Law: The Return of Unequal Justice?

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Hard times and the White House squeeze poverty lawyers

In a series of landmark cases that began with Gideon vs. Wainwright (1963), the Supreme Court ruled that any criminal facing a possible jail sentence was entitled to have an attorney. At the same time, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society Administration began to provide millions of dollars to set up local legal services programs to handle such civil court problems of the poor as evictions, consumer complaints and fights with bureaucracies. Over the next decade and a half, the increasing commitment of Government to provide lawyers for the poor led some to note with acerbic exaggeration that only the very rich could afford legal representation that was as good.

No one would want to make that claim today. Clinton Lyons, the outgoing acting president of the federally funded Legal Services Corporation, ruefully concludes: "Perhaps we went too far in the '70s. Now it seems that we're going to the other extreme and just saying, 'To hell with it.' "

Ever since he assumed office, President Reagan has been trying to abolish the Legal Services Corporation, which provides 85% of the money that supports local legal aid offices. Congress has so far managed to save the LSC, but did allow a 25% cut in its current budget, reducing it to $241 million. Reagan, who believes the LSC is misused by ultraliberal lawyers, has undercut its effectiveness by appointing an interim eleven-member board of directors, most of whom are basically opposed to what the corporation does. Last week the board signaled its intent to withhold funds from local groups that it deemed too "activist," and next year it is likely to attempt to block legal services lawyers from filing class-action suits. Joseph Rauh, longtime civil rights lawyer, calls Reagan's appointments "the most disgusting fox-in-the-chicken-coop maneuver I've ever seen."

Fighting back with its own maneuver last week, a House subcommittee disclosed that Indianapolis Lawyer Donald Bogard, the new president of the LSC, has a contract that provides such perks as paid membership in a private club and a guarantee of a full year's salary ($57,500) if he is fired. The committee also revealed that the Reagan board appointees have charged $244,097 in consulting fees and expenses this year, more than double the bill of any previous board. The White House has asked the Office of Management and Budget to check whether the consulting fees represent "extravagance" or "an increase in the work load."

The financial arrangements of the board will hardly cheer the poor or the shrinking number of underpaid, overburdened lawyers who represent them. The Georgia branch of the LSC has lost 100 of its 300 staff members. Offices in some towns have been closed; others are served only by circuit-riding lawyers. Community Legal Services of Philadelphia has decided that in order to stay afloat, it must jettison eviction cases, small-claims actions, child support and custody cases, contested divorces and many spouse-abuse complaints. The office still represents many clients appealing disqualifications from the Social Security disability program and wins back benefits for two-thirds of them.