Legal services organizations and law firms that provide free or reduced fee representation often work closely with other service providers to secure transportation, food, housing, clothes, and other necessities. But legal organizations can’t typically pay for those things directly, thanks to an obscure rule that exists in many states. They can cover filing fees and some required medical exams, but cannot pay for many of the basic things that would prevent clients from getting to court for their cases.

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“Human services often have client emergency funds, so it seems like a false distinction that legal services can’t do that,” said Amy Barasch, executive director of Her Justice, an organization focused on representation for women living in poverty. “If you can’t come to court because you don’t have enough money to pay for child care while you are coming to court, that’s going to be an access issue.”

The problem lies with the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 1.8(e), which prohibits lawyers from loaning or giving clients money for anything not directly tied to litigation. At least 11 states, including Louisiana, Alabama, California, and Minnesota, have made efforts to loosen their own versions of Rule 1.8(e) so certain lawyers, mostly those working pro bono or in legal services for low-income clients, can pay on behalf of clients for things that fall outside direct litigation costs.

New York is the latest state to alter Rule1.8(e) in favor of providing aid to poor clients. Changes proposed by a committee at the New York City Bar were approved by the Administrative Board of New York courts on June 18. The push to refine Rule 1.8(e) began two years ago, but was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying state of emergency. In March, the bar modified their ask to request an immediate “humanitarian exception” to the rule for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

The economic fallout from the pandemic may have pushed the courts to take action on the proposal. The modified rule will allow some lawyers to offer “humanitarian assistance to their clients in dire need,” according to the news advisory released by the New York State Unified Court System.

“New Yorkers are experiencing severe financial consequences as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” writes a previous letter from two New York City Bar committees to members of New York State’s Supreme Court. “Lawyers throughout the state have answered the call to provide pro bono assistance to those dealing with the repercussions of the pandemic.”

Indigent clients — those living in poverty who cannot afford to pay a lawyer nor court-related fees — have always needed more than volunteer lawyers are currently able to provide. Now, with job losses ballooning, more clients could enter that indigent category, and it’s likely that more people will be seeking pro bono services for eviction. The amended rule means that pro bono lawyers across New York preparing to take on cases caused or exacerbated by the pandemic now have one more resource open to them.

“Legal aid programs intersect with so many of these issues, unemployment, increased family violence, family separation or unification, eviction, foreclosure, debt problems, elder abuse. And all the things that come from a dip in the economy,” said Don Saunders, vice president of policy at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA).

The coronavirus pandemic, like natural disasters of the past, has had a catastrophic effect on human lives and human systems. “It’s kind of like what happens after a hurricane, after you have immediate first responders, then a host of legal needs come up. We’re worried about housing, homelessness, food and nutrition and healthcare. These are all issues that people have legal rights around.”

These issues are especially pressing for people of color. The pandemic is infecting and killing New York’s residents of color at higher rates than white people, and the inequities will likely continue through the disease’s aftermath. Assistance from lawyers could also help clients who are ineligible for state supports, including undocumented people who are excluded from the stimulus and unemployment benefits. Hamra Ahmad, Her Justice’s director of legal services expects that clients who could benefit the most are those who are undocumented, minors, and/or victims of human trafficking.

Andrew Kent, Fordham Law professor and the primary author of the bar’s report, explained that clients in a financial bind will sometimes settle claims for less than they deserve. For example, “say there is someone who’s been beat up in jail at Rikers Island. If that client is getting pro bono legal help for their case, and let’s suppose that they have a good claim which might be expected to get decent money, maybe $20,000 or $40,000.”

“But if the city or the state comes to them and says we can give you a check for $2,000 today and that person has rent due, or needs costly medical treatment, or their kid needs diapers or whatever it is, that smaller amount of money might be attractive,” said Kent. If a client can’t manage their living expenses through the long court process, they may forgo a higher amount of damages in the end.

“The challenge of getting out of poverty is that everything you’re supposed to do to get out of poverty ends up costing money,” said Barasch. Good pro bono representation is a proven way to better one’s financial situation for the long term, and yet the minimum amount of participation required from clients can still be too expensive. Providing assistance to stabilize clients throughout the process could alleviate some pains and strengthen the possibility of a life-changing result.

In some ways, the state’s indigent defense emergency is unique and extreme. Louisiana has never had a robust public defender system—in fact, it is the only state that attempts to fund this core government function largely through traffic tickets. And, as the state struggles to recover from Bobby Jindal’s disastrous tenure as governor, this already rickety framework is now collapsing. But difficult conditions for public defenders are neither new nor limited to Louisiana. Throughout the United States, public defenders have used the word “crisis” for decades as shorthand for the combination of volatile funding, understaffing, and excessive per-lawyer caseloads that has persistently plagued many defender offices.

In my recent article in the Columbia Law Review, “What Gideon Did,” I examined the grassroots effects of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to state-provided counsel in criminal cases. For a number of structural reasons, state-level funding for Gideon’s implementation has proven unpredictable in the best of times, and susceptible to collapse in the worst of times, as defendants in Louisiana can attest. Given this history, Congress should step in to secure the Gideon guarantee with federal funding, so that defenders like Natasha George—and the poor people they serve—are not so vulnerable to the politics of state budgets.

A Chronic Crisis

Almost as soon as Gideon was decided, lawyers began to describe their working conditions as a “crisis.” While a few states, like California, had longstanding public defender offices established decades before Gideon, lawyers in most states set out to establish and expand defender offices. However, the available funding never kept pace with the growing demand. These funding realities contrasted with defenders’ interpretation that Gideon required them to serve as many clients as possible—a noble aim, but one that quickly produced dissatisfaction in lawyers and clients alike, as defenders’ caseloads spiraled upwards. I found, for instance, that in Massachusetts, the state public defender agency went from handling about 18,000 cases a year in 1968 to about 42,000 cases a year in 1972—a figure that would only continue to climb thereafter.

And, although state budgets for indigent defense rose in the 1970s, the number of cases that public defenders were asked to handle rose faster. As legal scholar William Stuntz observed, “Notwithstanding nominal budget increases, spending on indigent defendants in constant dollars per case appears to have declined significantly between the late 1970s and the early 1990s.” In 1983, the American Bar Association (ABA) lamented a nationwide “crisis in indigent defense funding.” In 1994, the ABA published a follow-up report whose title remains apt today: The Indigent Defense Crisis Is Chronic.

The persistence of crisis conditions in indigent defense suggests that the causes are deeply entrenched, and not a temporary reflection of shifting political views or economic vicissitudes. One long-term historical factor helping to explain America’s weak commitment to indigent defense is the legal profession’s own prestige hierarchy, which has long valorized advising corporations more than helping ordinary people. A second factor undermining indigent defense is simply the structure of American federalism. The New Orleans judge who recently ordered the release of defendants awaiting counsel wrote, by way of explanation, that “constitutional rights are not contingent on budget demands.” But in practice, constitutional rights are often hamstrung by state-level budgets.

Attitudes within the Legal Profession

For much of the twentieth century, elite lawyers in many parts of the United States did not consider defending poor people to constitute a respectable professional niche—it was neither lucrative nor, in elite jurists’ view, particularly intellectually challenging. Rather, indigent defense was often described as a suitable training exercise for young lawyers—a way to gain courtroom experience and maybe do some good for the community before they moved on to their “real” careers. In order to quantify this phenomenon, I looked through Harvard Law School alumni directories for the class of 1958. Among those who had volunteered as law students with Boston’s local public defender equivalent, none were working as public defenders ten years later, and only one was working in government service. There were geographic exceptions to this pattern, but in the many regions that had no strong tradition of career public defenders when Gideon was decided, Gideon’s implementation had to start from scratch.

Fortunately, lawyers’ own attitudes about indigent defense have changed in recent decades. Over time, lawyers have reimagined indigent defense as a respected practice specialty—not just training for a future career, but a career in its own right. Jane Kelly, the Iowa federal judge whom Obama recently floated as a possible Supreme Court nominee, embodies this shift. Kelly spent many years working as a public defender in the federal system. After her name appeared on Obama’s rumored short-list, conservative media outlets subjected Kelly to despicable personal attacks, maligning her for representing “infamous criminals.” Nevertheless, Kelly’s very presence on court-watchers’ radar suggests that most of the American legal community now considers public defense a respectable background for a judicial nominee. To be sure, indigent defense is not the typical legal vocation, but law schools do provide support for students interested in this work, and hiring for some defender offices is extremely competitive. In particular, the organization Gideon’s Promise has an excellent record of partnering with law schools to place graduates in public defender offices in the Deep South, where the need is especially acute.

Federalism and Funding

Funding, however, remains a constant headache for defender offices around the country, which symptomizes a larger issue—the mismatch between the requirements of American constitutional law and the federalist structure of American government. It is easy, and often quite justifiable, to blame state legislators for stingy appropriations for public defenders. But state legislators work within a system that permits them to get away with underfunding indigent defense. The Supreme Court has never specified how exactly Gideon is supposed to be implemented. And although states can be punished after the fact if they fail to provide individual defendants with effective counsel, in the form of reversed convictions or habeas relief (although in practice even those remedies are hard to win), the Court has never translated Gideon into forward-looking standards for how states are supposed to structure and fund their indigent defense systems.

It is not surprising that the Court has failed to set clearer standards. The right to counsel is unique in American law—it’s one of the few federal rights to positive government assistance, as opposed to a negative right against government interference—and there is no clear blueprint for how such a right is supposed to be judicially enforced. Moreover, the justices are typically reluctant to micromanage state criminal justice systems. Nevertheless, the result is that public defenders have been left in the wake of Gideon to cobble together funding from an ever-fluctuating mix of sources.

Possible Solutions?

In New Orleans, the ACLU has filed a civil rights lawsuit challenging the public defender shortage as a systematic violation of defendants’ rights to counsel, due process, and equal protection. This litigation builds on efforts nationwide, since the 1980s, to use class-action litigation to spur indigent defense reform. For example, two years ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo reached a settlement agreement with plaintiffs challenging New York’s indigent defense system. On the whole, however, such lawsuits have met with mixed success.

As a more promising nationwide solution, Congress could establish a dedicated source of federal funding for local and state public defender offices. In 1979, Senator Ted Kennedy introduced legislation, based on an ABA proposal, to establish a permanent Center for Defense Services to administer federal grants and enforce minimum quality standards for indigent defense. At the time, the bill made no progress, but given the current political momentum for criminal justice reform, Congress should revive the idea. John Pfaff, a law professor at Fordham University who studies criminal justice from an economic perspective, recently estimated that a congressional appropriation of just $4 billion—a minuscule sliver of federal discretionary spending—would have the effect of instantly tripling indigent defense resources nationwide.

An infusion of federal funds into local defender offices could have ripple effects beyond alleviating emergencies in states like Louisiana. Every issue on criminal justice activists’ agenda—from excessive bail to draconian sentencing—is one where public defenders could make headway through their advocacy in individual cases, if they had the necessary resources. But more fundamentally, the rights of poor people, wherever they happen to live, should not be abandoned to the whims of state legislators. All Americans should be able to depend on federal support for what is, after all, a federal constitutional guarantee.

Nearly three decades later, we now know that 1 in 3 Americans have some type of criminal record, which translates into nearly three million residents in Pennsylvania, where I practice. And it is well documented that having even a minor record—such as a misdemeanor, or even an arrest that never led to conviction—can serve as an intractable barrier to employment.

Meanwhile, the number of people with criminal records seeking help from the legal aid program where I work, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS), has grown exponentially.  Today roughly 1,000 people with criminal records request CLS representation every year, comprising roughly two-thirds of our employment caseload.

As the White House commemorates National Reentry Week, civil legal services must be front and center as a vital tool to help people with criminal records get a fair shot at employment.

Helping people earn a clean slate

Record-clearing is at the heart of what CLS does to help people with criminal records, as it is the single most helpful tool to address the barriers associated with having a record. In addition to helping hundreds of clients get their records expunged each year, we conduct expungement clinics in the community to reach people who don’t—or can’t—make it into our offices. And one of my colleagues created “expungement generator” software that assembles expungement petitions from case information available online, allowing us to help many more individuals at once than if we had to enter the information one-by-one.

But no amount of clinics or special software could make it possible for us to help all the Philadelphians held back by criminal records, and we are forced to turn away far more people than we have the capacity to help. Some 82,000 petitions for expungement were filed in Pennsylvania last year alone.  But that is the tip of the iceberg—so many more people qualify for, and need, expungements.

That’s why CLS is working with the Center for American Progress and the transpartisan U.S. Justice Action Network to pass first-in-the-nation legislation that would enable Pennsylvanians to earn a clean slate once they have remained crime-free for a set period of time. The Clean Slate Act, which was introduced by bipartisan legislators in the Pennsylvania legislature earlier this month, has the potential to transform record-clearing for untold numbers of Pennsylvanians who have no access to the legal process.

Protection from employment discrimination

While a clean slate is the surest pathway for people with criminal records to move on with their lives, protections against employment discrimination are critical for those who cannot clear their records. Although people with criminal records are not a protected class, employment discrimination on the basis of a criminal record has for years been held a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That’s because communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) plays an important role in enforcing Title VII. But without lawyers to file complaints on behalf of people whose rights have been violated, Title VII protections are theoretical at best. Thus, filing race discrimination claims with the EEOC and challenging employers who have turned down our clients for jobs due to criminal records is another key part of CLS’ work.

We’ve also seen—and worked to rectify—gaps in existing laws and policies around hiring discrimination. After many years of advocacy by CLS and others, the EEOC issued a new criminal records policy four years ago, making clear that blanket policies excluding people with records are illegal. It also set forth criteria—such as the nature and length of time since the offense—that must be considered by employers. Similarly, at the local level, working with a broad coalition of partners, CLS helped develop and pass the “fair chance hiring” law enacted in Philadelphia last year.

Another employment barrier that many of our clients face stems from overly broad laws prohibiting employers from hiring people with criminal records. For example, in 1997, Pennsylvania enacted a law prohibiting long-term health care facilities from employing people convicted of crimes as minor as library book theft at any point in their lifetimes, no matter how clearly they had been rehabilitated. CLS filed suit challenging these restrictions, and in December of last year, the law was struck down for violating Pennsylvania’s state constitution.

Improving accuracy in background checks

Another major problem people with criminal records face is erroneous background checks—particularly when they are prepared by commercial screeners, a cottage industry that’s grown dramatically over the last 20 years. Common errors include reporting expunged cases or providing the wrong grade of an offense (such as stating that a misdemeanor was a felony). Sometimes screeners even report cases that didn’t involve the person who is being screened.

In addition to helping our clients correct faulty reports, CLS frequently brings class action lawsuits under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, seeking to fix systemic problems and require companies to ensure accuracy in their background checks.

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Over the years, my CLS colleagues and I have developed a practice that helps at least some people who have paid their dues move on and make their way out of poverty. This work has been enormously gratifying. I have never seen clients more overjoyed—or relieved—than when they finally get an expungement, or when the job they’ve desperately needed comes through.

The community of legal aid and public interest lawyers doing this type of work around the country has grown tremendously over the nearly 30 years since I met my first client who’d been turned away from a job because of his record. Civil legal services organizations like mine have come to play a central role in making successful reentry possible for countless people with criminal records seeking to move on with their lives. As we commemorate National Reentry Week, expanding the capacity of civil legal services to help the millions of Americans struggling to enter or reenter the workforce will be key to addressing what I believe is the civil rights issue of our generation.

Stories like this one are becoming commonplace, as the increasing number of judicial vacancies (74 at present) has led to the largest backlog of federal criminal and civil cases in American history. Yet, despite the courts’ impact on consequential and timely issues, the process of appointing a new federal judge can be arduous and slow.

As explained in our Just a Judge video, a judicial vacancy occurs when a judge retires, steps down, or is otherwise unable to perform their duties. The process from there is complex: following the president’s nomination of a qualified judge (usually following consultation with home-state senators), senators from the home state of the nominee are then responsible for submitting blue slips of paper to demonstrate their approval. The Senate Judiciary Committee then holds a hearing and vote, and only then is there a confirmation vote in the Senate.

Unfortunately, this confirmation process leaves our judicial system vulnerable to partisan obstruction by the legislative branch. Home-state senators often delay their submission of the blue-slips, and senate leadership regularly delays scheduling the requisite hearings and votes. As a result, in 2015, the Senate confirmed judicial nominations at the slowest rate since 1960, which means many judicial vacancies have remained open for months and, in some instances, years.

The large number of vacancies has wreaked economic havoc on communities. In Texas, which has the most vacancies of any state, a 2015 study by the Perryman Group revealed that if two judicial vacancies were filled, it would likely lead to the creation of over 78,000 jobs and an increase of $11.7 billion in economic activity by 2030. The study found that fully-staffed courts lead to increased personal income, worker earnings, and retail sales “by reducing uncertainties and the time required to resolve business disputes.”

Even more alarming is the federal backlog’s effect on criminal cases. The Constitution grants all persons the ability to be heard before the court; more specifically, the Sixth Amendment enshrines the right to a speedy trial. However, since 2009, the average time to resolve a felony case has doubled to 13 months. This can result in the creation of what are known as “plea-bargaining mills,” where defendants are incentivized to plead guilty (even if they are innocent) to end waiting periods spent in prison that can far exceed the actual sentence for the offense in question. Indeed, a criminal defense lawyer who practices in the Eastern District of Texas, stated that the delay in felony cases is often used by prosecutors as a “hammer” over a defendant’s head: “Plead guilty and you’ll be out of jail.”

It is clear that the political jousting that occurs throughout the judicial confirmation process is having unintended effects that harm everyday Americans and create instability in the judicial system. This is the same system in which, just a few months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a challenge to the affirmative action policy at the University of Texas. And this month, the Court heard arguments about whether unions can require contributions from employees who benefit from union-negotiated conditions. Now, the Supreme Court is gearing up to hear oral arguments challenging President Obama’s immigration actions.

And so, in order to ensure the functioning of this vitally important system and prevent further infringement on Americans’ constitutional rights, the Senate needs to do its job and hold timely votes on federal judicial nominees. While the judiciary may not be as glamorous as the executive or legislative branches, it is vital for us to invest more time to learn about the judicial process, fill our vacancies with judges whose diversity reflects that of this country, and hold our Senate accountable for denying Americans their day in court.

Let’s start today. Learn more about the federal judicial process through this short and sweet video: Just a Judge.

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Javier’s experience isn’t uncommon. Our civil legal aid attorneys have also represented a crew of cleaners who were locked in a restaurant overnight while they cleaned (and not paid overtime for the additional hours) and construction workers strung along for years with partial weekly payments, among others. We have even had to sue the same employers multiple times on behalf of different workers. And the practice is widespread. A report from Temple University’s Sheller Center found that in any given work week in the Philadelphia area, almost 130,000 workers will be paid less than minimum wage, over 100,000 will experience an overtime violation, and over 80,000 will be forced to work off-the-clock without pay.

Although wage theft is illegal under federal law and under statutes in most states, enforcement is underfunded—sometimes nonexistent. This disproportionately impacts low-wage workers, who are more likely to work in low-regulation and non-union jobs where employers cut corners at their expense. But these workers—who need those wages the most—don’t know where to turn for help when they do not receive a paycheck, fear losing their job if they complain, or simply cannot afford to miss work for the several days that it takes to file a complaint and attend a court hearing. And for immigrant workers like Javier, they are often threatened based on their immigration status when they complain to their boss.

And between the small number of workers willing to complain and low financial penalties, deterrents to wage theft are inadequate to curb the practice. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Wage Payment and Collection Law only mandates a penalty of 25 percent of wages due on top of repaying the wages. Thus, if an employer doesn’t pay six workers and only four come forward with formal complaints in court, the employer comes out ahead—he pays less in fines than he would have had he paid his six workers correctly.

Unfortunately, bills that would help address these issues have languished in the legislature for more than a year despite the support of the vast majority of voters. In the absence of legislative action, we have found that local ordinances are a powerful locus of action, even though they impact fewer workers.

As the workshops of democracy, cities and municipalities also allow us to test new models on a limited scale and to identify what should be replicated on a wider scale. This was a tried and true strategy in the context of paid sick days: after an organized and effective campaign over the last few years, activists managed to pass a paid sick leave ordinance in Philadelphia last year. Similar ordinances have come out of San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles, among other cities.

We therefore partnered with labor and community activists to pass a local anti-wage theft ordinance that fit well within the powers of a municipal government. The legislation included three main facets, each of which was integral to the legislation.

First, an administrative enforcement mechanism allows workers to bring complaints against their employers without having to miss work and therefore pay. Making the complaint process easy and the hearing free  is a critical way to expand remedies by making them practically available to more people. Although the federal Department of Labor already offers this kind of service, it does not do so for workers who work at businesses that have less than $500,000 in annual revenue. Some states offer a similar complaint process, but their efficacy varies.

Second, the legislation requires that penalties be raised. The current penalties in Pennsylvania are shamefully low, making wage theft an economically good decision for the unscrupulous employer. By raising penalties, the ordinance should increase compliance by making wage theft a bad economic decision.

Third, the legislation allows the city to go after business licenses, further demonstrating to employers that wage theft is a poor business decision. By allowing the city to revoke or suspend a business license, we can root out the worst actors and prevent them from causing further harm (or cajole them into compliance).

With these principles in mind, we partnered with Councilman Bill Greenlee, who had led and won the seven year fight for paid sick leave, and introduced a strong bill in City Council. Boosted by press coverage of the widespread local wage theft problem, we built a broader network of community leaders and advocates, created supporting materials, wrote legal memos, met with editorial boards, and lined up workers to tell their stories. The bill passed City Council in October and was signed by Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter in December. The ordinance will go into effect in July 2016 and will be implemented by our new Mayor, Jim Kenney.

Despite all appearances, legislative change that benefits working families is possible, even when state politics makes it seem impossible. In order to achieve pro-working family change, activists need to alter their frame by working at the local level, rather than deal with the gridlock and lack of action at the federal level and state levels.

After all, as former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.”

*Name has been changed.

There are no quick or easy fixes to eliminate poverty. But there is a vital resource in our communities that helps prevent many people from falling into poverty while lifting others out of it: civil legal aid. By providing legal assistance to people who face potentially life-changing and destabilizing challenges—like wrongful evictions and foreclosures, domestic abuse, and debilitating medical crises—civil legal aid allows people to protect their homes, families, and livelihoods. And it does it in a cost-effective way: A New York Task Force study found that every dollar invested in civil legal aid delivers six dollars back to the state’s economy. Unfortunately, because of a lack of investment in this resource, many families don’t get the legal help they need and therefore face the prospect of economic ruin.

It’s all too easy to become poor. In challenging economic times and with growing income inequality, it’s often a matter of bad luck. For example, Mary is a hard-working single mother in Maine who lost her job as a hairdresser when the salon that employed her unexpectedly closed down. It was already difficult to support her three children on her salary; after losing her job and then struggling to rebuild her client base at a new salon, she was unable to continue paying the rent. She found herself and her children at risk of losing the roof over their heads.

But as is the case for many people throughout the nation, things took a turn for the better when Mary got help from a civil legal aid organization. Pine Tree Legal Assistance worked with her to challenge the eviction and negotiate an agreement with her landlord that allowed her family to stay in their home and avoid poverty and a costly stay in a local shelter.

Civil legal aid also helps people who are already in poverty. Monica is a former Navy officer who was discharged for misconduct following an in-service sexual assault—behavior that was a symptom of her undiagnosed and untreated Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that resulted from the assault. Despite her service to our country, she found herself unable to access veterans’ benefits due to the discharge, and was battling homelessness, jail, and addiction. She turned to Bay Area Legal Aid in California for assistance. Civil legal aid lawyers helped Monica navigate a complex system to prove that she was assaulted in the military and consequently suffered from PTSD. She now receives veteran’s benefits—including disability compensation—which is helping her get her life back on track.

Others need civil legal aid in order to escape dangerous situations, like domestic violence. In Illinois, Kayla was struggling to support herself and her son after ending a bad relationship with her child’s father—who not only withheld child support, but physically abused her during parental visits. With the help of Prairie State Legal Services, Kayla secured a protective order against her abuser as well as several thousand dollars in unpaid child support. The award and the protective order allowed her to move to another state, lift herself out of poverty, and build a new life for her family. She now makes more than $50,000 a year working as a welder.

I wish that every story of a family experiencing poverty had a happy ending. But that’s not the case, and a lack of legal counsel should never be the reason that a family can’t work its way out of poverty. In more than 70 percent of civil cases today, Americans are headed to court without legal representation. We simply don’t provide enough resources to civil legal aid organizations, and therefore too many people go without the legal help needed to avert poverty and better their lives.

In the terrible aftermath of a natural disaster, everyone recognizes the importance of water, food, and shelter as a first response. But one thing many people don’t think about is this: providing access to expert civil legal help is absolutely essential to rebuilding communities and lives.

Immediately after Katrina, people who had lost their jobs needed help getting their final paychecks from businesses and employers that no longer existed. Some landlords rented out damaged and dangerous properties with the promise of quick repairs that never happened. Other landlords found it profitable to rent out the same residence simultaneously to different desperate families

Moreover, a year after the storm, FEMA, claiming it overpaid thousands of hurricane victims, sent more than 150,000 collection letters. Insurance companies claimed that much of the damage was due to flooding, and that the policies they had issued did not cover those losses. And, to qualify for repair funds, people whose family records had been destroyed by the storm or who had never officially filed documents in probate court suddenly needed to prove they owned houses that had been passed down for generations. These challenges were amplified for the region’s most financially vulnerable individuals and families.

For 10 years, Southeast Louisiana Legal Services (SLLS), a civil legal aid organization I run, has been on the front lines helping people recover from the storm. When a landlord displaced nearly 300 families in order to charge higher rent, we challenged him in court. When lack of clear property titles threatened the ability of homeowners to access millions of rebuilding funds administered by the government, our staff and volunteer attorneys helped them clear the legal hurdles. As scam contractors exploited families who were trying to rebuild their homes, legal aid attorneys held them accountable in court. I’m proud to say we have provided assistance to nearly 400,000 people. We continue to represent Katrina survivors today, as Katrina remains our single largest civil legal aid challenge in our nation’s history.

Unfortunately, we haven’t learned our lesson about the importance of providing civil legal aid after disasters. After Superstorm Sandy in 2012, only $1 million out of the $60 billion appropriated by Congress was earmarked for civil legal aid.

If you have doubts about why we should make sure people have legal help, consider this: even today, SLLS is battling shady contractors who never rebuilt roofs or kitchens as promised, but took their customers’ money and skipped town. And FEMA—still claiming they overpaid people—is taking money from seniors’ social security checks.

I acknowledge that having access to a lawyer or some sort of legal support is not a magic fix. But it is an underappreciated model for how we should react to future disasters. Just as we have rebuilt even stronger levees to protect New Orleans, we should strengthen civil legal aid to protect our nation’s families and increase access to justice.

That the DOJ is now investigating the Baltimore shooting is a testament to the fact that the nation has suddenly awakened to the disregard that some police departments have for the lives of our most marginalized citizens. In Freddie Gray’s case, a cell phone video helped to publicize the abuse, and then widespread demonstrations forced public officials to pay attention.

But as egregious as the police conduct is in these killings of unarmed black men, it is routine injustice – the utter disregard for the humanity of those arrested and processed every day, often for minor offenses – that wreaks far more havoc on the poorest people in our nation. For every person killed by a police officer, tens of thousands are arrested and processed into prison cells. Ronald Hammonds flood our overflowing penal system, with 2.2 million people now sitting in America’s jails and prisons. They come out incapable of securing housing, employment, or educational loans. Many are not allowed to participate in the democratic process. They are literally rendered second-class citizens.

This routine injustice has destroyed countless lives, families, and communities. But we are so used to it that there is no sense of public outrage. And yet, every day, judges, prosecutors, and elected officials help perpetuate this system, and there are no cell phone videos to record it or demonstrators out there demanding change.

However, there is, in theory, a built in protection against routine injustice – the right to counsel. Lawyers are the guarantee that people will have their voices heard. But Hammond did not have a lawyer when he admitted to possessing marijuana. Fifty-two years after the Supreme Court made clear in Gideon v. Wainwright that the lawyer is the engine necessary to ensure justice, our nation’s public defenders are overwhelmed, under-resourced, and unable to ensure every person brought so carelessly through the system is treated justly.

But despite these challenges, our public defenders fight mightily—even as most others in the judicial system wish they would just go away and stop interfering with the “efficient” processing of people who are arrested.

The protests in response to the killing of Freddy Gray were led by members of neglected communities throughout Baltimore who denounced the inhumane treatment they receive at the hands of city officials. But the official response only reinforced the demonstrators’ position that their lives are devalued by those in power. While a relatively small group of protesters engaged in destructive behavior, police declared war on all demonstrators. In the first week nearly 500 protesters were arrested, many illegally – swept up for simply being in the vicinity of protests.

Officials in Baltimore showed no regard for the rights of those they rounded up and jailed. Rather than questioning the decision to deal with protesters by locking them up, Governor Hogan facilitated this response. He immediately suspended a Maryland rule that requires anyone detained by police to be brought before a judicial officer within 24 hours to ensure that no one is illegally deprived of their liberty. The Governor’s position was clear: if the rules designed to protect individual liberty make it difficult to process arrestees, they can be disregarded.

Nearly half of this wave of arrests occurred on a single day. Because of the rioting – which Dr. Martin Luther King once described as “the language of the unheard” – the Governor closed the courts the next day. Judges and prosecutors took the day off.   As a result, many protestors were held for two days without any charges being filed, only to be released with no apology for the infringement upon their rights. Never mind the toll these illegal detentions may have taken on the detainees’ employment status, family obligations, or other commitments.

But if no one else felt a sense of urgency about this situation, the city’s public defenders did. They immediately mobilized to challenge illegal detentions and to visit terrified citizens who otherwise would have had no idea why they were being held or what to expect next. They worked throughout the day to interview the detainees and to ensure that their rights were protected. What these public defenders found was jarring.

One public defender described the conditions under which the protesters were confined—many of them “held for days even though they hadn’t been charged with any crime.” There were fifteen women in one cell that was designed to hold a few people for a few hours. Each cell had one sink and one toilet. Water was scarce – the women were instructed that the water from the sink was not safe for drinking. There were no beds, pillows or blankets. There was not enough room for all of the women to lie down at the same time. The women were given four pieces of bread, a slice of American cheese, and a small bag of cookies three times a day. The women didn’t want to eat the bread, so instead they used the slices as pillows “so that they wouldn’t have to lay their heads on the filthy concrete floors.”

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By the time the rest of the criminal justice system returned to work on Wednesday, the public defenders had succeeded in demonstrating the illegality of many of these detentions and as a result nearly half of the arrestees were released without charges ever being filed.

But against the backdrop of the demonstrations, this story of how arrested citizens were treated received little attention.   This routine indifference is the story of criminal justice in America. While the six officers charged in the killing of Freddy Gray are back home, many of the Baltimore protesters continue to be held on bonds they are unable to afford.

While cell phone video has helped to tell the story of deadly police abuse, the story of routine injustice is being told by public defenders. They took to social media, television, and blog posts to document the egregious treatment of those arrested.   They served as the voice for people who would otherwise be voiceless. Baltimore shows how, collectively, public defenders who speak on behalf of marginalized people and communities remind us of their humanity and how we all should be treated.

While public defenders have largely been ignored in the conversation about how to reform our broken criminal justice system, as events in Baltimore demonstrate, they are an essential part of the solution. And while it is encouraging to see outrage over what happened to Freddy Gray, justice demands that we muster equal outrage over the Ronald Hammonds of the world, and that we support our public defenders who are trying to make things right.

Judge Jeffrey Weill seems to believe public defenders should be more deferential to him and less passionate in the representation of their clients.  Apparently disapproving of the zealous advocacy of one public defender, Judge Weill removed her from all of her cases and, according to Public Defender Michelle Harris, to identify any specific behavior that violated the lawyer’s professional obligations to her clients, or the court.  In doing so he has disrespected the right to counsel for the poor. When the Hinds County public defender office refused to abandon those they are charged with serving, and collectively resisted Judge’s Weill’s attempts to further interfere with their representation of clients, he held an attorney and the head of the office in contempt.

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This case is yet another example of local authorities disregarding the rights of our most vulnerable citizens.  It should leave every person who is concerned about justice troubled.  Wielding power to interfere with fundamental rights of the least powerful is exactly what our Founding Fathers feared the most.  Few things could be less consistent with what our Constitution demands of those given the privilege to preside as judge.  Many of us are a paycheck away from needing the services of the public defender should we be wrongly accused of a crime.  The citizens of Hinds County are fortunate to have a public defender willing to fight for their constitutional rights.  They should demand their judges do the same.

Our Founding Fathers valued liberty above all else, and in the 6^th Amendment guaranteed every individual a lawyer to ensure a fair fight, whenever liberty was at stake. In a nation committed to equal justice, the public defender is essential to ensuring that one’s ability to protect his or her fundamental rights does not depend on income.

Sadly, public defenders are often not given the respect and support they need to protect the most vulnerable among us.  Since our poorest citizens are prosecuted and punished more than those with means, true justice remains elusive.  For every person accused of a crime who can pay for a lawyer, four more are too destitute to do so.  Public defenders are left to fight back against a system that has accepted an embarrassingly low standard of “justice” for the poor.

No one should respect the critical role of defense counsel more than a judge.  Judges should be committed to protecting the most marginalized and supporting those who advocate for them.  But some judges, like Judge Weill, apparently think the courtroom belongs to them, rather than the public.  They think they can dictate how a lawyer defends her client and somehow still be impartial.  That kind of behavior is a great threat our democracy.

This case is particularly shameful, but it is hardly unique. Across the country we see judges who abuse their power at the expense of the powerless, and only when public defenders are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve can this situation be corrected.

Despite the grave potential consequences, nine out of ten low-income New Yorkers who go to Housing Court do so without the benefit of a lawyer.  It is difficult to navigate the courts without assistance.  Filling out the necessary paperwork, requesting repairs, and negotiating with a landlord’s attorney are no simple matters, especially when you are facing the threat of losing your home.

In a perfect world, everyone facing eviction would receive legal representation.  In many cases, the presence of a lawyer can be the difference between keeping your home and getting evicted.  We can and must do more to increase the pool of lawyers available to serve Housing Court litigants.

Like many others, I have worked diligently in recent years to expand state funding for legal services that deal with the “essentials of life” like eviction.  In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council have increased funding for legal assistance programs; the City has also moved to consolidate their administration of legal service funding under the leadership of Steve Banks, the commissioner of the Human Resources Administration.

Another key player has been the Robin Hood Foundation, which focuses exclusively on combatting poverty in New York.  Since 1988, Robin Hood has raised more than $1.95 billion in dollars, goods and services for vulnerable New Yorkers.  This includes a sustained commitment to supporting civil legal service providers, including the Legal Aid Society and New York Legal Assistance Group.

Make no mistake: funding for legal services is fundamental to the ability of courts to perform our constitutional mission.  In these difficult financial times, we often talk about the challenges of keeping the courthouse doors open.  But simply keeping the doors open is not enough.  If what’s happening inside those doors doesn’t amount to equal justice, you might as well close the courts.

Despite the best efforts of the courts, the city and private foundations, there still exists a significant justice gap in New York City, to say nothing about courts around the country. In recent weeks, we have taken a step to address this gap in our city.

The New York court system has joined Robin Hood, the Human Resources Administration, and the Center for Court Innovation to create a new program, Poverty Justice Solutions.  The idea behind it is simple.  Each year, Poverty Justice Solutions will take 20 recent law school graduates and place them in two-year fellowships with civil legal service providers in New York. These attorneys will work at different agencies but they will all be dedicated to the same goal: helping low-income New Yorkers preserve their housing and prevent homelessness.

The first Poverty Justice Solutions attorneys will be selected this spring and will begin work following their graduation in June.  These new attorneys will combat poverty by helping to reduce evictions and improve the financial stability of participating tenants.  They will also help close the justice gap, providing hundreds of low-income New Yorkers with legal assistance that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise.  In the process, Poverty Justice Solutions will also help address the challenges of a constricted legal job market, providing jobs for 20 new lawyers each year.

The Old Testament tells us: “Justice, justice shall you pursue, rich and poor, high and low alike.”  My judicial philosophy is to make sure that justice is done.  I don’t consider myself an activist judge, but I do consider myself proactive in the pursuit of justice.  That’s the idea behind Poverty Justice Solutions – and behind the quest to improve access to civil legal services in general.  Meeting our responsibilities to the most disadvantaged in society is not a luxury and it isn’t a choice – it is a simple matter of justice.

Selma is set in 1965, and—just as we did 50 years ago—we continue to view some lives as less valuable than others. We still embrace an embarrassingly low standard of justice for our most marginalized populations. We persist in promulgating policies that ensure certain communities will never be able to fully participate in our society.

2.2 million people are incarcerated at any given time in America, far more than any other country in the world. Nearly 6 million have lost the right to vote because of a criminal conviction. Countless others are rendered ineligible for student loans, public housing, benefits necessary to care for their families, and employment opportunities. The victims of this injustice are almost exclusively poor. They are disproportionately people of color. Our race- and class-based system of mass incarceration is tearing apart families, destroying communities, and making it almost impossible for children of incarcerated parents to ever break the cycle. So, much like 50 years ago, we need a movement to address this civil rights imperative.

Like any other feature-length movie focusing on a complex event, Selma was reduced to a simplified narrative in which the heroes overcome adversity to achieve victory—the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But, as much as Dr. King sought to push for policy reform, his larger vision demanded much broader transformation.  He understood that while a law can temporarily force those with a warped sense of justice to change their behavior, true equality only occurs when we collectively embrace it as a fundamental and inviolate American value; when we reshape our culture into one which truly views each and every citizen as deserving of respect and dignity.  King fought not only for legislative victories, but also the transformation of the hearts and minds of Americans. Selma was part of a broader campaign designed to shine a light on the inhumane treatment of African Americans and awaken our national consciousness to the fact that this behavior violates our greatest ideals.

Likewise, if we are to realize equal justice today, we must work to transform a criminal justice narrative that assumes people in our poorest communities are somehow inherently dangerous; that measures justice by the harshness of the punishment; that lumps the world into categories of “us” and “them” with law enforcement as “the good guys” and those they police as “the bad guys.” Strategies to reform unjust polices are necessary. Of course we must scale back the criminalization of an ever increasing index of behavior. Certainly we should end a system of bail that detains people pretrial simply because they are too poor to pay the bond that is set. We absolutely need to reform overly punitive sentencing laws.

But if we do not change the fact that we have come to equate justice with punishment and to associate the most negative qualities with race and class, equal justice will remain elusive. Those who administer our justice system will continue to disproportionately monitor, arrest, prosecute, and punish poor people and people of color. We must work to transform our assumptions about our most marginalized populations and how they deserve to be treated. So, while policy reform plays an important role, as was the case 50 years ago, we need a movement to transform the hearts and minds of a nation.

Public defenders can help to drive this campaign. With 80 percent of people accused of crimes too poor to afford an attorney, public defenders are the voice of our impoverished communities in the criminal justice system. By organizing public defenders, we can harness the collective voice necessary to speak up for the humanity of people in these communities and to infuse the system with values essential to justice.

A movement of public defenders has the power to reframe the criminal justice narrative in this country—an essential precursor to sustaining a movement for reform. Lawyers for the poor have the opportunity to humanize their clients every time they speak in court. Public defender leaders can spread the message more broadly as they speak on behalf of the populations they represent in meetings with judges, policymakers, and the community. There are thousands of public defenders across the nation speaking for millions of people whose voices are routinely ignored or dismissed. Their clients are frequently cast as demons, when in fact they are the people who bag our groceries, care for our children, and serve us in restaurants. Most Americans are a paycheck away from needing a public defender. Yet, we do not see people caught up in the criminal justice system as part of our shared community. Until we see these lives as just as valuable as the lives of people we care about, we will not have equal justice. We must mobilize this army of advocates to achieve that transformation of hearts and minds.

That is how we will continue the march that so many heroic civil rights warriors began in Selma.

“My favorite is Head Start because it was my idea,” he answered. “But 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, also known as civil legal aid, has indeed been a potent anti-poverty tool in two ways. First, through individual case work that enables poor people to gain access to the rights and benefits from state and federal service agencies, health care providers, and schools to which they are entitled. Second, through large, class-action lawsuits and advocacy efforts that change laws and governmental policies that adversely―and overwhelmingly―affect poor people.

With the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty in 2014, we have been treated to numerous assessments of the effectiveness of Johnson’s (and Shriver’s) program these past 12 months. It is indisputable that tremendous progress has been made and that much work remains.

To continue progress, civil legal aid must be deployed more broadly in future efforts to combat poverty, and public resources for legal assistance must be increased greatly.

With regard to class action lawsuits, we have seen how civil legal aid has resulted in significant legal victories. In 1970, legal aid attorneys successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in Goldberg v. Kelly that state welfare departments cannot terminate benefits without first providing applicants with a fair hearing. In 1973, California Rural Legal Assistance successfully sued to stop large agricultural operators from requiring migrant farm workers to use short-handled hoes while working in fields. (The short-handled hoes forced workers to stay bent over for long periods of time; field managers required their use because if they saw workers standing up, then they knew that they were resting and not working.  After these hoes were banned, back injuries among farm workers dropped by more than 30 percent. ) More recently, a federal lawsuit by Greater Boston Legal Services resulted in changes in policy by the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance which had improperly denied benefits to people living with disabilities.

A look at how civil legal aid case work for individuals struggling with homelessness and/or unstable housing, as well as those who are victims of intimate partner violence, is also instructive.

Numerous programs around the country demonstrate that civil legal services can help poor people keep their housing, or negotiate exits from housing that prevent immediate evictions, and ensure a smooth transition to safe, affordable housing. A pilot program launched in 2009 by the Boston Bar Association showed conclusively that poor people fighting eviction notices in housing court in Quincy, Massachusetts fared much better when they were represented by attorneys. Two-thirds of those with full representation kept their housing; only one-third of those who went through housing court without an attorney were able to do the same. Similar results have been found in New York City, San Francisco, and San Mateo County in California.

Meanwhile, a landmark 2003 study published in Contemporary Economic Policy showed that legal services is one of the most effective ways to help women living in poverty escape intimate partner violence. Amy Farmer and Jill Tiefenthaler, researchers at the Carnegie Mellon Census Research Data Center, were intrigued by a U.S. Department of Justice report noting that rates of domestic violence had significantly declined during the 1990s. They analyzed data from the National Crime Victimization Survey and the U.S. Census to tease out the reasons for the improvement. Their conclusion? Access to civil legal services ensured delivery of protective orders; assistance with child custody and support; and divorce and property distribution that victims needed to begin rebuilding their lives. Civil legal assistance was also critical for resolution of domestic violence-related legal disputes around immigration, housing, and public benefits.

While services provided by emergency shelters, counselors, and hotlines are vital in the short-term, Farmer and Tiefenthaler wrote, services provided by civil legal aid “appear to actually present women with real, long-term alternatives to their relationships.” (It is also interesting to note that between 1994 and 2000, the period during which incidents of domestic violence declined, the availability of civil legal services for victims of domestic violence increased 245 percent—from 336 such programs to 1,441).

Despite these clear successes, many people do not understand what civil legal aid is, and surveys regularly find that most Americans erroneously believe that poor people have a right to free counsel in civil cases. Meanwhile, state and federal funding for legal assistance is well below what it needs to be.

This fall, the Boston Bar Association’s Statewide Task Force to Expand Civil Legal Aid in Massachusetts released Investing in Justice, a report showing that more than 60 percent of those who are eligible for civil legal aid in Massachusetts and seek services are turned away due to lack of resources. (Full disclosure: I am a member of the task force.)  The Task Force proposed that the Commonwealth’s investment in civil legal aid be increased by $30 million over the next three years to begin to address the unmet need. Currently, the state invests $15 million annually in civil legal aid.

The irony, of course, is that the civil legal aid yields a measurable―and significant―return on investment. Looking at work solely related to housing, public benefits, and domestic violence, three independent economic consulting firms which did analyses for the Task Force found that every dollar spent on civil legal aid in eviction and foreclosure cases saved the state $2.69 on services associated with housing needs such as “emergency shelter, health care, foster care, and law enforcement.” Every dollar spent assisting qualified people to receive federal benefits brings in $5 to the state. Every dollar spent on civil legal aid related to domestic violence is offset by a dollar in medical costs averted due to fewer incidents of assault.

This summer, Philadelphia resident Tianna Gaines-Turner became the first person actually living in poverty to testify before Congressman Paul Ryan’s Congressional hearings on the War on Poverty. In her strong and moving testimony she spoke of the need for increased state and federal funding to end poverty, saying, “People living in poverty―those who were born into it, and those who are down on their luck―want to get out of poverty. We want to create our own safety nets, so we never have to depend on government assistance again.”

Civil legal aid is a powerful tool.  It helps people living in poverty build a foundation of stability so they can create a better future for themselves, their families, and our communities. 

In 1963, the Supreme Court declared that states are obligated to provide a lawyer to anyone accused of a crime who cannot afford one. In Gideon v. Wainwright, the Court made clear that a lawyer is essential to ensure justice is served and liberty is protected—that laypeople cannot possibly safeguard their own liberty in a complex system of law and procedure without a lawyer.

One of the best ways to prevent unnecessary foreclosures is to provide struggling families with a legal aid lawyer.  While the state guarantees legal representation for any criminal proceeding, there is no such guarantee in civil cases. Therefore, access to fair representation depends largely on the availability of free legal aid lawyers who have a long track record of helping people with no other options—such as battered spouses, people with disabilities, parents seeking child support, homeless veterans, and others without means.

Legal aid lawyers have the necessary training to help homeowners navigate the byzantine mortgage servicing system. They can identify mortgages that were illegal or predatory, and also help families make their mortgage payments by securing resources like unpaid wages, child support, public benefits, or unemployment insurance. Legal aid programs have saved many thousands of homes since the start of the financial crisis, but recently have struggled to secure funding for their vital work.  The Bank of America settlement will hopefully be helpful in this regard  but we need to do much more.

Early in the foreclosure crisis, the Center for Responsible Lending, a national advocacy group, received a $15 million grant for an innovative grant-making enterprise called the Institute for Foreclosure Legal Assistance (IFLA).  Over the course of three years, IFLA more than doubled the number of attorneys devoted to foreclosure prevention work and created a national infrastructure of training, informational materials, and networking that served as a powerful force multiplier. The program ultimately reached tens of thousands of borrowers either through individual assistance, broadly applicable policy changes, or access to critical information and materials.

Yet funding for IFLA was only available for three years, and at the end of that period, IFLA closed its doors. Since then, resources for foreclosure prevention work have dwindled even as the significant risk of foreclosure for millions of homeowners continues. Yet the IFLA infrastructure still exists, and an infusion of funds could immediately be put toward productive use without the need to build a new program.

While the Bank of America settlements directs monies to states, there is another source of federal monies that could be used to restart IFLA’s critical work: the remaining funds from the Independent Foreclosure Review (IFR).

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The IFR was initiated when financial regulators found evidence that mortgage servicers had engaged in rampant misconduct when troubled borrowers came to them for help with their mortgages. The regulators first attempted to review every case individually, but that effort foundered. Instead, they decided to compensate homeowners who were most likely to have been harmed by the servicers, setting aside $3.6 billion for this effort. Borrowers ultimately claimed roughly 86 percent of the monies set aside but approximately $500 million remains unclaimed.

Regulators are considering giving those remaining funds to states for their “unclaimed funds” accounts in case homeowners file late claims. However, under this scenario, it is unlikely that much of that money will end up in the hands of homeowners seeking compensation. In fact, according to a recent letter to federal regulators from the National Housing Resource Center—an advocate for the nonprofit housing counseling community—only 2.8 percent of unclaimed funds held by New York State, and about 6 percent held by the state of Texas, reach the rightful owners every year. These funds are much more likely to end up in a state’s general funds where they could be used for just about anything, as has occurred with proceeds from other mortgage settlements.

Instead, regulators should send the states only the amount of remaining IFR funds that are likely to be claimed by homeowners. The rest of the money should be used for other foreclosure prevention efforts—including re-funding IFLA—to reinvigorate critical civil legal aid efforts, prevent unnecessary foreclosures, and help stabilize communities that are still being left behind in the economic recovery.

With the Bank of America agreement, hundreds of billions of dollars have now been collected in settlements with lenders and servicers, and families and neighborhoods should be far better off than they are now. Adequately funding national, state and local civil legal aid programs is one of the most effective ways to ensure that these settlements provide meaningful assistance to the people and communities that have been hit the hardest by the bad behavior of financial institutions.

Day in and day out, legal services attorneys fight for the rights of poor individuals and families, providing legal help to people who cannot afford an attorney. Access to representation is vitally important.  But as we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty, it’s time to renew the vision of legal services as antipoverty work.

While American legal aid has existed since the turn of the 20^th century, the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) as part of LBJ’s War on Poverty offered a bold new vision of legal services as an antipoverty strategy, and legal services attorneys as agents of systemic change. Catherine Carr, Executive Director of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, describes this historic shift:

No longer were legal aid programs being designed to simply respond to the problems that individual poor people brought to intake offices; instead, the programs were to work with low-income communities to identify needs and strategically set priorities that protected and advanced the rights of poor people and poor communities as a whole.

In the years that followed, legal services proved to be an enormously effective antipoverty tool. Legal services programs lobbied elected officials, engaged in local and national social justice organizing efforts, won landmark victories in courts across the nation on behalf of their clients, and thereby brought about systemic change that benefited poor people nationwide. The watershed U.S. Supreme Court case Goldberg v. Kelly, for example, established that a poor person has a constitutional right to a fair hearing before his or her welfare benefits can be terminated.

Fifty years later, legal services attorneys continue to fight on behalf of low-income Americans who cannot afford legal help. But much of the work today more closely resembles the “legal aid” vision that existed prior to the 1960s rather than the “law reform” vision brought about by the OEO as part of the War on Poverty.

This shift is in large part due to conservative backlash against legal services as an antipoverty tool. It didn’t take long for conservatives to view a strong legal services movement as a threat.  In the decades that followed the launch of the War on Poverty, they placed restrictions on legal services programs, barring those that accept federal funding from engaging in much of the work that effects systemic change.

President Nixon prohibited staff attorneys from lobbying or engaging in political activities. President Reagan—who, as Governor of California, had battled efforts to improve the working conditions of poor migrant farmworkers—prohibited legal services programs from using federal dollars for legislative and regulatory activities as well as class action lawsuits. Even after the Reagan restrictions, many legal services programs found alternative funding sources to support their law reform activities. But in 1996, the Gingrich Congress hammered the final nail into the coffin, expanding the restrictions to any legal services program that accepted even a single dollar of federal funds.

While a small number of programs found ways to continue their law reform work—for example, by creating separate programs to receive unrestricted dollars—most responded by backing away from the kinds of systemic work that had proven most effective at impacting large numbers of poor people, in favor of the “legal aid” model of one-off individual client representation.

Today an ever-shrinking number of legal services programs—and legal services attorneys—view their role and mission as that of antipoverty work.  Access to representation has supplanted the bolder vision of law reform and systemic change.

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To be sure, a handful of programs still embrace the OEO vision. As a new lawyer fresh out of law school, I had the good fortune to land in one of those programs: Community Legal Services in Philadelphia (CLS). As a staff attorney at CLS, I learned firsthand the power of the “law reform” model that CLS continues to embody, providing representation to poor Philadelphians, and using that individual representation to inform large-scale systemic work—through class action and impact litigation as well as legislative advocacy on the local, state and national level.

The cutbacks and restrictions championed by Nixon, Reagan and Gingrich have without question made it much more complicated and challenging for many legal services programs to engage in law reform. As long as the restrictions persist, unrestricted programs like CLS must take seriously their responsibility to prioritize law reform work, given that there are so few programs free to pursue it.

But even restricted programs can find ways to maximize their role as part of the antipoverty movement. Media is a powerful example, as human stories have the power to bring abstract policy debates to life. As advocates who interact with low-income individuals and families on a daily basis, legal services attorneys are uniquely positioned to tell the story of how few poor families are actually helped by TANF, for example; or how struggling families have no room for SNAP cuts; or how inadequate the official federal poverty measure is. They can paint a picture of the barriers people face in seeking to get a job—people with criminal records, for example—or what it’s like to be working full-time and still unable to rise out of poverty. They can tell the story of how and why it’s expensive to be poor. Even better, they can empower their clients to tell their own stories. Talkpoverty.org offers a unique new outlet to tell these stories, and I hope to see a steady stream of contributions from legal services advocates and their clients in the months and years ahead.

But we must also look beyond the present. As we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty and the Office of Economic Opportunity, let’s pave the way for a renewed legal services movement—one that is unhindered by restrictions and plays a leading role in bringing an end to poverty.