Public Interest

Want To Help The Economy? Then Don't Cut Legal Aid.

Legal Aid gives back ten times what it costs.

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woman counting bonus moneyFunding of legal services for the poor historically has been championed in Congress by a bi-partisan cross-section of members. Among the reasons for this powerful, across-the-aisle support has been the simple fact that an allocation of funding for legal aid is a wise investment. In addition to the lives it saves, investment in lawyers for the poor, on a strictly economic, cost-benefit analysis, is an investment worth making. For every dollar spent in support of legal services, an astonishing rate of return results. By any measure, an investment yield of ten-to-one is an investment worth making.

The most recent federal budget submitted to Congress proposes elimination of all funding for the Legal Services Corporation, the nation’s largest source of support for access to justice on behalf of those without means to retain an attorney. Overlooked in the politics of it all have been the significant economic benefits that historically and consistently result from the efficient uses of these invested dollars. Recent studies have concluded that funding of legal services returns as much as eleven times the amounts invested.

Consider the mother, abused by her spouse, with a small child to raise and protect. Access to counsel that she could not otherwise afford will get her a restraining order as well as spousal and child support. That means she will not require public benefits because her abuser-spouse will pay the costs of rent and food. Her calls to 911 will end, she will not need emergency room medical care, police costs will disappear, and she will not be dependent on Temporary Aid to Needy Families, food stamps, or general relief.  The chances of her child needing special education services due to the trauma inflicted by continued violence will be significantly reduced. There will be fewer lost work days and less loss of income. All of these benefits drive millions of dollars into the local economy.

Consider the family being wrongly evicted by an overzealous landlord. With access to a legal aid attorney, unjust evictions are prevented. As a result, homelessness is avoided, expensive emergency shelter costs are unneeded, police costs, emergency room visits and health care costs are reduced. Public safety is improved, juvenile justice costs go down and schools are stabilized. Lawyers can also bring actions to remedy substandard housing conditions in which those families may be living, further reducing health costs and building and safety expenditures. Those lawsuits will preserve and improve available low-income housing, saving communities many more millions of dollars. Remediating uninhabitable conditions reduces childhood asthma and additional significant strains on the public health care system. And this is before we even measure the human costs incurred when children’s lives and schooling are upended.

Military veterans are often denied benefits because of their inability to find a lawyer. If one of our nation’s veterans gets sick, falls behind on a mortgage, loses her home and her medical care, and can’t find a lawyer, she may end up on the streets, as shameful a situation as we have in this country. All for the lack of an available legal aid lawyer.

Civil legal aid lawyers help children in foster care, effectuate adoptions and create families. This saves the foster care system the expense of placement and monitoring families. It saves court costs and social service expenses. Holocaust survivors find help securing reparations from foreign governments, bringing directly into the economy many millions of dollars, while saving health care costs, dignity and hope.

Pro bono attorneys from the private bar then are able to leverage these funds to a significant extent, further increasing the value of every invested dollar. Legal aid attorneys, who may be able to handle ten wrongful evictions by themselves, can supervise and oversee the work of twenty volunteer lawyers, greatly increasing the value of the benefits derived from the funding of a legal services organization. Major law firms across the country, alone, annually contribute as many as five million hours of free representation to low-income clients, augmenting a system they cannot replace but for which they can heighten that all-important return on investment. If funding is reduced, so too is the level of pro bono participation. Fewer legal aid supervising lawyers means a lesser capacity to mentor volunteers, leading directly to a loss of valuable leverage provided by the pro bono community.

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And all of this does not even take into account the amount of money brought into local communities by legal aid lawyers who help clients access federal public benefits. Successfully representing the aged, blind or disabled in appeals from denials of Social Security Disability benefits provides those clients with a subsistence income, as well as health care through the Medicaid program. The result is that successful appellants can rent apartments, avoid further stress on emergency medical care systems, buy food and infuse money into the local economy. Representation may lead to the receipt of funds through the SNAP (food stamp) program, alleviating stress on emergency nutrition systems and leading to enhanced commerce throughout the community.

Economic impact studies conducted around the country have concluded that the return is significant on the investment of funds in support of legal aid. Pennsylvania economists calculated an 11-to-1 yield. Massachusetts found the work of grantees of the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation annually results in a net value increase of more than $35 million. New York realized more than $300 million. In Tennessee, the economic impact is more than $11 for every $1 spent on civil legal aid. In Louisiana it has been found to be $8.73. Numerous other studies concur.

While this space often has focused on the human costs of a lack of legal aid, the economics cannot be ignored. Without adequate funding that ensures access to justice for the needy, people lose their housing, their medical care, and their hopes. Veterans go homeless, seniors struggle, children’s lives are inalterably impacted, communities suffer. We tell important stories all day long about the fairness that is enhanced by a strong civil legal aid system, how democracy stands or falls on access to the judicial system, and how lives are touched in the most profound ways imaginable by skilled and caring lawyers. In addition, we can tell how funding of the system of delivery of legal services to those most in need makes economic sense. A small investment improves us all, strengthens our communities and returns its value many fold. For all those reasons, support of legal aid must continue to be a bi-partisan priority.

David LashDavid A. Lash serves as Managing Counsel for Pro Bono and Public Interest Services at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He can be reached at dlash@omm.com. The opinions expressed are his alone.

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