The dedicated staffs of nonprofit organizations and thousands of attorney volunteers provide the frontline delivery of direct legal services to the poor in Texas. The nonprofit legal services programs are primarily either staff-based or volunteer-based. Many staff-based programs also operate volunteer projects, and most volunteer-based programs require, at the least, funding for administrative staff support.
Both the staff and volunteers of these programs perform yeoman’s duty to provide access to justice for low-income Texans with critical legal needs. Pro bono attorneys willingly represent the most vulnerable in our society because they believe that everyone is entitled to equal justice. Legal aid staff attorneys do their work year after year for salaries they could have earned without ever going to law school. Their strong commitment to justice for all brings honor to the entire legal profession.
I. Staff-based Programs
A. Legal Services Corporation (LSC) programs
Each year, Congress appropriates funds for the provision of civil legal services to the poor. These funds are disbursed by the Legal Services Corporation, which sets policy and promulgates regulations for its grantees, in accordance with congressional mandates. In recent years, annual congressional challenges to the continued existence of LSC have all but ceased. This welcome development is a result of much effort on the part of the legal profession through the American Bar Association; state bars, including the State Bar of Texas; access to justice bodies, including the Commission; and many supportive legislators.
In the late 1990s, LSC required its grantees throughout the country to implement a state planning process to ensure that federal funds be used in the most efficient, effective manner and that programs coordinate service to ensure minimal overlap. In 2001, LSC approved a plan for Texas that reduced the number of LSC programs from ten to three. The mergers that resulted in the new configuration were finally completed in 2003.
The new programs, three of the largest in the country, serve every county in the state. The LSC programs together constitute by far the largest legal services provider in Texas, employing approximately 265 staff attorneys and providing about 80 percent of the legal services to the poor in Texas. The three programs offer a range of civil legal services. Priorities for accepting cases are set by the boards of directors of the programs. More than half the cases handled are family law cases; most other cases are in the areas of housing, consumer law, employment, and public benefits.
The mergers created many challenges for the LSC programs. Coming at the same time as reduced funding from LSC due to the 2000 census increased those challenges. According to the 2000 census, the poverty population grew in Texas since the 1990 census, but did not grow as much as in some other states. LSC reallocated its funds based on the census data, which resulted in a reduction of LSC funds for Texas. That funding reallocation will remain in effect until the next census count.
As the programs struggled to combine staffs, avoid interruption of services to clients, and coordinate incompatible technology, costs of the mergers soared, even though the legal merger issues were handled pro bono by several large law firms. LSC programs were forced to cut back, through lay-offs or job elimination, more than 120 legal aid staff.
The three Texas programs now are: Lone Star Legal Aid (LSLA), Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA), and Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas (LANWT).
Throughout the merger process, all the programs worked diligently to overcome each hurdle without impacting the quality of client services. For all the LSC programs, providing quality service to their clients remains the top priority.
B. Non-LSC staff programs
Numerous non-LSC staff-based programs operate in Texas. Most of these programs either serve a specific client group or limit service to a specific type of legal issue. Examples include Advocacy, Inc. (disability-related issues), Texas Civil Rights Project (civil rights & discrimination), the Women’s Advocacy Project (domestic violence/family law), Equal Justice Center (immigrant employment issues and farm worker issues) and numerous immigration projects (immigrants & asylees). These programs provide high quality services in critical areas of law or to low-income populations that LSC programs cannot address adequately due to funding restrictions or limited resources.
II. Volunteer-based Programs
Organized pro bono programs thrive throughout Texas. The Texas Attorneys' Guide to Volunteer Opportunities, an annual county-by-county listing of pro bono opportunities for attorneys, is available online on the website of the State Bar of Texas (www.texasbar.com/volunteer). The diversity of the programs provides a wide array of volunteer opportunities for attorneys in all types of practice.
A. Programs Created Due to LSC Mandate
LSC requires that its grantees expend 12.5 percent of LSC funding on private attorney involvement. LSC programs may use the funds for in-house pro bono projects, often co-sponsored with local bar associations, such as Dallas Volunteer Attorney Program (co-sponsored by Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas and the Dallas Bar Association) and the Community Justice Program (co-sponsored by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and the San Antonio Bar Association).
LSC programs also may sub-contract with other organizations to administer pro bono legal services, as does Lone Star Legal Aid with Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse in Houston. Finally, LSC programs may contract with individual attorneys at a substantially reduced hourly rate to provide direct legal services to eligible clients, as does TRLA in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
B. Non-LSC Affiliated Projects
Many Texas pro bono programs are affiliated with local bar associations, such as the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program. Other programs focus on specific client groups, such as children, persons with HIV/AIDS, immigrants, the elderly or victims of domestic violence. Usually, an attorney, paralegal or legal advocate staff person recruits volunteer attorneys, coordinates referrals and provides support to the attorney-volunteers. Examples include Justice for Children, Dallas Legal Hospice, and Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, among many others.
Faith-based projects are a small but important segment of the pro bono/legal services program community. Some of the smaller projects serve only members of their congregations or immediate neighborhoods, while others make their services available to large regions of the state. One example is Catholic Charities’ immigration programs, which operate in cities throughout the state.
III. Revenue
The legal services delivery system is funded from many sources, the majority of which are from the federal government. Since 2000, the variety of funding sources has increased. The following chart illustrates the 2003 revenue data for grantees of the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation. Although the variety of funding sources and the amount of funding has increased since 2000, so has the poverty population eligible for legal aid.
Revenue Sources
2004 Funding
|
Funding Source |
Amount |
% of Total |
| Legal Services Corporation (LSC) |
$26,706.804 |
43.82% |
|
Federal Funding Other Than LSC
(Protection & Advocacy, VAWA, DOJ, etc.) |
$3,369,114 |
5.53% |
|
TEAJF/IOLTA |
$4,780,825 |
7.85% |
|
SBOT Dues Check-off |
$479,175 |
.79% |
|
TEAFJ/BCLS (State) |
$3,970,270 |
6.25% |
|
TEAJF/CVCLS (State) |
$2,412,500 |
3.95% |
| Other State & Local Government Funding |
$3,177,617 |
5.22% |
| United Way |
$880,922 |
1.45% |
| Client Fees |
$1,853,371 |
3.04% |
| Bar Associations |
$933,142 |
1.53% |
| Foundations (Other Than TEAJF) |
$5,829,591 |
9.57% |
| Universities or Law Schools |
$876,135 |
1.44% |
| Fundraising |
$2,499,773 |
4.10% |
| Other |
$3,158,482 |
5.18% |
| TOTAL |
$60,927,721 |
100% |
IV. Gaps in Service
Gaps in the legal services delivery system remain and, for the most part, have not changed since 2000. These gaps continue to result from restrictions on use of funds, inadequate resources and geographic challenges.
A. Restrictions on use of funds
Almost all Texas programs are limited in the services they provide due to restrictions imposed by funding sources. Restrictions include prohibiting class action lawsuits, suits against the government, redistricting cases, and fee generating cases, among others. Many grantees are prohibited from representing incarcerated people or undocumented immigrants. Unlike many other states, Texas has no significant source of unrestricted funding for the provision of legal services to the poor. Almost all available funding carries restrictions, either by case type and/or by class of eligible client served.
LSC grantees face an “all funds” restriction. Programs that receive LSC funding cannot use LSC funds for restricted purposes, nor can they use any other funds they receive from other sources for LSC prohibited activity. Some state funds effectively carry “all funds” restrictions, as well. Such restrictions impact other funders that do not choose to restrict funds, since one funder effectively decides for what purposes another funder may issue grants.
A significantly limiting LSC restriction is the one that prohibits LSC programs from receiving, or even requesting, attorneys fees in any cases. This restriction eliminates a potentially valuable source of funding for legal services to the poor. It also removes an important deterrence effect because most cases brought by poor people do not involve large damage awards.
B. Geographic challenges
Texas geography presents unique challenges, particularly to the rural poor. Remote distances and lack of transportation complicate access. The LSC mergers resulted in further reduction of satellite offices in some rural areas, sometimes increasing the distances that clients must travel to reach a legal aid office. Although technological advances offer some hope for this problem, they come with increased costs. Currently, there are many underserved areas in the state, primarily in rural areas.
C. Inadequate resources
Programs continue to be severely limited by inadequate resources in 2005. Despite several very successful efforts to create new sources of funding for legal services since 2000, other sources, such as IOLTA, have continued to decline. Also, many private attorneys volunteer their time and expertise in pro bono cases, but these volunteer efforts, while substantial, cannot possibly meet the existing need. Since that need continues to grow, programs increasingly struggle to do more with less.
All legal services programs are governed by client eligibility and case acceptance guidelines. Applicants for legal services must meet certain income limits, usually 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines and must reside in the program’s service area. In 2005, that means that an eligible individual may earn no more than $11,963/year, and a family of four no more than $24,188. However, no program is able to serve all the clients who qualify under all the guidelines.
Providers limit the types of cases they accept due to inadequate staff and volunteer resources. One common limitation, for example, is acceptance of divorce cases only where domestic violence is present. People who need divorces for other reasons must wait for extended periods of time or, more often, simply do not receive the services. Additionally, many clients who receive only legal advice often need actual representation but do not receive it due to lack of resources. Gaps in the legal services delivery system remain and, for the most part, have not changed since 2000. These gaps continue to result from restrictions on use of funds, inadequate resources and geographic challenges.
