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Pressure Mounts To Restore Low-Cost Legal Services Program

After killing the program earlier this summer, folks in Washington are asking to bring it back.

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(Image via Getty)

In June, Washington’s supreme court voted 7-2 to put an end to the state’s pioneering Limited Legal License Technician program. The program allowed non-lawyers to become certified to provide limited legal counseling in family law matters. In practice, LLLT offered a low-cost alternative for families grappling with divorce and child custody issues who too often go unrepresented because they cannot afford legal counsel. But the program lost money for the state bar association so it landed on the chopping block.

Because as we all know, the proper standard for evaluating public services is profitability. Just ask the Post Office right now.

Washington may not seem like a state with a critical access to justice problem but that’s because most people don’t really know much about Washington. People understand that economic inequality is universal in the country but the justice gap isn’t just about money. Most of the country can’t see much beyond Seattle whenever they think about Washington, but there’s a large, fairly rural state on the other side of the Cascade range that suffers from the exact same geographic access to justice issues that famously plague states like South Dakota. The LLLT program offered critical protection for kids whose interests often get shortchanged in family law because one (or both) parents can’t afford an attorney. And while LLLTs couldn’t aid clients in court, assistance navigating the paperwork is a godsend for these families.

The editorial board of the Seattle Times has brought media weight to the effort to restore the program, pointing the finger at attorney-driven protectionism for thwarting the program:

An empowered LLLT system should have been part of the solution. LLLTs cannot represent people in courtrooms, a well-considered restriction. But others were piled on. Regulators hobbled the program, then blamed it for limping.

LLLTs asked the Court this spring to expand into two areas — administrative hearings over public benefits including unemployment, and eviction and debt assistance — where its members could have helped with massive statewide needs. But just as it had in 2017, when LLLTs requested permission to take up elder care and health law issues, the Supreme Court said no, instead of looking toward how Utah’s broader program is working. And this year, the state Bar denied a request to help provide LLLT students family law education after a UW program ended.

Expanding the program to other areas that lower income people typically confront would seem to be the logical extension of a program designed to help lower income people with legal problems. But since the powers that be were more interested in the program as a sideshow they balked at any extension and then shrugged when few people signed up for a job with a sever cap on their opportunities.

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One of the dissenters put it this way:

As Justice [Barbara] Madsen wrote in her dissent, “It is not the time for closing the doors to justice but, instead, for opening them wider.” That’s true whether or not Bar Association leaders see it as bad for profits.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to focus on legal representation policies at times like these, but that’s why keeping up the pressure is so important. Washington eliminated this program. Cuomo is gutting immigration rights defense in New York. Initiatives to defend the rights of people who can’t afford help are easy targets. Keep pushing back.

Supreme Court should reinstate low-cost legal-assistance program [Seattle Times]

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