State Chief Justice Urges Lawyers to Give More Free Services to Poor

California Chief Justice Ronald M. George has sent a letter to the state’s 100,000 lawyers strongly urging them to voluntarily provide more free legal services to California’s growing legions of poor people.

George’s letter stresses that the programs providing legal services to the indigent have experienced a significant reduction in federal funding. As a consequence, George said, there are 130 fewer lawyers providing these services full time in California than there were in 1980, while the number of poor people in the state has increased by more than 2 million in that period.

“This situation demands immediate attention and concerted action from the bench and the bar,” George wrote. “I urge lawyers from all practice settings and levels of experience to offer legal services to the indigent on a pro bono basis.”

George emphasized that equal access is a fundamental tenet of the U.S. legal system.

“To perform their judicial function, our courts must be accessible to all of our citizens,” he wrote. “However, equal access to justice is clearly at risk if poor and low-income Californians are unable to obtain the legal representation they need but cannot afford.”

Several attorneys said they could not recall any justice of the California Supreme Court ever making such an appeal to the state’s lawyers.

“This is a shot in the arm for a lot of reasons,” said Luis Jaramillo, a veteran attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance in Salinas. “It’s very encouraging because it gives legitimacy to the work we’re doing and to the access many of our clients seek.” He said the agency could use help from volunteer lawyers because its staff has been slashed from 47 lawyers to 31 in the past two years because of federal funding cuts.

George’s letter comes on the heels of a recent State Bar report stating that “access to justice for poor Californians is at best an unfulfilled promise and at worst a cruel hoax.”

The report says only one-quarter of poor California families with a civil legal problem receive full or partial legal assistance. The report makes a number of short- and long-term recommendations, including increased funding for free legal service programs.

An even more ambitious recommendation calls for amending the state Constitution or enacting a statute that proclaims that state government has a legal obligation to ensure everyone access to civil justice.

The report states that “the majority of Europe’s Western democracies and Canada’s provinces have long recognized their governments’ legal obligation to ensure poor citizens receive access to justice in civil matters.” The report notes that many Americans mistakenly believe such a right exists in this country, when, in fact, indigents are guaranteed free legal representation only when they are defendants in a criminal case.

The report also advocates a number of smaller initiatives to alleviate the crisis, such as development of programs that help litigants represent themselves until adequate legal representation can be provided to those who need it.

Along this line, George said in an interview Friday that he had been stunned to learn that in only 10% of the state’s divorce proceedings do both parties have a lawyer. He said that in 60% of such cases only one party has a lawyer and that in 30% of divorce cases neither party has a lawyer.

He said the State Bar and the Judicial Council, the policymaking arm of the California judiciary, have taken initial steps to set up a program, modeled after one in Phoenix, that would assist people by providing easier forms to fill out and videotaped guidance that could be viewed at a courthouse.

George also noted that the Judicial Council and the State Bar are setting up a 21-member Commission on Access to the Courts to oversee efforts to increase funding and improve delivery of legal services to low-income residents.

Joseph J. Bell, a Grass Valley attorney who has headed the State Bar’s legal services committee for the past year, applauded George’s letter “as a model for what judges can do at a local level around the state.”

Bell said that at present California lawyers provide about a million hours of free legal services a year. “That’s less than an hour a month per lawyer.” He added, “We need to at least double the amount of pro bono work.”

But several attorneys said it was becoming more difficult to get lawyers to volunteer for pro bono work because of increasing financial pressures at law firms.

“There is a perception that volunteer hours tend to reduce billable hours, and it has a negative impact,” said Steve Nissen, executive director of Public Counsel, the public interest wing of the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills bar associations. “It’s harder and harder to get commitments from law firms because they are more concerned about the bottom line.”

Despite the decline in lawyer volunteers in recent years, Nissen said the Public Counsel program is still able to provide about $25 million in free legal services yearly because of an increase in student volunteers. “There’s a deep reservoir of support for pro bono activities among students; they don’t have to worry about billable hours,” he said.