Legal Services Corp. Sponsors North Carolina Forum on Civil Legal Aid
Earlier today, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) sponsored a forum in North Carolina to address the role of legal aid for the poor in safeguarding the fair administration of justice. Held in conjunction with a LSC board meeting, North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Sarah Parker and five other distinguished judges from the Southeast participated in the forum. The panel also emphasized the civil legal needs for military veterans.
In an op-ed to the Raleigh’s News & Observer, LSC Board of Directors chairman John Levi stressed the dire situation facing the nation’s legal community as it struggles to balance funding cuts, increased demands for civil legal services and rising poverty:
The 2 million people aided by lawyers at LSC-funded programs every year are seeking assistance with problems that go to the very heart of their safety and security. They are fighting to avert unlawful foreclosures, or to escape domestic violence. They are veterans returning from overseas and facing legal issues, or grandparents seeking legal guardianship of a grandchild in need of lifesaving surgery. Nearly three of four of them are women, and include Americans of all races, ethnic groups and ages.
LSC, established by Congress during the Nixon administration with a bipartisan board of directors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, provides federal grants to 134 nonprofit legal aid programs with more than 900 offices in every state. LSC’s grantee in North Carolina, Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC), operates 20 field offices across the state and gets nearly 50 percent of its funding from LSC.
LSC’s programs throughout North Carolina and the rest of the country are increasingly overwhelmed with requests for help. As a result of the recession, nearly one in five Americans – 61 million people – now qualify for LSC-funded civil legal assistance because they live at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline. That is an all-time high.
As demand has been rising, the combined funding for LSC programs from federal, state, local and all other sources has dropped from $960 million in 2010 to $878 million in 2012.
Not surprisingly, the combination of increased demand and diminished funding has reduced LSC’s ability to meet the civil legal assistance needs of low-income Americans. Recent studies have shown, in fact, that the U.S. ranks 21st on access to justice for disadvantaged groups and 52nd in the world in terms of access to legal assistance.