80% of Poor Lack Civil Legal Aid, Study Says

By Evelyn Nieves

Washington Post Staff Writer  

At least 80 percent of low-income Americans who need civil legal assistance do not receive any, in part because legal aid offices in this country are so stretched that they routinely turn away qualified prospective clients, a new study shows.

Roughly 1 million cases per year are being rejected because legal aid programs lack the resources to handle them, according to the study, "Documenting the Justice Gap in America," by the Legal Services Corp. (LSC), which funds 143 legal aid programs across the country.

The 1 million cases do not include the many qualified people who do not ask a legal aid program for help -- because they do not know the programs exist, they do not know they qualify or they assume that the help is not available to them, the study shows. Nor does the figure include people who received some service -- including simple advice -- but not the level of service that they actually need, the study found.


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