Billionaire’s Matching Grant Program to Benefit Legal Aid Services

Billionaire financier George Soros is launching a $9-million matching-grant program to encourage law firms and corporations to provide legal services to low-income individuals and communities.

Soros made the announcement Tuesday in Washington with leaders of the National Assn. for Public Interest Law, law school officials and Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke.

The two-year program follows more than $50 million that Soros’ Open Society Institute has already donated across the country--including $5 million in Los Angeles County--for advocacy on behalf of legal immigrants denied access to public assistance as a result of welfare reform.

The latest cash infusion comes as federally funded legal services face the possibility of further cutbacks on the heels of Congress’ dramatic slashing of the budget for such services in 1996.

A substantial chunk of the new Soros money will come to Southern California and other parts of the state. For example, Fairfax Avenue-based Bet Tzedek Legal Services, which has played a key role in combating real estate and consumer scams targeting the elderly, will be able to hire two new lawyers as a result of Soros’ largess.

In all, the project will fund 70 two-year public interest law fellowships, and Soros has told the public interest law association’s officials that he may provide even more funds later. Among the other projects are ones that will help ensure the civil rights of disabled people in Los Angeles, assist families with the transition from welfare to work in Berkeley, ensure appropriate education for disabled children in Contra Costa County, assist farm workers with legal problems in rural areas, educate workers about their employment rights in the Silicon Valley and help safeguard the employment rights of battered women in San Francisco.

“The strength of our democracy depends on the ability of all Americans to obtain legal representation to address essential health, housing, safety, family, employment and business problems, and to remedy civil and constitutional violations,” Soros said at a Washington news conference.

“Yet--even before Congress eliminated one-third of federal funds for legal services--only 15% to 30% of the legal needs of low- and moderate-income Americans were being met by our civil justice system,” he added. “. . . We can help support the enormous number of law students and graduates who want to work in underserved communities but cannot find jobs and are burdened with heavy student loan debts.”

The Soros initiative will enable the public interest law organization, founded by law students in 1986, to dramatically expand its Equal Justice fellowship program. Each two-year fellowship provides a salary (normally $32,500 a year), law school loan repayment assistance, a national training program and support and assistance from the association, according to the organization’s executive director, David Stern.

Several major California corporations--including Bank of America, California Federal Bank, Southern California Edison and Walt Disney Co.--are among those providing matching money. And a bevy of the state’s high-powered law firms--among them Cotchett, Pitre & Simon; Irell & Manella; Latham & Watkins; McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen; Munger, Tolles & Olson; and Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati--also are providing matching funds.

Among the other major corporations sponsoring a fellowship are AT&T;, Ford Motor Co., Hoffman-LaRoche Inc., J.C. Penney Co., LEXIS-NEXIS, Mobil Corp., Texaco and United Technologies Corp.

Little Rock attorney Philip S. Anderson, incoming president of the American Bar Assn., stressed the importance of the new grants at the press conference: “There are millions of people who lack access to any legal representation even when they face legal problems associated with the most basic necessities--food, housing, health care, education, protection of their children. NAPIL’s fellowship program and the Soros grant offer law firms and corporations the opportunity to expand their role in making the legal system more effective for a larger number of Americans.”

Bet Tzedek attorney Manuel Duran said that having two new attorneys “will help us tremendously, particularly in the area of consumer fraud.” Duran became one of the law association’s first fellows when he graduated from law school in 1993, and has specialized in protecting low-income individuals from losing their homes through home improvement or mortgage assistance scams. Veteran legal service lawyer Alan Houseman, director of the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, said the Soros initiative is critical because on a national level, the only other foundation that ever provided significant grants to civil legal assistance programs was the Ford Foundation.

Last year, Soros’ Open Society Institute gave a $5-million grant to fund a long-term joint project of the center and the National Legal Aid and Defender Society that is attempting to expand and redesign programs for the delivery of legal services for the poor. In part, the project grew out of Congress’ decision in 1996 to slash the federal Legal Services Corp.’s budget from $400 million to $278 million and to impose significant restrictions on what federally funded legal services programs around the country could do.

Another substantial Soros grant to the Public Interest Clearinghouse in San Francisco is being used to help legal services programs and their clients dramatically increase their technological capacity, including the development of computer networks to link advocates for the poor.

Soros, 67, is a Hungarian-born financier who in the past decade has donated more than $1.5 billion to promote what he describes as “open societies”--through grants for the expansion of civil liberties, a free press and other worthy endeavors--in the U.S. and abroad.