Legal-Aid Project for Poor: Needy but Near Reality

For attorney Kathy Forbath, it is “the sort of work you dream about when you’re in law school.”

Her vision was of an organization that would use the courts to fight for the rights of those who traditionally are denied legal services--the poor and the working poor. It would be a law firm made up almost entirely of attorneys volunteering their time to help those unable to pay.

In a county with a population of more than 2 million--and about 7,400 lawyers--it seemed like a modest proposal. But Forbath found, as others before her had, that in Orange County it is not easy to raise money and attract volunteer attorneys for public-interest law.

Today, three years after Forbath and a group of like-minded people launched the project, Orange County Public Interest Law Advocates is nearing reality, with some 30 lawyers having indicated an interest in volunteering.

Only about $50,000 has been raised so far to finance the project--about 20% of the founding group’s original goal--but the people involved have decided to proceed anyway.

“We scaled back our vision,” said Forbath, a 29-year-old business law practitioner. “We knew it would take a long time to raise the (extra) money. If we waited until we had the public-interest law firm we dream of, we might never start.”

Issues of Wide Scope

Public-interest litigation, sometimes called “impact” litigation, generally involves issues of a wide scope, affecting the rights or welfare of many people. An example is a lawsuit brought several years ago by the Legal Aid Society of Orange County after lawyers with that organization noticed an unusual provision of Social Security regulations.

A divorced person who remarried jeopardized his or her right to receive Social Security benefits upon the death of the former spouse.

“The divorced spouse could claim the benefits only if the spouse died before remarriage,” recalled Legal Aid director Bob Cohen. “The effect was people would be afraid to remarry because they were afraid they’d lose their Social Security.”

The topic was perfect for public-interest litigation. The victims of the policy came to Legal Aid for help; the rule was not mandated by federal law but by bureaucrats, and rather than carrying on many separate legal fights to resolve the issue, it was felt that it could be best resolved through a wider case.

Eventually, Legal Aid prevailed in a decision that overturned the regulation and affected the rights of all Social Security recipients.

The Legal Aid Society has been involved in other public-interest cases in Orange County. Last year it challenged a Santa Ana policy of confiscating possessions of the homeless and forced the county to hike its general relief payments. The group also has pushed unsuccessfully for affordable housing in Newport Beach.

195,000 Poor in County

But Legal Aid’s real mission is providing direct legal services for individuals in need. Some 195,000 people in Orange County who are under the poverty line or near it qualify for help.

And it lacks the funding to expand far beyond that role. A $3-million budget covers operations in all of Orange County as well as Southeast Los Angeles. During the last 8 years, the Reagan Administration has fought to eliminate all funding for Legal Aid, and federal budget-cutting measures left the local group $200,000 in the red last year and facing the possibility of layoffs.

“We see 15,000 people a year,” Cohen said. “With our budget, if you take a few impact cases and litigate them hard you’ve exhausted the organization’s budget. There can’t be too much impact work--otherwise we’d need to severely reduce services.”

As for the immediate mission of Public Interest Law Advocates, Forbath said she expects health care and housing will be early focuses of the group.

“Sixteen percent of our residents get no medical treatment,” she said.

“When the system doesn’t work as it’s designed to do, someone has to point that problem out,” Forbath said. “That’s what impact litigation does. You raise the flag and say, ‘Hey, Orange County, you’re not following the law.’ ”

Other Legal Aid Groups

There are other groups in addition to Legal Aid already providing free legal assistance in Orange County, but they have limited roles and are operating under their own financial constraints.

* Amicus Publico matches volunteer attorneys with needy individuals who have been referred to it, often by Legal Aid. It serves about 600 people a year but lacked the resources to initiate public-interest litigation.

* The American Civil Liberties Union has been involved in well publicized cases challenging conditions at the Orange County Jail and Juvenile Hall. ACLU lawyers also had a hand in stopping seizures of the belongings of the homeless, have challenged the county’s policy of checking the criminal records of welfare applicants and have taken on several AIDS discrimination cases and one high school newspaper censorship case.

Groups such as Legal Aid and Amicus Publico are often restricted by artificial definitions of need in determining who is eligible for their services, according to Elliot Block, staff counsel for the Fair Housing Council of Orange County.

“There is a tremendous middle ground of people who are also affected who aren’t quite that poor but are clearly not in a position to sue on their own,” Block said. “That has always been a problem. They could only take impact cases where they could find a client who earns this tiny amount of money.”

Cohen estimates that his agency serves only 20% of those in need.

The need for more accessible legal assistance is apparent in figures compiled by the State Bar of California and the American Bar Assn. According to Ann Wassam, a State Bar official involved in promoting pro bono work, about 3 million Californians are living on incomes below the poverty line. The American Bar Assn. estimates that about 23% of these people will need legal help in any given year.

Since 1984, a fund financed with part of the interest on money in trust accounts that lawyers hold for clients has provided support for legal services for the poor in California. Some $16 million was distributed last year. Part of that money went to 19 different legal assistance groups in Los Angeles--and only two in Orange County.

Extrapolating from available statistics, every lawyer working for groups supported by the trust has 1,437 potential clients each year, according to Wassam.

In Orange County, the figure is more than double, or about 3,504.

“For any impact litigation cases that have been done in Orange County, we’ve basically had to go begging to one of the Los Angeles public-interest firms,” Block said. “It’s a disadvantage. Lots of things don’t get done. You end up taking 6 months or a year to get their attention.”

For Forbath and the fledgling Orange County Public Interest Law Advocates, with the $50,000 raised so far, what is needed to survive is simple: money and volunteers.

“Kathy has undertaken a major challenge,” Block said. “(The $50,000) might be sufficient for seed money, but she’s going to need some ongoing support to keep it going year to year. And that’s very hard to come by in Orange County.”

Some lawyers say their profession is experiencing a national downward drift in the willingness of practitioners to volunteer their time.

“Some people sense the decrease in voluntarism is because of the trend of looking at the law as a business rather than a profession,” said the bar’s Wassam. “With all the emphasis on the bottom line and billable hours (office time lawyers can charge to clients), that sometimes discourages attorneys from doing pro bono work. With the business theme growing, the professional theme is diminished--the idea that this is a profession with a high calling.”

According to the American Bar Assn., an estimated 10% of all lawyers involve themselves in providing legal services--or pro bono work. Available statistics show far lower participation in Orange County.

A State Bar survey indicates that 11% of all attorneys volunteer services in San Diego County. In Orange County, with about the same number of lawyers, only 4% volunteer. While the figures are not exact--and the State Bar plans a major survey this year of pro bono work--the study shows Orange County lagging.

“We don’t see the same type of volunteer spirit in Orange County that we do in other parts of the state,” Wassam said.

While others involved in providing legal services for the underprivileged agree with that assessment, one who does not is Orange County Bar Assn. President Michael Gazin.

“There is a sense of community responsibility,” Gazin said. “The lawyers I know have it. It’s important to me and to the association. I don’t think our county is in any way less of a participant in pro bono than other counties.”

Some 310 lawyers now volunteer for Amicus Publico, according to its executive director, Deborah Fabricant, who acknowledges the number is low.

“There are a lot of attorneys out there who are interested in doing volunteer work,” Fabricant said. “The key is just in making them aware of how fundamental the problems of the poor are. In terms of financial support, it’s the same thing.”

The nearest parallel to Fabricant’s organization in Los Angeles is Public Counsel, a group created and funded in part by the Los Angeles County and Beverly Hills Bar assns., with 3,500 volunteers and a $1.1-million budget.

Among other cases, the group has filed lawsuits alleging that the county has failed to properly monitor abused and neglected children, challenged municipal ordinances limiting day care and attacked what it asserts are incompetent Immigration and Naturalization Service translators at deportation hearings.

“I can say generally that you don’t need a lot of people to promote the idea of pro bono, “ said Public Counsel executive director Steven Nissen. “You need a small number of well placed people initially to encourage the idea. The basic instinct of most practicing lawyers is to want to contribute and do some of this work. If the economic and social climate of the law firm promotes it, the great majority of practitioners will do the work.”

Gazin predicted that Forbath’s group “can and will” succeed.

“I’ve noticed that a lot of large firms have been very interested in getting lawyers in the firm involved in pro bono work. It may be easier for the large firms to afford that luxury, rather than sole practitioners who have to worry about paying the rent.”

Despite the uncertainties of the future, Orange County Public Interest Advocates has so far received a warm welcome.

“I see it definitely filling a need,” said Sister Annette Debs, of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, who has run a unique community law center in downtown Santa Ana for 8 years.

“Most agencies serving real people don’t have the resources to take the next step beyond the one-person cases. I think that is the importance of their effort.”