Legal Aid Lawyers Muzzled In Mortgage Mess

A recent article in The Nation describes some of the problems faced by legal aid attorneys around the country in their attempts to represent the poor and point to these impediments as a key reason why the mortgage crisis has been allowed to fester for over a decade.

• Civil legal aid lawyers, who work for non-profit organizations around the country, represent low-income people in the sorts of civil cases most important to their daily lives: housing issues, child custody, wage and hour law violations and consumer fraud. They are an essential part of our nation's law enforcement apparatus, because they ensure that the businesses and government agencies that operate in low-income communities do so according to the rule of law. Civil legal aid attorneys also serve as a detection and warning system for problems plaguing low-income communities. As the people most familiar with the legal problems of the communities in which they work, often they are the first to learn of new legal abuses occurring in those communities. Over the years, civil legal aid lawyers have spoken out and prompted change when the police refuse to respond to domestic violence calls, when foster care agencies place children in unsafe foster homes and when local employers repeatedly fail to pay the minimum wage.

• But since 1996, civil legal aid attorneys have been muzzled. Congress has barred them from using some of the legal tactics that are most effective at enforcing the law for entire communities. Civil legal aid lawyers who receive any Congressional funding through the federal Legal Services Corporation cannot call legislators to warn of new problems facing their communities and suggest legislative fixes. They cannot represent clients seeking to use the class action mechanism to compel repeat offenders to obey the law. They cannot use statutorily available fee awards to make it too expensive for repeat offenders to continue breaking the law. They cannot use private funds, donated by private foundations or individuals, to provide client communities with any of these services. And because their funding has eroded over the years, they cannot represent millions of people who seek help every year.

For more, see Lawyers for the Poor Muzzled in Subprime Mess.