In looking ahead to the next 100 years, NLADA civil members face new challenges and opportunities for reshaping the pursuit of justice for people living in poverty. The ongoing recession has devastated millions of moderate and low-income households, exacerbating the need for civil legal assistance. We continue to see record numbers of home foreclosures, enormously high rates of unemployment and incidents of domestic violence stemming from the troubled economy. Additionally, the changing demographics have resulted in new and shifting populations of poor people that have reconfigured census data and impacted legal services funding levels. The need of federal, state and public-private support for legal services has never been greater.

The volatile political environment has made it difficult to rely upon federal and state support to safeguard funding for legal aid. With cuts in funding, legal aid programs are challenged in planning their future budgets and responding to increased client needs. New laws and national and state policies around immigration and health care have had an impact as well on low-income communities and may change how legal aid programs address the new legal problems arising from these laws and policies.

In this time of crisis, legal services must marshal its resources and think innovatively about how to maintain effective legal delivery systems. This year’s civil sessions will provide a forum for civil legal aid leaders to strategize about a wide range of critical issues for the next century of NLADA and civil legal assistance. We will explore improvements in assessment and better evaluation tools and measures that expand our community’s ability to both gauge our effectiveness and address areas where we need improvement. Quality assessments and outcome measures will in turn allow civil legal aid to showcase to federal, state and public-private partners the measurable impact of the work and the need for increased resources to support it.

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