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Contents

 * 1 Criminal Legal Aid
 * 2 Civil Legal Aid
 * 2.1 A History of Legal Aid in the United States
 * 2.1.1 Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO)
 * 2.1.2 Legal Services for the Poor
 * 2.1.3 Legal Services Corporation (LSC)
 * 2.2 Legal Aid at the State Level
 * 2.2.1 New York
 * 2.2.2 California
 * 2.3 Pro Bono
 * 3 Administrative Legal Aid
 * 4 Community Based Legal Aid
 * 5 Impact
 * 5.1 Limitations of Civil Legal Aid for the Latino/a Community
 * 5.2 Serving Latino/a and Hispanic Clients
 * 5.3 Latino lawyers
 * 6 See also
 * 7 References
 * 8 Further reading
 * 9 External links

Civil Legal Aid
See also: Legal Services Corporation

Critically, the court did not extend this guarantee of legal aid to civil matters in Lassiter v Department of Social Services, holding that the provision was less necessary in matters where liberty was not at stake. A concerted movement towards substantive Civil Legal Aid in the United States didn't develop until the mid 1900s. The earliest developments trace back to 1876, with the first known legal aid society, the German Immigrants' Society being founded in New York. By 1965, there were around 157 legal aid organizations across the country, serving almost every major city. The landmark Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright guaranteed the right to counsel in criminal matters, but left the issue of civil aid unresolved. The movement towards extending Gideon to civil matters continues to gain momentum, even as States such as New York and California lead the way in establishing more substantive legal aid systems.

A legal clinic office suite at Suffolk University Law School

Legal aid for civil cases is currently provided by a variety of public interest law firms and community legal clinics, who often have "legal aid" or "legal services" in their names. Public interest practice emerged from the goal of promoting access to equal justice for the poor and this was inspired from the legal services disparity amongst European immigrants. Such firms may impose income and resource ceilings as well as restrictions on the types of cases they will take, because there are always too many potential clients and not enough money to go around. Common types of cases include: denial or deprivation of government benefits, evictions, domestic violence, immigration status, and discrimination. In 2006, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution that defined such issues as "basic human needs," and urged the Federal government to provide legal services in such instances. Some legal aid organizations serve as outside counsel to small nonprofit organizations that lack in-house counsel.

Most typical legal aid work involves counseling, informal negotiation, and appearances in administrative hearings, as opposed to formal litigation in the courts. However, the discovery of severe or recurring injustice with a large number of victims will sometimes justify the cost of large-scale impact litigation. Education and law reform activities are also sometimes undertaken.

Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO)
The first legal aid program to exist at the federal level was implemented though the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), founded in 1965. The OEO was established through the Economic Opportunity Act as part of the Johnson administration's War on Poverty. The first director of OEO, Sargent Shriver, moved the organization towards the provision of legal aid. In an interview in which Shriver was asked which program from the War on Poverty he most preferred, he replied that "I am proudest of Legal Services because I recognized that it had the greatest potential for changing the system under which people’s lives were being exploited.”

Legal Services for the Poor
The United States' first attempt at providing legal remedy came about in 1965. The Office of Economic Opportunity created the Legal Services for the Poor program, under the direction of Sargent Shriver. The ideology behind the program utilized the "justice model", as it went beyond providing access to legal aid. Its focus was to dismantle barriers faced by those unable to afford legal protections on grounds of discrimination based upon race, gender, and/or class (Smith, 2011). In this way, the state sought to alleviate poverty using legal remedies, tackling the legal causes of poverty. This approach was employed in the “war on poverty” under the Johnson administration (Smith, 2011). The new pool of antipoverty lawyers worked to transform the lives of those oppressed by poverty en mass. Using a unique combination of understanding poverty-causing factors while pursuing economic justice, this work aimed to transform the social world that constructed and produced poverty conditions.

In the late 1960s however, the U.S. saw backlash as those who seemed undeserving of public services as became the recipients of economic and social program boons.The "justice model" would be replaced by the “access to justice” model in response to the rapid societal changes occurring within American society under the Nixon administration. This new approach would be crafted under the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), and would have a more individualistic focus with limited social impact (Smith, 2011), as the United States does not stipulate that legal services are a right to be guaranteed. "Access to justice” is the model that legal aid offices and services would follow for future organizations (Smith, 2011).

Legal Services Corporation (LSC)
Civil legal aid appeared as early as the 1870s. In the early 1960s a new model for legal services emerged. Foundations, particularly the Ford Foundation, began to fund legal services programs located in multi-service social agencies, based on a philosophy that legal services should be a component of an overall anti-poverty effort. In 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to provide federal funding for civil (non-criminal) legal aid services. By 1975, the Legal Service Corporation had taken over the function of OEO, leaving it's organizational structure largely unchanged. Funding usually comes from the federal government Legal Services Corporation (LSC), Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts, charities, private donors, and some state and local governments. Legal aid organizations that take LSC money tend to have more staff and services and can help more clients, but must also conform to strict government regulations that require careful timekeeping and prohibit lobbying and class actions. Organizations that receive LSC funding cannot take funding from non LSC sources to pursue legislative efforts that contradict LSC regulations. In addition to lobbying and class actions, LSC organizations cannot purse abortion related litigation and cannot advance certain state or federal welfare challenges. LSC organizations are not able to conduct workshops related to political activities and advocacy as well.Many legal aid organizations refuse to take LSC money, and can continue to file class actions and directly lobby legislatures on behalf of the poor. Many organizations that provide civil legal services are heavily dependent on Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts for funding. Some civil aid organizations accept private donations and grants if they refuse LSC funding.

However, even with supplemental funding from LSC, the total amount of legal aid available for civil cases is still grossly inadequate. Demand for legal services remains high. In 2017, an estimated 60.3 million Americans were eligible for LSC programs. According to LSC's first annual Justice Gap report, initiated by LSC president Helaine M. Barnett in 2005, all legal aid offices nationwide, LSC-funded or not, are together able to meet only about 20 percent of the estimated legal needs of low-income people in the United States. The widely released 2005 report, "Documenting the Justice Gap in America: The Current Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans," concludes that 86% of civil legal problems facing Americans have received inadequate or no legal assistance in the past year. The report also finds that 71% of low-income households were at some point in need of civil legal services within the year. The report states that “in 2017, low-income Americans approached LSC-funded legal aid organizations for support with an estimated 1.7 million problems. They will receive only limited or no legal help for more than half of these problems due to a lack of resources."

Pro Bono
The problem of chronic under-funding of legal aid is that it traps the lower middle class in no-man's-land: too rich to qualify for legal aid, too poor to pay an attorney in private practice. To remedy the ongoing shortage of legal aid services, some commentators have suggested that mandatory pro bono obligations ought to be required of all lawyers, just as physicians working in emergency rooms are required to treat all patients regardless of ability to pay. Such proposals have been mostly fought off by bar associations successfully. The American Bar Association claims it is a lawyer's professional duty to perform 50 hours of legal pro bono work for poor people annually. 1/3 of Latino/a lawyers perform pro-bono work and 49% of Latino/a lawyers report to meet this 50 hour annual quota, with 8.3% report to providing 200 hours or more. Pro bono services are sometimes awarded by Courts in cases related to employment, sex discrimination, consumer credit and fraud amongst others. A notable exception is the Orange County Bar Association in Orlando, Florida, which requires all bar members to participate in its Legal Aid Society, by either serving in a pro bono capacity or donating a fee in lieu of service. Even where mandatory pro bono exists, however, funding for legal aid remains severely insufficient to provide assistance to a majority of those in need.

Operating “pro bono” came into official existence in 1919. Reginald Herber Smith uncovered in his study of how drastically different 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", or those that could least afford legal services, but would also significantly benefit from such services. The issue with that notion however, means that a lawyer would 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, 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, only a recommendation that all lawyers "should aspire to" serve, and lawyers who wish to extend themselves in such a capacity must decide to render their services free of charge (Ginsburg, 2001).

Community Based Legal Aid
The creation of community based legal aid organizations typically form 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. Legal aid organizations were 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).

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).

Impact
In 2003, a study was published that linked civil legal aid to a marked decline in rates of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Programs funded by the LSC closed 120,944 cases involving domestic violence in 2017 alone. In the decade following this study, a considerable body of research began to take shape investigating the positive impact of civil legal aid. Studies have established legal aid as providing such benefits as decreasing homelessness as well as the need for emergency shelters through reducing evictions. Over the last two decades, civil legal aid services have shown to save the homes of more than 6000 tenants in New York according to the 1996 study by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Because of the fragmented nature of civil legal aid in the US, cost benefit analyses are often specific to a given State. A 2010 article that gathered multiple other studies found that the benefits go beyond reducing domestic violence rates, finding that access to aid also brings more funds into a state by helping individuals receive federal benefits, protecting children, and aiding select groups such as seniors and veterans who are often exploited. A report from the ABA Day in Washington lists a State by State cost benefit analysis, finding a return on investment as high as 9:1 in Alabama in 2015.

East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC)
The East Bay Community Law Center provides free legal services to Alameda County residents. There are a variety of legal clinics from Berkeley Boalt Law School and legal divisions within the EBCLC and each has its own criteria establishing potential clients' eligibility for receiving their services. The EBCLC has two locations in Berkeley with one location on University Ave and one on Adeline Street. The EBCLC provides Clean Slate Services, Community Economic Justice Clinic Services, Consumer Justice and General Clinic Services, Education Defense and Justice for Youth Services, Health and Welfare Services, Housing Services, and Immigration services.

The Fair Debt Buying Practices Act
Born out of the work of community collaboration, The Fair Debt Buying Practices Act harks back to the original perspective of legal aid; the attainment of justice and fundamental change to a system from the ground up, creating a meaningful societal transformation of out from under poverty, shifting the culture under which American social spaces operate. This was achieved through an effort to serve the community, via an open door General Clinic event, leading the EBCLC to become 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 clients along with evidence and data that supported the position that this particular occurrence was a targeted business strategy, preying 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.

Limitations of Civil Legal Aid in the Latino/a Community
Legal services available for Latino and Hispanic clients vary. This clientele can include Spanish speaking and undocumented clients. Latinos often mistake notaries as legal organizations and they turn to notaries for legal advice that they are unqualified to give.

Limitations of civil legal aid for the latino community
The relationship between the Hispanic community and legal aid services can be described as low in confidence. 44% of Hispanics say they have little confidence courts will treat them fairly and 49% believe they will be treated fairly. 19% of Latinos say they or an immediate family member have attended court or have been involved in a criminal matter with brief attorney services. Institutional limitations such as income cut off quotas are a main deterrence in obtaining certain legal aid services for Latinos. For many Hispanic clients, poverty, family composition, and demographics determine social and legal aid needs. Non-legal issues such as stalking, domestic abuse, visa expiration, and language barrier can also affect latino client's ability to access legal aid. Lack of diverse racial consciousness can prevent lawyers from providing adequate services for latino clients. At the criminal level, Public defenders often times do not speak Spanish and they tend to recommend plea-bargaining over trials for latino clients.

Serving latino and hispanic clients
When latino clients have negative encounters with the criminal justice system in their latin country, they struggle to understand the legal system of the United States. When providing legal services for Latino clients, legal practitioners should ask what nationality or ethnic group the client is from. Attorneys and legal aid providers should not assume Latino or Hispanic clients speak Spanish and they should ask to confirm what languages they do speak. It is recommended that legal organizations have Spanish translated documents about legal proceedings so that Spanish speaking clients can understand legal terminology. Undocumented latinos can suffer additional immigration consequences because the legal representation received by latino clients in this field of law lack cultural and immigration background.

Latino lawyers
Latino lawyers serve as resources for advocacy and leadership in the latino community. They are more likely to be a part of a small firm or work in the field of public service and non profit legal services. Latinos make up 3% of lawyers and they are inadequately represented as partners or associates of large law firms, prosecutors, and defense attorney's.

Civil Legal Aid impact in the latino community
Legal services available for Latino and Hispanic clients vary. This clientele can include Spanish speaking and undocumented clients. Latinos often mistake notaries as legal organizations and they turn to notaries for legal advice that they are unqualified to give.

Limitations of civil legal aid for the latino community
The relationship between the Hispanic community and legal aid services can be described as low in confidence. 44% of Hispanics say they have little confidence courts will treat them fairly and 49% believe they will be treated fairly. 19% of Latinos say they or an immediate family member have attended court or have been involved in a criminal matter with brief attorney services. Institutional limitations such as income cut off quotas are a main deterrence in obtaining certain legal aid services for Latinos. For many Hispanic clients, poverty, family composition, and demographics determine social and legal aid needs. Non-legal issues such as stalking, domestic abuse, visa expiration, and language barrier can also affect latino client's ability to access legal aid. Lack of diverse racial consciousness can prevent lawyers from providing adequate services for latino clients. At the criminal level, Public defenders often times do not speak Spanish and they tend to recommend plea-bargaining over trials for latino clients.

Serving latino and hispanic clients
When latino clients have negative encounters with the criminal justice system in their latin country, they struggle to understand the legal system of the United States. When providing legal services for Latino clients, legal practitioners should ask what nationality or ethnic group the client is from. Attorneys and legal aid providers should not assume Latino or Hispanic clients speak Spanish and they should ask to confirm what languages they do speak. It is recommended that legal organizations have Spanish translated documents about legal proceedings so that Spanish speaking clients can understand legal terminology. Undocumented latinos can suffer additional immigration consequences because the legal representation received by latino clients in this field of law lack cultural and immigration background.

Latino lawyers
Latino lawyers serve as resources for advocacy and leadership in the latino community. They are more likely to be a part of a small firm or work in the field of public service and non profit legal services. Latinos make up 3% of lawyers and they are inadequately represented as partners or associates of large law firms, prosecutors, and defense attorney's.