Copyright 2000 The Hartford Courant Company
THE
HARTFORD COURANT
September 6, 2000 Wednesday, STATEWIDE
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. A10
LENGTH: 377 words
HEADLINE: A
CUTBACK ON FREE LEGAL HELP
BODY:
Indigent people
needing legal help in civil cases often must depend on the good will of lawyers
who agree to represent them for free.
The American Lawyer magazine,
however, has documented a disturbing trend among the nation's largest law firms
to cut back on their pro bono commitments. The cutback has been so severe that
many of the top firms now fall well below professional guidelines for minimum
hours devoted to helping the poor. At the country's 100 largest law firms, the
average lawyer spent 36 hours in 1999 on pro bono cases, compared with 56 hours
in 1992, when the magazine began tracking volunteer time.
Most worrisome
is that legal experts say the drop appears to be part of a long-term trend
rather than a short-term blip. They say lawyers at many of the big firms are
under intense pressure to bring in paying clients, which means they inevitably
will spend less time serving poor people who can't pay.
"Without a
sustained level of pro bono, a lot of people who need legal advice, or who need
their rights protected, are not going to have the same access to justice," notes
Robert Weiner, pro bono chairman of the American Bar Association.
The
timing of the cutback is problematic for another reason. Since 1966, the
Legal Services Corporation, which represents many poor people
in noncriminal cases, has been forced to absorb a 25 percent cut in funding,
leading to layoffs of its lawyers nationwide.
Bar association leaders in
Connecticut are aware of the drop in voluntary service at the big national
firms. They have not seen a similar drop in Connecticut, where small firms do
most of the pro bono work. They concede, however, that getting enough lawyers to
give their time to help indigent clients is never easy.
It's
disheartening that lawyers at big firms are scaling back their commitment to
help the indigent, especially at a time of increased prosperity at law firms and
huge increases in lawyers' salaries.
Poor people need help with a
variety of civil actions such as landlord-tenant matters and divorce and custody
disputes. Without a lawyer, they often have little hope of obtaining justice.
Last year President Clinton urged lawyers to increase their volunteer
work. The big law firms should heed that call.
LOAD-DATE: September 6, 2000 
