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In point of fact |
from NewsLink, Vol. 4, No. 3, Spring 2000
According to a Beacon Hill Institute study, less than one in ten of the legal needs of the poor in Massachusetts is unmet. The study, Just Services: Balancing the Scales of Legal Services Funding in Massachusetts, is the result of a two-year analysis by a team of economists, psychologists and lawyers.
“We found that relatively few low-income citizens with actionable legal grievances in Massachusetts are going without legal assistance,” said BHI Executive Director David Tuerck. “The Commonwealth already offers a wide array of free and readily-available legal options for low-income residents. More people could be helped if the Commonwealth used existing resources more effectively.”
The report's results contradict claims by the Boston Bar Association and the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation that six in ten legal needs of the poor are unmet. The Commonwealth funds MLAC grants to organizations that provide legal assistance to low-income residents. MLAC currently receives $7.53 million annually from the state. It seeks to more than triple this amount by increasing funding in $6 million annual increments until it reaches $25.53 million in FY 2003.
The BBA's claim that six out of ten needs go unmet is based on a one-page MLAC document that tabulated calls from persons who were turned away by MLAC-funded grantees. According to BHI, the MLAC document lacks credibility because it failed to provide any indication that its authors followed standard survey-research methods. In particular it did not indicate whether:
• persons inquiring about legal services were screened for their eligibility for legal assistance or for the legitimacy of their problems,
• the tabulations excluded duplicate calls by the same caller with the same problem,
• the margin of error was sufficiently small to justify confidence in the results, or
• the calls were tabulated by trained survey researchers.
The MLAC survey – and previous, more comprehensive surveys relied upon to substantiate claims of vast unmet legal needs – suffered from various weaknesess, among them, the definition of a legal need was too broad. Counted as legal needs were lacking phone service, having a roach problem, having an unwanted business such as a liquor store in the neighborhood, having to take a drug test on the job, or feeling dissatisfied with an employer. This inflated the results.
Said David Tuerck, “There is also the question of whether legal-services attorneys use state funds to pursue policy goals that lie outside their mission. Examples include lobbying for paid parental leave or for relaxing workfare requirements for welfare recipients. Such activities led Congress in 1996 to prohibit the federally-chartered Legal Services Corporation from supporting class action suits or lobbying.”
On the basis of its findings, BHI recommended that, before increasing MLAC funding, the Commonwealth: (a) commission a new survey to reassess the incidence of unmet legal needs among the poor in Massachusetts; (b) impose guidelines on the receipt of MLAC funds similar to the 1996 federal guidelines imposed by Congress on the LSC; and (c) enhance public oversight and disclosure of MLAC-funded activities.
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