U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and author and lawyer John Grisham joined leaders from 130 organizations funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and other advocates for access to justice at a forum and gala on April 9 celebrating LSC’s 50th Anniversary.
The forum and dinner at the Omni Shoreham brought together the nation’s foremost justice leaders, who spoke of their belief in the rule of law, but also underscored that the American ideal of equal justice under the law has not yet been realized for low-income Americans.
Roberts addressed the audience of 550 gala attendees from across legal, business, government, tech and other industries. He spoke of the significance of the 14th amendment which grants equal protection under the law.
“Equality under law remains a goal rather than a complete accomplishment, and equality under law requires lawyers. That is of course where the Legal Services Corporation comes in,” said Roberts. “Many of those in need of help do not know any lawyers, and certainly a sizable segment of our society cannot afford a lawyer, anyway,.
“LSC grantees help fill that void, assisting their clients as they navigate the sometimes complex procedural and substantive requirements of our justice system.”
Garland emphasized the urgency of improving access to justice.
“We gather at a time when protecting the rule of law is as urgent as it has ever been. Public faith in the rule of law depends in no small part on public faith that our system will ensure equal justice under law—and that faith in turn depends on there being equal access to justice,” said Garland.
Each year, LSC distributes federal funding to 131 independent nonprofit legal aid programs with more than 900 offices.
At the gala, American Bar Association President Mary Smith pointed to this data as evidence that, “for large swaths of our population, the system simply is not working.”
“For decades, the American Bar Association has advocated for legal services funding as the embodiment of the federal government’s role in securing the core American value of equal justice under law,” Smith continued.
In 2021, for the first time, housing cases became the biggest area of client services for LSC-funded legal aid providers—a trend that has continued. LSC’s Emerging Leaders Council Co-Chair Ransom Wydner took the gala stage to share his personal story of a childhood impacted by evictions and persistent housing insecurity. He was two years old when his family was first evicted for nonpayment.
In an afternoon session, Grisham sat down for a conversation about his early career as a lawyer in Mississippi and how it influenced his current advocacy and philanthropy.
In his first year practicing law, he was approached by people living in a nearby trailer park who were being wrongfully evicted and had no money to pay an attorney. Having few other clients to speak of, Grisham took the case pro bono, and easily got the evictions thrown out.
He knows that without representation, the outcome would likely have been very different.
“When they realized that these poor people had a lawyer, everything changed,” said Grisham. “Low-income people get run over all the time, unless they show up with a lawyer—and I realized the power of a law license at that moment.”
LSC Board Chair John Levi stressed the importance of directing resources to legal aid in order to close the persistent and growing justice gap that exists for low-income Americans.
“I have no doubt that LSC’s founders would be so very proud of the work of our grantees, and the extraordinary network we have built across the country, but I think at the same time they would also be dismayed at the lack of appropriate funding,” said Levi. “Funding equal access to justice is not an act of charity—rather, it is an investment in the stability of the American democracy and the rule of law.”
LSC received flat funding of $560 million in FY 2024, after receiving a $71 million increase in FY 2023. To fully resolve the legal problems of low-income Americans who contact LSC grantees for assistance, LSC requested an appropriation of $1.8 billion for FY 2025.
LSC leadership and thirteen of its grantee executive directors met White House Counsel Ed Siskel April 10 at the White House for a Roundtable on LSC’s 50th Anniversary.
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