In June of 2017, the LSC issued a report titled The Justice Gap: Measuring the Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-Income Americans. Narrowing the gap is central to the organization’s mission. The LSC uses the “justice gap” metaphor to describe the shortfall between legal needs and available legal services. The LSC currently funds 132 independent legal-aid organizations with more than eight hundred offices serving every county in the United States and the American territories. It distributes more than 93 percent of its appropriation to eligible nonprofits delivering direct civil legal aid services. The LSC is a grant-making organization funded almost entirely by an annual appropriation from Congress. 1 It is the backbone of legal-aid funding across the United States, ensuring that there is at least some support everywhere.Ĭreated by an act of Congress in 1974, the LSC is an independent nonprofit corporation headed by a bipartisan board of directors whose eleven members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. In a dozen states and territories, the LSC provides the majority of civil legal aid funding for its grantees. Local, private, and foundation sources of funding are also uneven and limited. Florida and Idaho, for example, provide no state funds of any kind for civil legal aid, while New York appropriated $100 million in 2018.
Federal funding is necessary because support for civil legal aid varies widely from state to state. This vital work is badly underfunded, and the shortfall between the civil legal needs of low-income Americans and the resources available to address those needs is daunting. Many are seniors, veterans, or people with disabilities. Legal-aid clients face a wide variety of civil legal problems: evictions, mortgage foreclosures, domestic violence, wage theft, child custody and child support issues, and denial of essential benefits. The LSC funds legal-aid programs that serve households with annual incomes at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline. T he Legal Services Corporation is the United States’ largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans.
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