User:LLAVE42/Legal aid in the United States

The creation of legal aid organizations formed in response to a lack of services, or ability to actively operate as fully enfranchised citizens with all the rights as determined by the Superior Court of the United States. An example of such a community based legal aid program is the creation of the New York’s Legal Aid Society, founded in 1876 to help German immigrants deal with a series of issues experienced within their communities (Ginsburg, 2001; p. 2). The lack (or inability to navigate and understand the U.S. legal system) led to German-Americans to develop this site in order to assist the people, who were vulnerable to wage abuse, criminalization, and other legal issues that plagued their lives. Other organizations would utilize legal means as practical steps in transforming fundamental American social values and culture. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are two of the most recognized legal aid/service providers within the U.S., but would come about later, founded in 1909 and 1920s respectively. The U.S. would go on to experience an explosion in legal service providers, with many legal aid organizations being formed outside the legitimization scope of the state, using law to pursue, challenge, and change existing legislation that worked against the most vulnerable citizens based upon grounds of race, gender, citizenship, and other categories by which the poor were disadvantaged (Ginsburg, 2001).

A significant development in the realm of legal aid can be traced back to 1965, with the Office of Economic Opportunity creating the Legal Services for the Poor program, the state’s official version of legal aid formed with the specific purpose of alleviating poverty using legal remedies, tackling the legal causes of poverty, and employed in the “war on poverty” under the Johnson administration (Smith, 2011.)  The new pool of antipoverty lawyers would work to transform the lives of those oppressed by poverty by a unique combination of understanding the factors causing poverty while pursuing economic justice in addition to transforming the social world that constructed and produced the poverty conditions. This approach would come to be referred as the justice model, when the idea of providing legal remedies went beyond providing access to legal aid, but concentrated efforts and energy in the implementation of meaningful transformative services and assistance to those who could least afford legal protections, and yet were the primary targets of legislative marginalization (Smith, 2011). The shift to the “access to justice” model would develop in response to the rapid social structure changes occurring within American society, causing backlash as those who seemed undeserving of such services as defined by certain political forces, the recipients of economical and social program boons. This “access” would become the form by which many legal aid offices and services would be based off of for future organizations, but not before another huge protection in the pursuit of legal justice would come about.

As a part of the dialectic of legal aid, the decision reached in the case of Gideon v. Wainwirght by the U.S. Supreme Court evolved into the “Civil Gideon” Movement, and is the basis from which “right to counsel” models would stem (Ginsburg, 2001; Smith, 2011). This is a very particular example of needs being vocalized by community and recognized by the state. Because this was a national and very public discussion on needs, the state would respond with the formation of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in 1974 under the Nixon administration, specifically to serve the poor concerning civil litigation of issues (Ginsburg, 2001.)  Again, the LSC would be demoted from its position and ability to enforce its original intentions, as the United States has yet to stipulate that legal services are in fact a right to be guaranteed. It appears as though “access” is best that the U.S., or the state, can promise.

Operating “pro bono” came into official existence via research conducted by Reginald Herber Smith in his study of how the poor and rich prevailed in legal matters within the U.S. (Ginsburg, 2001). What Smith honed in on was need for lawyers to serve the financially unservable. The issue with this position is that lawyers will not be compensated for their skills, knowledge, and time. Today, there are the “no costs to you” contingent contracts advertised in order to make a profit in the long run (i.e., we will not charge you in the initial undertaking but, will take a percentage of whatever winnings awarded by the courts), in addition to the recommendation that private lawyers offer at least 50 hours of “pro bono” services per year in providing legal aid to those that cannot afford their services (Ginsburg, 2001). To be clear, there is no mandate requiring any law firm or legal service providers to part take in either of these processes. It all hinges upon the possibility that a potentially profitable case that peaks the interests of a firm gets picked up, or a lawyer who wishes to extend themselves in such a capacity decides to render their services free of charge (Ginsburg, 2001).

Most of my research thus far has largely placed the shaping and defining of legal aid in the hands of the educated elite that are far removed from the actual population of those that experience legal matters that impact their everyday lives, contributing to the lack of understanding of what a community needs in order to be proactive in avoiding having to need legal services for litigation purposes to begin with. The ACLU, LSU, and NAACP are significant exemptions as they developed from a lack of resources directly tied and experienced by the communities they serviced, engaged as agents of social justice and advocates for their members and the overall improvement of social conditions. The case loads they took on were, and are, massive, making the number of clients they can serve competently limited. There are simply too many people, and not enough resources to go around in this small circle of service providers. Compound that with many of the larger legal aid providers being geographically inaccessible, and location becomes another barrier by which justice, and access to it, becomes barred. What new solution could be deployed to tackle this new problem? Would the state supply yet another response? The answer to this question is intimately tied with understanding “poverty law,” its multifaceted-ness, and a better understanding of the people it is meant to serve.

Legal clinics have become centers of legal aid, advice, and sites of holistic approaches to poverty (Ginsburg, 2001.) Within these spaces, the poor have access to justice, along with a less specialized legal pool of knowledge addressing the more common complaints that impact the day to day on-goings of life, also known as the “generalists” approach, creating a type of “one stop shop” which attempts to have all the legal needs of a client met in a single space, cutting down expenses of having to have multiple lawyers in multiple sites for multiple legal issues (Newman 2007). These sites also take into consideration the cultural and social considerations that contribute to the mental and social aversions to be able to seek legal aid by disadvantaged populations (Ginsburg, 2001; Newman, 2007.) A crucial part of this model is to meet the client where they are, or at least, be in a location that is actually feasible, and convenient for the client to visit. Insert neighborhood legal clinics, and their multifaceted approach to a multifaceted issue. Because poverty law “is not a specialized field,” there can be multiple issues a single client may experience, possibly simultaneously, and may not be all related to one particular case, or interwoven to such a degree that addressing one part of the problem leads to a chain reaction of sorts to affect all the moving parts (Newman, 2007).

That sounds a tad haphazard, as most legal firms specialize in a particular field so they execute those cases to the best of their ability. While this mode of operation makes things easier for the lawyers litigating and advising clients on certain matters, this also leads to the inability of some legal aid programs to be as impactful as they could be, sticking to doing what is familiar and comfortable for themselves, and not meeting the needs of their clients (Newman 2007; Mermin, 2018). The result of this fragmentation of legal aid not hinders the ability of the poor to secure legal aid, but handicaps the legal aid programs in being able to see the larger picture and problems plaguing their clients and their ability to provide solutions to prevent the reoccurrence of these situations (Newman, 2007: Mermin, 2018). One such example of the generalist approach that was able to capture this phenomenon is highlighted in the East Bay Community Law Center’s formation of the Consumer Justice Clinic.

An effort to serve the community via an open door General Clinic event led to the EBCLC becoming aware of a disproportionately large number of clients all being sued over credit card debt (Mermin, 2018.)  Because the General Clinic allowed for all forms of various legal matters to seek legal assistance, it was able to capture the clients, with tangible evidence and data the supported the position that this particular occurrence was indeed a very targeted business strategy that preyed upon the legally ignorant, marginalized, and poorest citizens. The ability to deliver legal remedies to the clients was only one part of the solution deployed by EBCLC. The other half enlisted the collaborative efforts of community members, academic and educational forces (i.e. law students serving the clinic) along with legal proposals to change the laws that allowed for this legal poverty trap to exist. The Fair Debt Buying Practices Act was a law born out of the work this collaboration, harking back to the original perspective of legal aid; the attainment of justice and fundamental change to a system from the ground up, creating meaningful transformations of people’s lives out from under poverty and shift the culture under which American social spaces operate.

This two pronged approached, led by a non-state actor, was successful at attaining the original goal of implementing legal aid as a tool against poverty because of their modus operandi of “looking up” (Mermin, 2018; Patel, 2018). Being the generalist based clinic that works to assist as many people as it can without turning any cases away because they were not familiar with specific law, EBCLC is a working model that shows law can still be transformative, not only for those immediate actors, but the surrounding community that it impacts as well. The shared knowledge that was utilized to create other transformative legal remedies demonstrates the value of having close community bonds to educate its members, yet still support matter their clients bring to them without refusal (Patel, 2018). The benefit to both clients, law students, and organization members is the mutual learning process about what their client’s legal aid need or needs are, what can be done, and having a guide through the process to demystify the legal realm, bringing legal knowledge and education into the same forum as everyday life topics and occurrences (Mermin, 2018; Patel, 2018.)  By listening to its clients, the EBCLC opened up an new line of communication, allowing for the community it serves to inform its pool of knowledge and collaborate to achieve solutions that work in favor of both parties, the client and law service providers, responding to the community by interacting with its clients at various levels within various topics in the same space.

Works Cited

Ginsburg, Ruth Bader. “In Pursuit of the Public Good:  Access to Justice in the United States.”  Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, 7, 2001. HeinOnline. Accessed October 3, 2019.

Merrin, Ted. “The Not-Quite-Accidental Genius of EBCLC’s Consumer Justice Clinic:  Lessons for Legal Services Providers.”  California Law Review, vol. 106, no. 2, April 2018. HeinOnline. Accessed September 10, 2019.

Newman, JoNel. “Re-Conceptualizing Poverty Law Clinical Curriculum and Legal Services Practice: The Need for Generalists.”  Fordham Urban Journal, vol. 34, no. 4, May 2007. HeinOnline. Accessed October 1, 2019.

Patel, Seema N. “On Love and Lawyering:  A Celebration of the East Bay Community Law Center.”  California Law Review, vol. 106, no.2, April 2018. HeinOnline. Accessed September 10, 2019.

Smith, Gary F. “Poverty Warriors:  A Historical Perspective on the Mission of Legal Services.”  Clearinghouse Review, vol 45, no. 1, May-June 2011. HeinOnline. Accessed October 1, 2019.

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