Documenting the Justice Gap In America: The Current Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans

By NLADA on February 4, 2020 • ( 0 )

Published by: Legal Services Corporation (LSC). Published in June 2007.

This Legal Services Corporation (LSC) report compiles and analyzes legal needs data that demonstrates the existence of a substantial justice gap for low-income persons seeking legal help with civil legal problems.

Findings:

For every client served by an LSC-funded program, at least one person who sought help was turned down because of insufﬁcient resources.
Only a very small percentage of the legal problems experienced by low-income people (one in ﬁve or less) are addressed with the assistance of either a private attorney (pro bono or paid) or a legal aid lawyer.
Despite the changes in legal aid delivery over the last decade, a majority of legal aid lawyers still work in LSC-funded programs.
The per capita ratio of legal aid attorneys funded by all sources to the low-income population is a tiny fraction of the ratio of private attorneys providing personal civil legal services to the general population.