Civil legal aid has suffered in the recession: more people need help, and funding is down. (One source of funding is IOLTA -- interest on lawyers' trust accounts. When interest rates are down, IOLTA is down too.) WSBA's support for different programs may be affected by the recent vote to cut dues. This article puts a human face on the problem: Chris Stein, Going It Alone: In civil court, fewer people are getting lawyers to help them navigate the system, Pacific Northwest Inlander, April 11, 2012.
1 comment:
Thanks for the link! closing the justice gap will indeed be more difficult with the upcoming changes in WSBA are unlikely to preserve the (IMO) already inadequate support, but it offers us opportunity as well to experiment with new things, e.g. Kickstarter projects, social networking, expanding the law clerk program out into underserved communities. Perhaps one approach is to augment public legal education with free access to online legal training opportunities such as I've cataloged here: http://4freecle.blogspot.com/p/cle-anytime.html
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