LAW : Budget Ax Hangs Heavily Over Legal Aid Services for the Poor : War on Poverty meets the war on deficit. Lawyers see animosity toward the needy, but GOP sees tax dollars promoting ‘agenda.’

Mention the words lawyers and poor people in the same sentence, and you have a problem in the new Republican Congress.

No wonder then that supporters of the Legal Services Corp., the federal agency that funds legal aid for the poor, are worried about whether it will survive the 104th Congress.

“The War on Poverty has turned into a war against those in poverty,” says Alexander D. Forger, president of the $415-million-a-year federally funded corporation.

Forger is an imposing 72-year-old New York attorney who spent a career representing the Rockefeller family and Chase Manhattan Bank. He came to Washington last year in hopes of stabilizing the perpetually embattled legal aid program. Now he confronts an angry mood on Capitol Hill.

“It is distressing to see the level of animosity,” Forger said after visiting several members of Congress. “There is no constituency for poor people. All we hear is, ‘Why should you lawyers frustrate the will of the people?’ ”

Indeed, critics point to several recent legal aid victories as reason for abolishing the program.

Using federal funds, legal aid lawyers in Los Angeles and San Mateo County won court rulings that blocked two parts of Gov. Pete Wilson’s plan to restrict welfare benefits. Both cases are now before the U.S. Supreme Court. Similar legal aid challenges have halted welfare cutbacks in Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Jersey.

“This is part of a dedicated effort by a small group of activists who believe in a constitutional right to welfare,” says William Mellor, president of the Institute of Justice, a conservative legal group in Washington. “They will do everything they can to paralyze decision-making and to make it virtually impossible to limit benefits.”

It is especially galling that they are doing so with federal funds, complains Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.).

“People have a right to promote their own agenda, but they do not have a right to do it with the taxpayers’ money,” Gramm said last year during a debate on the Legal Services budget.

House Republicans have questioned why the federal government, rather than local officials or the private bar, should pay for legal help, for example, for poor women seeking a divorce or child support. “That should be a state matter, a county matter, a city matter, not a federal matter,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) said in a recent TV interview.

The head of the Christian Coalition went one step further and accused legal aid lawyers of contributing to high divorce rates. Speaking to the Economic Club in Detroit last month, Ralph Reed called on Congress “to eliminate taxpayer subsidies that encourage family breakup . . . (including) funding for the Legal Services Corp., which every year pays for 200,000 divorces--one of three divorces in America.”

In their defense, legal aid lawyers say they cannot block welfare laws and do not encourage women to seek divorce.

“We represent people who come in the door and try to protect their rights,” says Don Saunders of the National Legal Aid and Defenders Assn. He notes that legal challenges to welfare regulations only succeed if judges--applying the Constitution or federal law--agree that the rights of their clients are violated.

Only tiny fractions of their work involve class-action lawsuits or broad attacks on welfare regulations, lawyers say.

“I’ve been here for 18 years,” says Irv Ackelsberg, a managing attorney for Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, which says it handles 28,000 cases per year. “And in that time, I’ve filed five” class-action suits.

On a typical day, legal aid lawyers say they help elderly people who have been cheated by scam artists, homeowners who are about to have their property foreclosed on and desperate mothers who need a court order to protect themselves from a battering spouse or to obtain child support.

Last year, legal aid lawyers in the San Fernando Valley devoted much of their time to advising victims of the Northridge earthquake.

“We tried to make the system work better, to help people work their way through the incredible bureaucracy,” says Neal Dudovitz, executive director of San Fernando Neighborhood Legal Services in Pacoima.

Nonetheless, the welfare reform issue could doom the legal aid program this year, in one of two ways, according to legal aid officials and congressional aides.

Lawmakers could eliminate the legal aid budget. Last year, House Republicans, then in the minority, prepared an alternative budget that included no money for Legal Services.

In recent days, while the balanced-budget amendment has been up for debate, Republicans have kept mum on how they plan to cut spending. But when a new budget is finally revealed, the legal aid budget is expected to be either sharply cut or eliminated.

The second possibility is that legal aid will be abolished in a welfare reform bill. Several versions have suggested that all federal funds now spent for the poor be lumped into a single grant to state officials, who could then decide whether they want to spend anything on legal aid.

“I think that will be the right-wing line now, that legal services are an impediment to welfare reform,” says Jim Lamb, a spokesman for the corporation.

Thirty years ago, legal aid for the poor began as an offshoot of the War on Poverty. Officials of the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration provided money for lawyers to represent the needy in their battles with landlords, farm corporations, county voting registrars and state regulators.

In 1974, Congress made legal aid into a private, nonprofit corporation funded by the government, similar in concept to the more familiar, and equally embattled, Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

These days, 900 legal aid offices are spread around the nation, and they employ 7,000 attorneys and paralegals.

It is not work for those who are eager for affluence. The average salary for a lawyer is $33,700, a fraction of what private attorneys in big cities earn.

Under the legal aid rules, these lawyers do not represent criminal defendants or clients whose cases could generate fees, such as auto accidents. Generally, clients may have an income no more than 125% of the poverty level, or $9,200 per year for one person and $18,500 for a family of four.

“We take the cases that no private lawyer would take,” says Dudovitz.

While legal aid is little known by the public, its efforts over the years as a champion for the poor have won both die-hard admirers and determined enemies.

In the first category was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who from 1978 to 1980 served as chairwoman of the Legal Services board. Among its enemies was Ronald Reagan, who as California governor and President worked to kill the agency.

In 1981, Reagan won a 25% cut in the legal aid budget, and every year after sought further cuts. But on Capitol Hill, Democrats defended the corporation and spared it from deep damage.

This year is different.

“This is my 20th year here, and there has been uncertainty every year, but this is probably the worst,” says Lou Rulli, head of Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. Last year, state support for his program was eliminated after the GOP took control of the state Legislature.

One morning last week, a lawyer in the North Philadelphia office said he worked with 12 clients, most of whom are in a financial hole because they signed up for worthless job training or were taken in by a home equity scam.

“In my view, we do extraordinary work that is in the public interest, rather than padding our own pockets,” says attorney Ackelsberg, “But these days, that seems to be considered a bad thing.”

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Government’s Pro Bono Work

Legal Services Corp. is a nonprofit corporation funded by the government. For 30 years, it has represented those too poor to hire legal assistance. There are 900 legal aid offices nationwide, with 7,000 attorneys and paralegals.

ISSUES LEGAL AID HANDLES Family (divorce, custody, etc.): 32% Housing: 21% Welfare/benefits: 18% Other: 18% Consumer: 11% ***

LEGAL SERVICES FUNDING ‘94: $415 million ***

HOW CASES ARE RESOLVED Counsel and advice: 59% Other: 18% Client withdrew: 9% Court decision: 8% Settled: 6% ***

VOICES

Pro: “We take the cases that no private lawyer would take.”

--Neal Dudovitz, San Fernando Neighborhood Legal Service in Pacoima

Con: “People have a right to promote their own agenda, but they do not have a right to do it with the taxpayers’ money.”

--Sen. Phil Gramm, (R-Tex.)

Sources: National Legal Aid and Defender Assn., Legal Services Corp.