80% of Poor Lack Civil Legal Aid, Study Says: "By Evelyn Nieves | Washington Post Staff Writer | Saturday, October 15, 2005; Page A09
At least 80 percent of low-income Americans who need civil legal assistance do not receive any, in part because legal aid offices in this country are so stretched that they routinely turn away qualified prospective clients, a new study shows.
Roughly 1 million cases per year are being rejected because legal aid programs lack the resources to handle them, according to the study, 'Documenting the Justice Gap in America,' by the Legal Services Corp. (LSC), which funds 143 legal aid programs across the country.
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Poor people also have few options when it comes to legal help. The study determined that there is one legal aid lawyer per 6,861 low-income clients vs. one lawyer for every 525 persons in the general population. ...
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"The Justice Gap" report concluded that although state and private support for legal assistance to the poor has increased in the past two decades, stagnant or declining federal funding and an increasing poor population have combined to increase the unmet demand.
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