Talking It OverI was one year out of law school and about to start teaching law at the University of Arkansas. It was 1974, and President Nixon had just signed a bipartisan bill to fund legal services for the poor. The law school was looking around for someone to organize its legal aid clinic. I had already worked in legal services programs. My experience, along with the fact that I was the newest member of the faculty, marked me for the job. There were mountains of paperwork and logistics to figure out. I didn't know where to begin. Before long, I also discovered an obstacle I hadn't imagined — local lawyers and judges who were skeptical about any effort to provide free legal aid to the poor. I remember going to a cocktail party where the president of the local bar took me around to meet everyone, including a senior member of the bench. "Judge," he said, "this is the new lady law professor. She is going to teach criminal law and run the legal aid clinic." Without taking a breath, the judge looked at me and said, "Well, I don't have any use for either lady law professors or legal aid clinics." Over the years, as director of that clinic and as one of President Carter's appointments to the national Legal Services Corporation, which oversees local legal aid programs, I met many people like that judge. But I also met many more men and women who appreciate the importance of legal aid in helping all Americans — not just those who can afford lawyers — find justice. For those of us who have seen firsthand the difference that legal aid has meant in the lives of women, children and families, it is distressing to watch Congress' current attempts to move the cause of justice backward. Today, Congress wants to shrink federal funding by almost one-third. What that means is that somewhere a couple and their young children will have to sleep in an unheated car or on the street because of an unlawful eviction; a woman will be forced to cower in her bedroom, a victim of domestic violence; and a child will go to school hungry because his father refuses to pay child support. Last year, legal services programs helped 5 million of our country's neediest people resolve civil — not criminal — legal problems.
While private law firms, bar associations and individual lawyers have increased their donations and pro-bono hours to make up for the lack of funds, legal aid clinics still have had to scale back dramatically on the number of cases they accept. We can only hope Congress will not make matters worse. But right now, Congress is further trying to tie the hands of legal aid lawyers by banning them from filing class-action suits, such as those on behalf of groups of poor citizens who want to challenge unfair housing practices or consumer fraud. And even as Congress touts less federal involvement in local programs, it is trying to restrict the funds that legal aid programs are able to raise from private sources. You may be asking yourself why the debate over the future of legal services matters to you, even if you don't think you'll ever need such help. It has to do with our society's fundamental commitment to justice, law and progress for everyone. I believe that our society became more just and the legal profession truer to its fundamental mission with the establishment of legal services programs for the poor. The thousands of legal aid lawyers and the tens of thousands of private lawyers who donate time to legal aid work are the heart and soul of the law. Each time a legal aid lawyer helps a mother petition for child support or forces a nursing home to live up to its contract of taking care of elderly residents, our country moves closer to its ideals. Legal aid is a way that our country upholds the one true contract that individual citizens have with America — the Constitution and, specifically, its promise of justice for all. COPYRIGHT 1996 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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