiscal year 2005. Its final appropriation
for 2005 was $330.8 million, after two across-the-board domestic budget
cuts.
"The Justice Gap" report concluded
that although state and private support for legal assistance to the poor has
increased in the past two decades, stagnant or declining federal funding and
an increasing poor population have combined to increase the unmet demand.
