The need behind the first-ever Promise of Justice Statewide Campaign
In 2005, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) published a study that found a “major gap between the legal needs of low-income people and the legal help that they receive.” Closing this gap, LSC recommended, would require at least one legal aid attorney for every 5,000 low-income people. The study called this ratio the minimum standard of access.
But the State of Arkansas is not even close to this minimum standard of access. Here there are 14,000 low-income people for each legal aid attorney. To achieve the minimum standard of access, Arkansas’s legal aid providers need to hire 71 more attorneys, plus more support staff and infrastructure. In other words, our legal aid organizations need another $6.8 million annually.
In an attempt to narrow the gap between legal needs and legal aid, the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission has teamed up with Arkansas’s legal aid organizations to conduct the first-ever “Promise of Justice Statewide Campaign.” This campaign hopes to raise $500,000 for the two legal aid providers in our state: the Center for Arkansas Legal Services (CALS) and Legal Aid of Arkansas (LAA).
Together, CALS and LAA have 40 attorneys in 14 offices reaching into every area of the state. But the efforts of CALS and LAA are limited because of a lack of resources. If it is successful, the “Promise of Justice Statewide Campaign” will raise 7.4% of the funds needed to provide a minimum standard of access in Arkansas.
