The public accounting for legal services rendered is one of the most important functions performed by the Corporation. It is important because it enables the President, the Congress, and the public (benefactors and beneficiaries alike) to see what is being accomplished, in terms of cases produced, with the several hundred million dollars the U.S. Government spends on this program each year. In addition to being used to monitor program performance and effectiveness, the program's annual case workload is also important because it is used by the Corporation to support and justify annual funding requests and by the Congress to make judgements on annual funding levels.
The Corporation reported to Congress that the 1997 program had 471,600 cases open at the end of the year and 1,461,013 cases closed during the year. It summed open and closed cases when claiming the program served 1,932,613 clients during the year (Appendix 4). The Corporation obtained this information from annual case reports submitted by 269 grantees. The program received funding totaling $511.8 million for the 1997 program from the Federal appropriation and non-Corporation-funding sources. Based on the reported closed case count, the average cost per case for the entire 1997 program was $350 ranging from $80 at one program to $4,790 at another (Appendices 5 and 6). The Corporation submitted information from this fact book to Congress in support of the FY 1999 and FY 2000 appropriations. The Congress relied on 1996 and 1997 annual caseload program data when making the decision to increase the Corporation's FY 1999 Federal appropriation by $17 million.
Index of the LSC Case Over-Counting Scandal
Legal Services Accountability Project Page