Vol. 8, No. 2, Pg. 44. Legal Services: Pro: An Effective Program Fights For Survival.

• Author: By Rep. John M. Spratt Jr.

South Carolina Lawyer

1996.

Vol. 8, No. 2, Pg. 44.

Legal Services: Pro: An Effective Program Fights For Survival

44LEGAL SERVICES: PRO: An Effective Program Fights For SurvivalBy Rep. John M. Spratt Jr.Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is in a fight for its life. It faces sudden death if Congress block grants the program and abolishes the corporation. We seem to have forgotten how and why the LSC was started.

The LSC was initiated in 1966 as a government anti-poverty program, but it was embraced by the bar. It was controversial, so the American Bar Association suggested that the program be spun off into a corporation to insulate it from political interference. President Nixon proposed the idea to Congress in 1971. With bipartisan backing, a bill was passed, and in 1974, the LSC was established.

President Nixon christened LSC with an eloquent statement of purpose, ". . . Here each day the old, the unemployed, the underprivileged, the largely forgotten people of our nation may seek help. Perhaps it's an eviction, a marital conflict, repossession of a car or a misunderstanding over a welfare check. These are small claims in the nation's eye, but they loom large in the lives of poor Americans."

Nixon was not the first president, nor the only Republican, to understand the need for legal aid. William Howard Taft, President and Chief Justice, said the following in 1924: "Something must be devised by which everyone, however lowly and however poor, however unable to employ a lawyer and pay court costs, will be furnished the opportunity to set this machinery of justice going."

Another Republican, Learned Hand, may have said it best. Judge Hand said, "If we are to keep this democracy of ours, then we had better keep this commandment: 'Thou shalt not ration justice.'"

My experience with Legal Services started when I was a law student and volunteered for New Haven Legal Services. After my second year of law school, I tried to get a Legal Services agency set up in York County under Carolina Community Action with an 0E0 grant; but support among the Bar was mixed, and competition for grants was tight.

When I got out of the Army and came home to practice, I quickly learned how much average citizens need lawyers and how many can't afford private practitioners. I went into a partnership with my father in York, a town of some 6,000 people and a...