The Inspector General and a senior program analyst and supervising senior auditor in the OIG organization independently reviewed and analyzed the quality of annual caseload information available at Corporation headquarters for the 1997 legal services program. These analyses were performed in November 1997, June 1998, and July 1998 and concluded the (1) information was unreliable and should not be used as a bulwark to obtain Federal funding, (2) numbers are likely wrong and astounding, and (3) the numbers reported to Congress are poor, at best. The July analysis also identified several hundred thousand questionable cases in the system.
Another series of audits and evaluations performed by OIG and GAO buttressed the other assessments made by OIG that there was something seriously wrong with the quality of 1997 program data in the Corporation's annual report to Congress. OIG and GAO staff determined that 172,570 of 397,295 (43.4 percent) cases reported by 13 legal services programs for the 1997 legal services program to the Corporation and included in the report to Congress were invalid and/or questionable. The Congress asked the GAO to review the accuracy of LSC's case statistics for the 1997 program in May 1999 after LSC officials continually denied existence of a serious and widespread reporting problem during the first several months in 1999.
Even more evidence of a serious and systemic reporting problem became available during the course of three reviews performed in 1998 by the Corporations headquarters staff. They reviewed the Central Michigan, Alameda, Farmworkers of North Carolina legal services programs and found serious problems; similar to OIG and GAO, at each program reviewed. These three programs had reported 25,950 cases to the Corporation for the 1997 program. The problems were so serious that the Corporation ceased funding the Alameda program and levied a fine against the North Carolina program. Unlike OIG and GAO, the Corporation reviews did not quantify the scope and magnitude of the problems.
Another analysis of the numbers in the 1997 annual caseload report revealed the Corporation’s annual case-count was also boosted by a policy allowing local programs to report cases "primarily" financed with non-Corporation funding causing the annual closed caseload to be further overstated by about 144,000 cases (Appendix 6). Also, a procedure to sum open and closed cases in the annual caseload report to arrive at a annual "client served" figure resulted in 420,000 single cases to be counted in the 1996 fact book and recounted in the fact book for the 1997 program (Appendix 4).
It is reasonable to conclude from the results of all of these analyses, examinations, and audits that the Corporation's 1997 annual caseload report was unreliable and significantly overstated.
Index of the LSC Case Over-Counting Scandal
Legal Services Accountability Project Page