Washington Post Article.doc

Washington Post Article A. 80% of low-income Americans who need civil legal assistance do not receive any B. Roughly 1M cases per year are rejected because legal aid programs lack resources to handle them         1. Do not include many qualified people who do not ask a legal aid program for help because :                 a. they do not know the programs exist                 b. they do not know they qualify                 c. assume that the help is not available to them                 d. or those who received some service like simple advice but not the level of service they actually needed C. LSC=Legal Services Corp. D. on average low-income households experience 1 civil legal need per year         1. examples: Matters relating to family law Housing Employment Government benefits Consumer problems E. only 1 in 5 (or even less) problems are addressed either with a private or legal aid lawyer F. For every client served by an LSC-funded program, at least one person will be turned down G. 1 legal aid lawyer for every 6,861 low-income clients vs. 1 lawyer for every 525 people in the general population H. Family problems represented the largest category of cases         1. examples: domestic violence and abuse, custody issues, problems involving social service agencies I. Housing problems came in 2nd. Income issues was 3rd on list of cases met, 5th on cases unmet J. LSC funded entirely by Congress