Copyright 1999 Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles
Times
January 15, 1999, Friday, Home Edition
SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 2; Metro Desk
LENGTH: 2387 words
HEADLINE:
FRIDAY REPORT / AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT PEOPLE AND POLICIES SHAPING SOUTHERN
CALIFORNIA;
PLEADING THEIR CASE;
LEGAL AID CAN BE VITAL FOR
THE POOR BUT IS WOEFULLY UNDERFUNDED DESPITE RECENT FISCAL GAINS, ADVOCATES SAY
BYLINE: CAITLIN LIU, TIMES STAFF WRITER
BODY:
Retha Wilson's feeble heart nearly gave
out when she learned of the paper sticking out of the mailbox at her Watts
apartment.
It was a 30-day notice demanding that she move out. The
55-year-old former nurse's aide--who has high blood pressure, suffers from a
heart condition and is legally blind--pleaded with her public housing manager to
let her stay. Yes, her grandson had been detained by police the week before, but
he was released without charges filed against him. Yes, his name was on her
lease. "But I didn't do anything wrong," she recalled saying.
The Los
Angeles Housing Authority turned a deaf ear. "I needed help, but I didn't have
the money to pay a lawyer," Wilson said. She went to the Legal Aid Foundation of
Los Angeles, and a paralegal there negotiated on her behalf. The Housing
Authority dropped its eviction case against her. "If it wasn't for Legal Aid, I
wouldn't have my apartment," she said. "I'd be in the street."
Every
day, an untold number of low-income people like Wilson in the Los Angeles area
run into legal problems that bring them to the edge of disaster. What sometimes
saves them--short of a miracle--are the free legal service organizations that
counsel and represent them.
After being hard hit by federal budget cuts
a few years ago, these groups are making a modest comeback. Some are hiring more
staff, and many are trying to stretch their scarce dollars. But they're still
underfunded and understaffed, their leaders say, and the poor remain woefully
underserved.
Across Los Angeles, some of the largest and smallest legal
service groups say their funding has improved this year. San Fernando Valley
Neighborhood Legal Services, which was down to 13 attorneys in the mid-1990s,
now has 20. The Los Angeles Housing Law Project, which has only two attorneys,
both volunteers, is expecting at least one to become a paid staffer soon.
Even the Legal Aid Foundation, which laid off one-third of its staff
during the worst of the budget crunch, is hoping to add a lawyer or two to its
35-attorney roster. "The situation now is not the crisis cutback situation of a
few years ago," said the foundation's executive director, Bruce Iwasaki.
In 1996, a GOP-led Congress hostile to legal aid slashed its funding
30%. Because Congress had been the largest single source of money for legal
services in California, the cutbacks caused layoffs at organizations across the
state. This year, Congress increased its funding of legal services 6%.
"People are hopeful that the worst is over," said Laurie Zelon, a
partner at Morrison & Foerster who chairs the California Access to Justice
Commission. "We're in an environment where we can build, rather than scramble."
But the modest growth is still inadequate to meet the overwhelming
demand for legal services, advocates say. Congressional funding of legal aid in
1999--$ 300 million--is exactly the same as in 1980, not adjusted for inflation.
But since 1980, the number of poor people has grown almost 22%, according to the
latest Census Bureau figures.
"If you quadrupled our staff and
quadrupled the number of clients we serve, we still wouldn't be able to meet the
need," said David Lash, executive director of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, which
has 22 lawyers.
Daniel Grunfeld, president and chief executive officer
of the Public Counsel Law Center, said his paid staff of 18 attorneys and
volunteer network of more than 2,000 lawyers, paralegals and law students are
inundated with work. "One of the toughest things about what we do is turning
away people we can't take," he said.
Staff attorney Suzanne Blau vividly
remembers one client, a middle-aged woman from Eastern Europe, who was seeking
political asylum. She had fled to the United States to escape persecution over
her sexual orientation.
For a month Public Counsel tried to find
available staff or volunteers, but no one had time to help her. The woman was
despondent when she left, Blau said. No one knows what happened to her.
In 1997, Public Counsel received more than 800 cases in which the client
seemed to have valid legal claims, but its staff and volunteers had the time to
take only about 350 of them, Grunfeld said.
U.S. Lags Behind Other Major
Nations
Emblazoned across the front of the Supreme Court building are
the hallowed words upon which the U.S. legal system is founded: "Equal Justice
Under Law."
To try to live up to that ideal, the government guarantees
legal representation for the poor in criminal matters by providing public
defenders. But unlike many other countries, such as England, Germany, France,
Australia, Spain and Greece, the United States does not give its poor the right
to state-funded legal representation in civil matters.
The United States
also lags behind other nations in the money it spends on legal services for the
needy. According to a 1996 report by the State Bar of California, France and
Germany spend twice as much per poor person as the U.S.; England spends eight
times as much on its poor.
"We do not stack up well in terms of federal
support for legal services, compared to other Western democracies," said John
McKay, president of Legal Services Corp., the nonprofit
organization set up by Congress to distribute its funding to programs
nationwide.
Research by UCLA law professor Gary Blasi suggests that
having a lawyer--or not having one--can have a dramatic impact on the outcome of
cases. Last year, Blasi's class analyzed a sampling of 151 eviction cases filed
in Los Angeles Municipal Court in 1997 and early 1998.
"Tenants who were
represented by attorneys won about half the time," Blasi said. "Not a single
tenant who represented themselves succeeded."
Sometimes, having a lawyer
is critical even if the case never goes to trial because it gives poor people
more clout in negotiations.
The Housing Authority would not listen to
Retha Wilson, the Watts grandmother, when she went to the agency on her own, but
relented after Legal Aid paralegal Linda Williams, a second-year law student,
appeared on Wilson's behalf.
It is not known how many poor people in
California never get the legal aid they need. Almost a decade ago, a nationwide
study by the American Bar Assn. estimated that four out of five low-income
people with legal problems were not being served. Today the need could be even
greater, advocates say.
In 1980, California had 630 attorneys working
full time to serve the poor, according to the state bar. Today there are about
550, even though the number of poor has grown. Put another way, there is now one
attorney for every 10,000 poor Californians, compared to one attorney for every
210 people in the rest of the state population, according to the California
Access to Justice Commission.
California also happens to be one of 16
states that does not provide any state funding for legal services to its poor.
Rewards and Struggles of Helping Others
Patricia Goldsmith
belongs to the corps of 550. An attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los
Angeles for many years, she left a few years ago to pursue a more lucrative
private practice. But the rewards of helping others, she said, drew her back
last year to the foundation, where she is now directing attorney for housing
law.
Most mornings, she is in the waiting room at the Pico-Union office,
lecturing a packed room of worried-looking people--most of them black or Latino,
all of them poor--on the process of unlawful detainers, the most common device
by which landlords evict tenants.
She pounds in the rules of evidence,
which can make or break a case in court. "You cannot bring a letter from a
friend! It doesn't matter if it's notarized or written in your friend's blood,
if you swear on the Bible, the Talmud or the Koran. It's hearsay! You have to
bring your friend with you to court."
Later, a staff member meets
privately with each client and provides counseling, and on occasion,
representation in court.
But before the staff can do that, the front
desk screens clients for eligibility. The client's annual income must be no more
than 125% of the poverty line set by the federal government, which means not
more than $ 10,063 for a single person or $ 20,563 for a family of four. The
client must also not be an illegal immigrant.
The latter
requirement--imposed by Congress since 1996 on any group that receives funding
from the Legal Services Corp.--is particularly disturbing to
many in the legal community. Congressional funding comes with other strings
attached: No class-action lawsuits. No collecting attorneys' fees. No challenges
to welfare reform laws. No political lobbying, even if the legislation directly
affects legal services for the poor.
Critics call the restrictions
draconian.
"Imagine if a corporate lawyer for a big company were told by
the government, 'We'll allow you to do some things, but not other things to
serve your client.' That wouldn't sit well with private attorneys," said Steve
Nissen, executive director of the state bar. "But that's what legal services
lawyers have to do."
To be free of Congress' restrictions, some groups
are refusing to accept funding from the Legal Services Corp.
Bet Tzedek used to take the agency's money, but a few years ago its board
decided not to apply for those funds anymore, Lash said.
Two Legal Aid
Foundation attorneys last year founded the Los Angeles Housing Law Center, which
accepts no Legal Services Corp. funds so that it can serve all
people regardless of citizenship status. "You can't exclude a sizable portion of
the community from legal protection," said Executive Director Rob Field.
'The Stories We Hear Are Horrendous'
The civil legal areas that
most affect the poor include housing, family law, health care, government
benefits, immigration, employment and consumer fraud, advocates say.
Michele Milner, a Bet Tzedek attorney, might deal with several of those
issues on any given day in her visits to senior centers. On a recent morning at
a Wilmington center, Milner advised a 61-year-old man who might have been
wrongfully terminated from his factory job and improperly denied reimbursement
by his health insurance company. A legal resident, he also wanted to know how he
could become a citizen and bring his wife here from Mexico.
Across the
county on the same day, attorneys and volunteers for San Fernando Valley
Neighborhood Legal Services were trying to help victims of domestic violence.
A woman who asked that her name not be used sought help after her
husband, who had abused her for years, bound her with duct tape one day and
threatened to kill her.
After obtaining a restraining order against her
husband, staff attorney Harvey Silberman, who is also an adjunct professor at
USC Law School, persuaded her to move to a shelter for battered women. He also
helped her obtain custody of her three children.
Taking that first step
to get legal help was what "started changing my whole life," said the woman, who
added that she could not have afforded a private lawyer. "I highly believe that
if I hadn't received legal aid . . . I'd be dead."
The 1996 state bar
report estimated that it would take $ 250 million to $ 300 million annually, in
1993 dollars, to provide adequate legal services to California's poor. In 1997,
the most recent year for which statistics are available, spending in California
on such services totaled about $ 98 million, the state bar says.
Of
that, about $ 29 million came from the Legal Services Corp.
About $ 10 million came from the interest earned on money that lawyers sometimes
hold in a pooled trust account for clients. The remainder came from foundations,
individuals, local governments and other federal agencies.
Though legal
aid funding is up slightly this year, its outlook remains uncertain. Federal
funding depends on the vagaries of congressional politics, and trust account
interest can fluctuate wildly year to year.
To help make up for the
funding gap, groups are taking steps to become more efficient. They are doing
more client screening over the phone to save time and joining to negotiate
cheaper rates for online library services. They are also stepping up efforts to
raise private funds and recruit volunteers.
The profession encourages
lawyers to do pro bono--free--work for the poor. But only a small percentage of
California's lawyers donate any time. In 1996, only about 15% of them did pro
bono work, according to the American Bar Assn.
Those lawyers who do
donate their time, along with non-lawyer volunteers, play a vital role in
providing legal services in the Los Angeles area. At Bet Tzedek, Lash estimates
that volunteers provide about half of his organization's direct legal services.
The three domestic violence clinics of the San Fernando Valley Neighborhood
Legal Services, which helped more than 5,000 victims last year, are run entirely
by volunteers, said Executive Director Neal Dudovitz.
But working with
volunteers is not easy, advocates say. They require training that consumes staff
resources, and retaining them is a constant challenge.
"There's a lot of
burnout," said Judith Segall, a volunteer attorney for the San Fernando Valley
Neighborhood group.
Many volunteers can't seem to stomach the work. "The
stories we hear are horrendous," Segall said. "You see clients coming in with
welts around their neck. You see them with bruises all over."
In
addition, some complicated areas of poverty law, such as government benefits,
require expertise that attorneys doing occasional pro bono work just don't have.
Bet Tzedek attorney Milner often finds herself navigating the
intricacies of government rules and patiently dealing with bureaucracies to help
her elderly clients. She has met sickly seniors who lacked money to buy fresh
food, others so poor they lived without heat. "Helping them obtain even a few
hundred dollars a month in Social Security income is a drastic improvement to
their lives," she said.
Improving lives and ensuring that all people are
equally served under the law are what legal services to the poor are all about,
advocates say.
"Making the system of justice available and accessible
for the poor is part of what makes our government work," Dudovitz said. "If we
close the doors to them, we'll all suffer for it."
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Faced with eviction from a Watts
housing project, Retha Wilson, left, got help from legal aid paralegal Linda
Williams. The city Housing Authority then relented. PHOTOGRAPHER: AL SEIB / Los
Angeles Times PHOTO: A legal aid group runs a domestic violence clinic in Van
Nuys, left. PHOTOGRAPHER: KEN HIVELY / Los Angeles Times PHOTO: At right, lawyer
Michele Milner helps client in Wilmington. PHOTOGRAPHER: LUIS SINCO / Los
Angeles Times
LOAD-DATE: January 15, 1999
