Advocates of continued federal funding for the $415 million legal
services program are citing a series of statistics in defense of the program.
These statistics must be taken with a grain of salt for the reasons stated
below. This information is taken from the testimony of NLPC President Kenneth
F. Boehm before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative
Law on June 15, 1995. A copy of Boehm's complete testimony may be
obtained by calling the number below. Here are the statistics cited by
LSC defenders:
* “Legal services programs win 85% of their cases.”
Comment: There are no reliable statistics whatsoever on
the percentage of cases won by programs. LSC does not collect such
information, has no definition as to how to calculate what a win is in
a case with multiple issues, and would have no way to verify the statistics
if it did collect them because client files are are not available for inspection.
* “Since 1981, LSC’s budget has only gone up [insert small number and % here]“
Comment: As anyone who ever took Statistics 101 knows, your
percentage of increase is dependent on which base year you pick.
LSC proponents invariably pick 1981 because it was a high water mark in
appropriations and thus gives the lowest increase figure. If they picked
1977 or 1982 as a base year, the increase would be dramatically higher.
Critics, of course, can play the same game by picking the first year of
the program in order to show skyrocketing percentage increases.
* “Only 20% of the legal needs of the poor are being met.”
Comment: Low figures such as 20% invariably
come from bar-sponsored needs surveys which typically use questionable
devices to calculate “unperceived legal needs.” Answering affirmatively
about a roach problem in your apartment or as to whether you’ve had a dispute
with a store, can be interpreted as an “unperceived legal need.”
When these questions designed to inflate legal needs are stripped out and
more realistic standards are used, the needs figure drops like a stone.
A better standard might be distinguishing between “needs” and “wants.”
* “Legal services programs handle 1.6 million cases a year.”
Comment: The weasel word here is “cases.” A huge percentage
of what are considered cases are fairly quick provisions of advice or brief
service. Past experience with this issue shows that some programs
have a tendency to over count, double count, and use the most cursory contact
as a case.
* “The legal services program has only 3% of its budget go to administrative costs.”
Comment: This can be very misleading without some explanation.
While the Management & Administration line of the LSC budget (the amount
to run the LSC staff and headquarters) has typically been in the 3% - 4%
range, there are plenty of administrative costs in field programs, national
support centers and other components of the legal services system.
While LSC has claimed that 97% goes directly to providing legal services
to the poor through local programs, even this is not true in that national
support centers are neither local nor are they primarily engaged in providing
direct representation to the poor.
* “Legal services programs provide just 2000 divorces a year.”
Comment: This piece of misinformation is off by a country
mile. It was first seen in a lobbying packet being distributed this year
by the American Bar Association. The actual figure is closer to 200,000,
a figure confirmed by LSC in a hearing before the House Appropriations
Subcommittee in May, 1995.
* “Legal services programs turn away [fill in big number here] for each case they take.”
Comment: The fact is there is no legal or regulatory requirement for maintaining any kind of verifiable statistics on the numbers of potential clients declined for each one accepted. Most such numbers turn out to be rough guesses with nothing approaching credibility. A clear example of this occurred at the LSC reauthorization hearing before this Subcommittee on May 16, 1995. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick stated that the Washington, DC legal services program she was associated with turned away a large number, which she stated, for each case taken. A Member asked what the basis of those statistics were. After checking with colleagues, she had to state that the basis was an estimate made by the receptionist.