WASHINGTON, DC, March 12, 2009 — The U.S. Congress took a big step forward in upholding the promise of equal justice for all with the Senate’s passage on Tuesday, March 10 of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill (HR 1105), which includes an increase of $40 million in funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC). The increase sets the FY 2009 budget at $390 million compared to the previous year’s budget of $350 million. The House of Representatives previously passed the bill on a 245-178 vote on February 25 and has since went to President Barack Obama, who signed it into law on Wednesday, March 18.

Concentrated and collaborative efforts during the past year by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) and its national partners to bring attention to individuals and communities in dire need of civil legal aid, especially in this time of economic instability, were prime motivators for this increase. NLADA’s Don Saunders, director of civil legal services, and Julie Clark, vice president of strategic alliances, served as strong advocates for the increase, visiting congressional offices and offering support and encouragement for the LSC mission.

The increase will boost LSC’s ability to fund grantee legal aid offices across the country in their duty to supply legal support to low-income populations facing drastic life-changing situations, including employment, child custody, evictions and foreclosures, health care, discrimination and a variety of other critical issues. While this increase will enable access to justice for additional tens of thousands of low-income people, it still falls far short of the amount needed to provide adequate legal aid funding for all those that qualify. In its 2005 report “Documenting the Justice Gap in America,” LSC estimated that only about half of all qualifying clients who went to a legal aid office seeking aid were able to receive it, due to budget limitations at the offices. Additionally, these numbers only include those individuals that actually visit a legal aid office, not those that qualify and need help, but might not know legal aid is an option, of which some estimates believe may be as high as 50 percent of those in need of help.

“This increase is a great reward for all the hard work so many people and organizations have put into the struggle to provide fair and equal legal rights for our low-income friends and neighbors,” said NLADA’s Don Saunders. “After so many years of seeing either stagnant funding and sometimes drastic decreases, it is a huge boon for those that care about a fair justice system to see this increase. But, the work is not finished, this year alone there will be hundreds of thousands more people who need legal aid to maintain the basic dignities of life, but will be turned away because of a lack of funding.”

NLADA and its national partners will continue advocating for increased funding for LSC, so all Americans, regardless of the amount of money they have the bank, will be able to have fair and equal legal access.

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The National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA), founded in 1911, is the oldest and largest national, nonprofit membership organization devoting all of its resources to advocating equal access to justice for all Americans. NLADA champions effective legal assistance for people who cannot afford counsel, serves as a collective voice for both civil legal services and public defense services throughout the nation and provides a wide range of services and benefits to its individual and organizational members.