About Civil Legal Aid - And Why it Matters
The Civil Legal Aid Explainer! Watch this brief video to better understand civil legal aid.
Legal aid helps people solve problems…
tenants facing wrongful eviction;
homeowners facing foreclosure due to fraudulent schemes;
women who are victims of domestic violence;
veterans and military families struggling in civilian life;
consumers bankrupted by predatory lenders;
workers cheated out of wages or denied lawful benefits;
children who need a stable home or special education;
elderly whose economic security or health care is in jeopardy;
disabled people denied opportunities;
immigrants who work the lowest-wage jobs without benefits or contracts;
communities devastated by natural disasters…
For the millions who are facing a life crisis of some sort every day, the most powerful and effective response often includes some kind of legal help — knowledgeable guidance through unfamiliar rules and processes. This legal help is especially important for people who are poor or nearly poor (federally defined as $31,200 a year for a family of four) — people whose basic survival depends on being able to stay in a home, secure health care or food, keep their families together, or protect themselves against abuse. Unresolved, such problems can multiply, tearing families apart and driving them further into poverty.
Yet, unlike in criminal cases, there is no guarantee of counsel in civil cases.
There are offices around the country [including New Mexico] with experienced professionals that offer legal help ranging from dispensing basic advice, helping to mediate claims, providing representation in court, community advocacy, and policy reform. Most of the encounters with legal aid do not involve litigation.
“The impact of legal aid in terms of public costs saved — homelessness prevented, health benefits secured, domestic violence harms averted, among other measures — has been documented in dozens of local and national analyses,” says David Udell, director, National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law School in New York City. “The impact in terms of people’s lives is immeasurable.”
Various reports indicate that funding civil legal aid gets a return on investment of approximately $7 for every $1 spent. To learn more about the value and impact of legal aid across the nation, and the many challenges read the Legal Services Corporations' 2022 Justice gap report.
tenants facing wrongful eviction;
homeowners facing foreclosure due to fraudulent schemes;
women who are victims of domestic violence;
veterans and military families struggling in civilian life;
consumers bankrupted by predatory lenders;
workers cheated out of wages or denied lawful benefits;
children who need a stable home or special education;
elderly whose economic security or health care is in jeopardy;
disabled people denied opportunities;
immigrants who work the lowest-wage jobs without benefits or contracts;
communities devastated by natural disasters…
For the millions who are facing a life crisis of some sort every day, the most powerful and effective response often includes some kind of legal help — knowledgeable guidance through unfamiliar rules and processes. This legal help is especially important for people who are poor or nearly poor (federally defined as $31,200 a year for a family of four) — people whose basic survival depends on being able to stay in a home, secure health care or food, keep their families together, or protect themselves against abuse. Unresolved, such problems can multiply, tearing families apart and driving them further into poverty.
Yet, unlike in criminal cases, there is no guarantee of counsel in civil cases.
There are offices around the country [including New Mexico] with experienced professionals that offer legal help ranging from dispensing basic advice, helping to mediate claims, providing representation in court, community advocacy, and policy reform. Most of the encounters with legal aid do not involve litigation.
“The impact of legal aid in terms of public costs saved — homelessness prevented, health benefits secured, domestic violence harms averted, among other measures — has been documented in dozens of local and national analyses,” says David Udell, director, National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law School in New York City. “The impact in terms of people’s lives is immeasurable.”
Various reports indicate that funding civil legal aid gets a return on investment of approximately $7 for every $1 spent. To learn more about the value and impact of legal aid across the nation, and the many challenges read the Legal Services Corporations' 2022 Justice gap report.
Economic Benefits of Civil Legal Aid
—Laura K. Abel, National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law School
Civil legal aid, an essential part of our Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all, also yields substantial economic benefits. It helps people prevent events that would be harmful to them and expensive for the larger society, such as domestic violence, long foster care stays, eviction, and health emergencies. It also helps people participate in government safety-net programs.
—Laura K. Abel, National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law School
Civil legal aid, an essential part of our Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all, also yields substantial economic benefits. It helps people prevent events that would be harmful to them and expensive for the larger society, such as domestic violence, long foster care stays, eviction, and health emergencies. It also helps people participate in government safety-net programs.
- Civil legal aid saves public money by reducing domestic violence. Civil legal aid “significantly” reduces repeat incidents of domestic violence by helping victims obtain custody and child support arrangements that make it possible for them to leave an abusive relationship. Thus, when a civil legal aid program expanded its services to help every low-income victim of domestic violence throughout its geographic service area, requests for protective orders within the area fell by 35.5%, while requests within the entire state fell by only 16.2%. When civil legal aid programs reduce domestic violence, they reduce public spending “on medical care for injured victims, special education and counseling for affected children, [and] police resources and prison for perpetrators.” Medical and mental health care costs alone total approximately $4.1 billion annually. Civil legal aid also reduces victims’ property losses and sustains their productivity: victims lose 8 million paid days of work annually, equivalent to 32,000 full-time jobs.
- Civil legal aid saves public money by helping children leave foster care more quickly. Children exit foster care more quickly when their parents receive high-quality representation in child welfare proceedings. In Washington State, the rate at which children were reunited with their parents was 11% higher when the parents were represented by lawyers whose caseloads were kept to a manageable level than when the parents were represented by high-volume contract attorneys. The rate of adoption nearly doubled. When civil legal aid programs speed family reunification and adoption, they reduce public spending in the form of payments to foster parents, subsidies for children’s medical care, cash benefits, and the expense of monitoring the foster family.
- Civil legal aid saves public money by reducing evictions. Tenants facing eviction are more likely to retain possession of their homes if they are represented by a civil legal aid attorney than if they either have no representative or receive less than full representation. A substantial proportion of the tenants receiving representation avoid homelessness as a result, saving thousands or tens of thousands of public dollars in shelter costs for each eviction averted. Civil legal aid saved $116 million in shelter costs in 2009-2010 in New York State alone.
- Civil legal aid saves public money by protecting patients’ health. Civil legal aid improves clients’ health, thereby reducing public spending on healthcare. Civil legal aid enabled half of asthmatic adults in a study to get landlords to remove contaminants from their homes, enabling the patients to stop taking steroids for at least six months (no such benefit was seen in a control group that received no legal help). Another study showed cancer patients who got legal aid to help with health insurance, disability benefits, or health-related job discrimination had reduced stress and improved compliance with medical regimens and with doctor appointments. Studies of medical-legal partnerships also reveal new revenue for hospitals in the form of insurance reimbursements and government benefits (Medicaid, Social Security and disability benefits).
- Civil legal aid helps low-income people participate in federal safety-net programs. Clients served by civil legal aid programs obtain hundreds of millions of dollars each year in Social Security Disability, Supplemental Security Income, SNAP, and other safety net programs. In New York alone, the federal benefits awarded to civil legal aid clients totaled $348 million in 2011. In many jurisdictions, legal aid is responsible for a substantial proportion of the benefit awards.
“Ultimately, civil legal aid is a powerful tool that can increase the impact of a funder’s support. At the same time, it empowers low-income people and communities to have an equal shot at the justice they deserve to meet their basic needs, promotes more dignity and stability in their lives, and creates pathways out of poverty.”