Equal Justice Coalition:
Finding Innovative Solutions to Funding the
Legal Needs of the Poor

By Diane Molvig

Legal service agencies always have been vulnerable to shifts in the political winds. In fiscal 1995 the U.S. House Appropriations Committee set the national Legal Services Corporation's (LSC) funding at $400 million. That amount was cut significantly in recent years. The ill winds have continued to blow and in January 1996 legal service agencies were hit with an Arctic blast, when the 104th Congress voted to reduce LSC funding by 30 percent. Since then, the U.S. House of Representatives approved funding the LSC at $250 million. The amount is up significantly from the $141 million proposed by the Judiciary Committee but down slightly from the current $283 million operating level.

A majority of the Wisconsin delegation supported the amendment, including U.S. Representatives Thomas Barrett, Jay Johnson, Ron Kind, Gerald Kleczka, Scott Klug and David Obey.

Because the Senate version of the appropriations bill sets LSC funding at $300 million, a conference committee will decide the final amount of funding.

In Wisconsin the four agencies dependent upon LSC dollars saw their funding drop by 28 percent in fiscal 1996, from roughly $5.5 million to slightly less than $4 million. It may get worse. As was clear in the recent round of budget debates about LSC's future, key congressional members support eventual elimination of all federal government support for LSC.

But while legal service funding dwindles, the legal problems of our nation's poor people persist, even increase. Filling the gap between support and need will require innovative solutions. Working toward that end is a new group in Wisconsin, known as the Equal Justice Coalition, a nonprofit organization made up of representatives from the State Bar, the state's five largest legal service agencies and the Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation (WisTAF).

The coalition is an outgrowth of the State Bar Delivery of Legal Services Commission, appointed in 1995 by then Bar president John Skilton. The commission recommended in its mid-1996 report: The State Bar should provide leadership in exploring alternative funding sources for legal service agencies.

"Our commission came up with a recommendation, which has become the Equal Justice Coalition," explains Milwaukee attorney Maureen McGinnity, the commission's reporter and now coalition member. "As I view it, the coalition is the action arm through which Wisconsin will address the crisis in legal services to poor people."

The coalition's first effort is under way: a statewide fund-raising campaign to replace the funds that Congress cut from legal assistance programs.

More need, less money

Why did Congress deal LSC such a major blow? At least part of the reason stems from the perception that legal service agencies consist of "a lot of '60s radicals who are trying to turn the world into a people's paradise," observes Green Bay attorney Herbert Liebmann, vice president of the Equal Justice Coalition's board of directors. "But that's not really what 95 percent of the legal service operations are about. The current Congress called for reform, saying, 'We don't want our tax dollars used to recreate the Great Society.' But then they tossed the baby out with the bath water."

The reality of those words strikes home with the lawyers who staff legal assistance programs. Lost in the political debate was the impact LSC cuts would have on real people in communities everywhere. The Legal Services Corporation estimates that 708,000 Wisconsin residents in 1997 will live at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, thus making them eligible for assistance from a legal services agency. The LSC also estimates that 30 percent of those residents or 212,400 have some civil legal services need. However, with current funding, the agencies last year could only serve 13 percent or 22,000 low income people with legal needs. Agencies have little choice but to turn away many of the thousands of clients who come to them for help in escaping domestic violence, securing medical benefits to cope with a disability or fighting an unlawful eviction from their home.

"Those are the kinds of cases we do day in, day out," says Daniel Tuchscherer, director of Legal Services of Northeastern Wisconsin, one of the four legal service agencies in the state dependent upon LSC funds. (The others are Legal Action of Wisconsin, Western Wisconsin Legal Services and Wisconsin Judicare. A fifth agency, the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, does not receive LSC dollars but has been hurt by funding cuts as private foundations face increasing demands for their donation dollars.)

"If you look at our client population and listen to their problems," Tuchscherer adds, "you realize that there, but for the grace of God, go I. How many people do you know who are only two or three paychecks away from not being able to pay their bills or afford their rent or mortgage? Our clients don't choose to not work and to be poor. It is not a fun life. It is not a vacation. It's a struggle every day."

The target clientele for legal assistance programs includes people living on incomes below 125 percent of the federal poverty level. For instance, for a family of four the poverty-level annual gross income is $15,600; 125 percent of that is $19,400. In Wisconsin, 708,000 citizens fall into the qualifying group.

For Tuchscherer the funding cuts meant losing nearly $200,000 of his former $750,000 annual budget. The number of people his agency is able to serve in a year has dropped from 3,500 to 2,700, a 23 percent decrease. He's had to close the agency's Sheboygan office, leaving the Green Bay and Oshkosh offices to cover a 7,000-square-mile area encompassing 15 counties. Staff attorneys dropped from nine to seven. "It's meant more time on the road for our attorneys," Tuchscherer says. "They're spread thinner, which means we're able to provide less service."

But the availability of legal services affects more than the individuals in need, Tuchscherer contends. "If I can represent somebody at the homeless shelter in Green Bay," he says, "and succeed in establishing he has a disability and is entitled to SSI benefits, then he'll have $550 a month coming in. The community won't have to support him in the homeless shelter. If I help him get food stamps, he won't have to rely on the local food pantry. If he has a medical assistance card, he'll have access to medical care and won't have to rely on the hospital emergency room for primary treatment. So not only does this make a world of difference for the individual client but the entire community benefits."

Lawyers are likely to see repercussions of the funding cuts in yet other ways, Liebmann points out. As services diminish, there will be "an awful lot of people floundering around in the legal system without decent guidance," he says. That situation will generate more work, more delays and more costs for the justice system.

Add another question: Who else will fill in as legal service agencies wane or face extinction? Private attorneys do provide pro bono services, but they can't begin to assume the entire caseload.

"It's an absolute verity," Liebmann says, "that legal service offices can do this work more efficiently than (private attorneys) can do it on a part-time basis, case by case."

The Wisconsin campaign

To avert a disaster in the making, the Equal Justice Coalition has launched a statewide fund-raising drive. The initial goal is to raise $5 million over three years to meet the immediate shortfall of legal services funding. This first step amounts to "a Band-Aid fix," says Skilton, president of the coalition's board of directors. "Even though the dollars are staggering, it's still only a holding pattern."

Looking at the longer term, the coalition hopes to build a funding base, drawn from multiple private and public sources, that will ensure the future financial stability of legal service programs.

Coalition members are aiming the first phase of the fund-raising campaign at their legal colleagues. The campaign then will reach out to corporations and private foundations with the aid of the coalition's Leadership Council, a diverse group of legal and corporate leaders. Why start with attorneys? Reasons range from the philosophical to the practical.

"Seeing to it that people have proper representation, who may not have the means otherwise, is a special responsibility of the legal profession," says former Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Heffernan, coalition board member and cochair of the Leadership Council. "Just look at the motto that appears on the U.S. Supreme Court building: 'Equal justice under law.' Lawyers know that people lacking representation, who don't know what their legal rights are, can't have equal justice."

"In practical terms," adds Liebmann, "our fund-raising advisors tell us, and they're certainly right, that when we try to solicit contributions from others, the first thing they're going to ask is 'What are the lawyers doing?' So it's important that the bar respond in a uniform way, and in a big way, if we're going to be successful in involving other components of society."

Of the $5 million goal, the coalition aims to raise half from Wisconsin attorneys. The fund-raising drive will shift into high gear this fall, with hopes of procuring $1 million in lawyers' pledged contributions by the end of December.

"What we're really trying to say here," notes McGinnity, the coalition's Leadership Council cochair, "is that we as lawyers appear to be in the best position not to totally fund alternate support, but to invent ways to generate it. That's what we're trying to do: invent a solution and encourage lawyers to come on board to help."

A cooperative venture

A unique feature of the Equal Justice Coalition campaign is that it marks the first time the five largest Wisconsin legal services programs have pooled their efforts to garner donations. "We have a history of working together around substantive legal issues through task forces and shared training events," Tuchscherer points out, "but fund-raising is not something we've done collectively."

By running one joint campaign, the coalition believes it can capitalize on economies of scale. It costs less to administer one campaign than five campaigns. Tuchscherer sees another key benefit of the cooperative effort.

"I could conduct a fund drive in my service area," he says, "and I could get support from lawyers in my area. But I couldn't attract Nate Heffernan to head up the campaign steering committee, and I couldn't attract John Skilton to be president of the board. So getting everybody to work together draws support from people around the state."

Bar members can add their support by, first, writing a check to the Equal Justice Coalition, P.O. Box 363, Brookfield, WI 53008-0363. The coalition is calling for donations of substantial amounts. The Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation will receive the raised funds to make grants to agencies that provide direct legal services to low income families and individuals statewide. Since its inception in 1986, WisTAF has granted more than $12 million to legal service agencies.

"If we're talking about pledges of $1,000 over three years," Liebmann notes, "that may sound like a lot of money. But that's less than $1 a day. I think most practicing professionals can find a way to squeeze out a buck a day."

Attorneys also can aid the coalition's cause by spreading its message in their communities. "We need lawyers to be ambassadors with their local politicians and other decision-makers," McGinnity says, "to let people know how critical it is to maintain legal services funding. We need to build a broad-based understanding of the necessity of these services."

Dianne Molvig operates Access Information Service, a Madison research, writing and editing service. She is a frequent contributor to area publications.

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