Access of Poor to Legal Representation Falls Sharply, Experts Say : Services: Downturn in economy has reduced funds in California Bar Assn. program for the needy, L.A. conference is told. Meanwhile, costs have risen.

The ability of California’s poor and middle class to obtain legal representation in civil court cases is diminishing sharply, according to a host of speakers at a conference held Monday in Los Angeles.

“We are able to meet only 15% of the legal needs of the indigent poor in this county,” and even that low figure is eroding, said Margaret Morrow, former president of the California State Bar Assn.

Morrow said that during the past decade the number of people living below the poverty line in California had increased by 40%, while the number of lawyers providing free legal assistance declined by 20%.

She said that funding for legal services programs has been slashed because of a reduction in funds from a California Bar Assn. program as a result of the decline in the state economy. The program provided a healthy chunk of the funding for legal services activities in California--$22 million as recently as two years ago. This year, it will be only be $5.7 million.

Morrow said the funding reductions have led to the closure of programs such as Westside Legal Services, which served 3,000 indigents a year, and staffing reductions at other legal services agencies.

Los Angeles lawyer Samuel Paz, who has been nominated for a federal court judgeship, added that the cost of litigation has increased so markedly in recent years that it also has become quite difficult for middle-class citizens to pursue their interests in court. And without a lawyer, he said, anyone’s chance of success is negligible.

Morrow and Paz made their remarks at the First Monday conference in Los Angeles, one of 12 gatherings around the country where lawyers, law students, law professors and judges discussed ways to increase access to the justice system.

The conference was organized by the Alliance for Justice, a national association of public interest law groups. “This is an exciting and unprecedented event in the history of public interest law,” said Nan Aaron, the Alliance’s executive director.

She said the conference’s goals were to “reaffirm a commitment to lawyering for the public good; to explore strategies for expanding access to justice for all Americans and for molding a federal jurisprudence wedded to core constitutional values.”

About 250 people attended the Los Angeles gathering, held at a mid-Wilshire church.

Panelists discussed a host of issues. Virtually every speaker presented a grim picture of the ability of ordinary citizens to get justice.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Candace Cooper noted that there currently are 129 languages spoken by Los Angeles County residents and said the courts have interpreters for only a fraction of them. Moreover, she said many of the typical court forms are written in language that is not comprehensible to the typical English-speaking person.

And, she said, “there is in the courts an identifiable hostility” to persons who represent themselves in civil cases.

Several speakers, including Karen Lash, associate dean of the USC Law Center, said the interest among law students in pursuing public interest work has grown substantially in recent years. However, she said it would be difficult for many of them to do because they have accumulated thousands of dollars of debt by the time they graduate and need to take high-paying jobs.

Among them is Tracey Jensen, president of the Student Bar Assn. at USC, who has spent summers working at San Fernando Valley Legal Services and the California Women’s Law Center. Jensen said she hopes to work at the Women’s Law Center after graduation, but said she is $75,000 in debt from loans she took out to finance her law school education.

None of the speakers offered a simple blueprint for any of the problems. But Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, said public interest groups have to do a much better job of pooling their resources in order to meet the challenges: “There are more mergers among the Fortune 500 than among nonprofits. Our ‘turf mentality’ has to be broken.”

Federal appeals court Judge Stephen Reinhardt said he was cheered by the large gathering, but his remarks were particularly bleak.

“This is a grim moment--a grim period for those who believe in access to justice, in courts that serve humanitarian needs, in a government that cares for the welfare of people,” the judge declared.

“In recent years those who would limit access to the federal courts have out-fought and out-smarted the rest of us in every possible way,” said Reinhardt, one of the most outspoken liberals on the federal bench. “They have seized the ideological initiative and have gained victory after victory. . . .”

The judge praised the work of the alliance and other public interest groups. But he also said liberals need to create a new legal organization to wage “the spiritual, ideological struggle” for the hearts and minds of Americans against conservative groups “who believe that law is about cost-benefit analysis, property rights and the free market, not about providing a decent society for all people, not about expanding the rights of human beings.”