Subsidized attorneys help poor clients win
“Attorneys are able to successfully negotiate settlements and reduce emotional tensions between the parties.”
Report from state Judicial Council
State-funded attorneys representing nearly 27,000 low-income Californians have helped many of them avoid eviction and settle disputes over housing and child custody far more often than those facing similar disputes without lawyers, the state Judicial Council reports.
The project provides legal assistance to people in seven counties, including San Francisco, facing certain types of highstakes civil suits in which the other side has a lawyer. While low-income people charged with crimes have a constitutional right to a lawyer at government expense, there is no such right in civil cases.
A review of cases resolved between 2011 and 2016 found that lawyers provided by the project were able to reach settlements about twice as often as people in similar cases without lawyers. In addition, feuding family members found ways to collaborate, the number of evictions declined, and tenants who left their homes usually found replacement housing, the Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the state courts, said in a report released Friday.
Another finding was that, with legal representation, far fewer low-income people gave up defending their cases and defaulted.
“Attorneys are able to successfully negotiate settlements and reduce emotional tensions between the parties,” the report said. “They can also help people resolve their own issues, armed with a clearer understanding of their options.”
The council provided funds, starting in 2011, to legal service agencies and local courts to pay for lawyers and court services in cases involving housing, child custody, domestic violence, and impaired or disabled people who require guardians or conservators.
Aid was offered to those making no more than twice the federal poverty level, or $48,000 for a family of four. A majority of the clients were female and nonwhite, the report said.
In San Francisco, the funding was directed at child custody disputes. Over nearly four years, the report said, lawyers from a nonprofit operated by the Bar Association of San Francisco represented low-income litigants in 227 cases and provided advice and assistance to an additional 1,742 people representing themselves.
When the cases were concluded, the report said, the number of clients with sole legal custody of their children had increased from 5 to 10 percent, and the number with joint legal custody had risen from 37 to 58 percent.
The housing cases in other counties involved tenants who had received eviction notices. With legal representation, the report said, only 6 percent were actually evicted. And while 78 percent of the tenants wound up leaving their homes, a large majority reached settlements that helped them find new homes, the report said.
It recommended seeking state funding to expand the program, noting that federal legal aid for the poor is in peril. President Trump’s budget would eliminate federal funding for the Legal Services Corp., the nonprofit that is the largest source of support for low-income Americans in civil cases.
Federal funding cuts are “threatening to increase the justice gap, rather than move closer to the goal of equal access,” the Judicial Council report said.