An Important Program Worth Saving

Let's hope the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable survives this transfer of power.

capitol building Washington DCAs a new Administration begins, its Department of Justice has the chance to embrace a little noticed, non-partisan, good government gem that is significantly impacting the lives of thousands of indigent, elderly, and disabled Americans. Known as the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR), this unique collaborative effort is touching vulnerable lives in a united way that is rarely seen in our sometimes siloed federal government. Flying below the political radar-screen, it is a program whose time is now.

The concept is simple, although not self-evident to those outside the world of public interest legal services. Federal programs often are more effective when civil legal aid is a part of their panoply of offerings. Access to justice is critical to enhancing the reach and results of federal efforts to provide housing, food, safety and other basic necessities of life. LAIR simply integrates these notions of access to justice into many federal grant programs by making it possible for those initiatives to access civil legal attorneys. The expenditure of already-allocated government funds to include legal aid lawyers who can make those programs work at their maximum effectiveness is the promise and magic of the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable. Literally, it costs nothing extra to save lives.

Launched in 2012, embraced by the President in 2015, run under the auspices of the Department of Justice and the White House Domestic Policy Council, the work of LAIR, in the words of President Obama, can “increase the availability of meaningful access to justice for individuals and families and thereby improve the outcomes of an array of Federal programs.” Begun through the cooperation of 18 agencies collaborating to create effective programming by combining good intentions, grant funding, and creative thinking, LAIR has been a complex undertaking of simplicity. LAIR engages with already-existing federal grant programs, clarifying the scope of those programs to include the provision of legal aid where the purposes of the grants can be furthered by the accompanying assistance that only civil legal aid lawyers can provide.

It is easy to overlook the impact of lawyers in helping to make more efficient the management of seemingly unrelated federal programs. For instance, grant funds from the IRS were directed to a legal aid organization in Texas. A victim of sex trafficking then was able to access a low-income taxpayer clinic and clear up a tax dispute that was preventing her from escaping the impact of having suffered so horrifically. A grant of Department of Labor funds allowed a legal aid organization to help that young single mother overcome a previous mistake she had made with a former employer that was preventing her from being hired to work in the call center of a major banking institution. Once she got legal help, she got the job, and a new chapter of her life began.

The funding streams identified by LAIR enable lawyers to go to VA hospitals to help veterans secure benefits, win child support, find housing assistance, and take care of warrants and fines that have grown so large over time as to make it impossible for the veteran to ever get on with her life. With help from an attorney, the poor can access much-needed public benefits and subsidized housing opportunities, the elderly can escape abuse, and victims of crime can find the help they need.

LAIR has clarified the scope of dozens of grants so that lawyers can help poor people with these myriad issues. Programs involve access to health care, protection against domestic violence, help for homeless veterans and many more initiatives that everyone in Washington D.C. can agree are worthy of support. And for each previously-allocated dollar that is directed toward specific legal aid projects, many more dollars are saved. When that single mother was able to secure a position at the bank, she went off Medicaid and no longer needed housing assistance. When a homeless veteran is brought in off the streets and secures public benefits, emergency hospital visits are eliminated, police costs evaporate, local governments no longer have to provide general relief funds. That is a worthy investment that few recognize and fewer will criticize. It is a non-partisan gift to all.

Additionally, LAIR supports partnerships between the legal aid community and federal law enforcement. For instance, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice and the Department of Labor get help from legal aid programs who are positioned to spot, early on, illegal practices and help identify fraud and abuse. LAIR also supports new training and technical assistance. Because of the advent of medical-legal partnerships, the Department of Health and Human Services began providing support to community health centers, bringing civil legal aid to hospitals and medical centers, improving health outcomes and decreasing health costs. When a landlord illegally turns off the heat in a cancer patient’s apartment or a victim of domestic violence keeps showing up in the emergency room, doctors may need to prescribe a lawyer for their patients. More than medicine, the patient needs a restraining order.

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When President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum formally creating the White House-Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable he directed that an annual report be made to the President on the progress of the program. Now, just because a change in Administration is occurring, this laudable directive must not be lost in the shuffle. Lifting people out of poverty crosses party and philosophical lines as does no other issue. Hope and greatness demand that LAIR, a little publicized but highly impactful program that successfully combats poverty, be embraced by all and continued by many.


David LashDavid A. Lash is the managing counsel for pro bono and public interest services at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. The opinions expressed are his alone. In the interest of full disclosure, his sister, Karen A. Lash, served as the founding executive director of the Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable. The LAIR report can be accessed at www.justice.gov/lair/annualreport.

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