Legal Services for the Poor: A Supply Side Analysis
Authors: Stephen Daniels, Joanne Martin
Providing adequate legal services to the poor is a perennial problem. Typically, it is addressed in terms of the amount of unmet demand. Little attention, however, is paid to the supply side of the equation and the question of what legal services are actually available in the face of unmet demand. This project is grounded in the proposition that it is not the demand side but the supply side that defines the “legal needs” that will be met. The supply side does so by the way it allocates scarce resources available for legal services (money and legal talent).
The preliminary findings suggest that those providing the scarce resources, such as large law firms, have their own goals in supporting legal services–goals that may have little connection to unmet demand. Law firms look at their investment in legal services (or pro bono) very pragmatically and legal services organizations know that they do. As stated by the head of one legal services organization interviewed as a part of this research, “you’ve got to sell … and you ain’t going to sell them by saying it’s God’s work.” The comments of a pro bono partner in a large firm show why: “my job is to decide if among the (potential) project cases (brought to the firm by legal services organizations) there are things that are unusual, that make a difference, and that would fit in with a number of models (within the firm). So no, we don’t do consumer fraud cases or divorce.” Consumer and family matters are among the areas of greatest unmet demand. In other words, a legal services organization needs to show that supporting its area of work is good for the law firm, that it’s good business – not that it is an area of unmet demand.
Focusing on Cook County, Illinois, the research is addressing the question of how limited funds, limited legal resources (lawyers), restrictions on funding, and the priorities of funders shape the market for legal services for people of limited means. To this end, interviews with legal services organizations, funders, lawyers, and law firms are being conducted to examine how legal services are allocated across a major urban community.