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42 Loy. L. A. L. Rev. 1021 (2008-2009)
Legal Services for All: Is the Profession Ready

handle is hein.journals/lla42 and id is 1043 raw text is: LEGAL SERVICES FOR ALL: IS THE PROFESSION READY? Jeanne Charn* For decades, the organized bar has been an unwavering supporter of expanded access to legal assistance for everyone the market cannot serve. The bar shares a fundamental agreement with legal aid providers that only a massive infusion of resources, complemented by an army of pro bono attorneys can solve the access to justice problem in the United States. This two-pronged agenda has not succeeded. The United States continues to rank last among peer nations in access to legal advice and assistance. However, there have been substantial changes in the legal services landscape that point to a more complex and challenging agenda. Resources alone will not solve the access problem. Normative, structural, and institutional changes will be needed to produce a more robust, efficient, and generous delivery system in every state. These reforms will pose substantial challenges for all sectors of the bench and bar, but particularly for the lower trial courts, solo and small-firm practitioners, and attorneys in the staffed legal aid offices who have been at the core of the delivery system in the United States. If the legal profession is willing to grapple with these challenges, reinterpreting and in some instances reformulating both its ideals and its practices, the U.S. legal system may finally be able to assure access for all. I. LEGAL SERVICES AND THE ORGANIZED BAR For nearly a half century, the American Bar Association (ABA) has been steadfast in its support of the federal legal services program for the poor and vigilant in its protection of legal aid lawyers' ability to represent their clients free from funder or board interference in individual cases.1 Bar activism played a critical Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School, Director of the Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project. 1. In the early years of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) Legal Services Program, the ABA carefully, but clearly, situated the new program securely within the bar's ethical structure through a series of formal and informal ethical opinions. See ABA Comm. on Ethics and Prof 1 Responsibility, Formal Op. 334 (1974); ABA Comm. on Ethics and Prof I Responsibility, Formal Op. 324 (1970); ABA Comm. on Ethics and ProfI Responsibility, 1021