The need for greater access to legal representation

Legal aid is among the least funded and most cost-effective ways to address poverty in the United States. A comparison of how much the U.S. spends on human services as a percentage of GDP to other high-income countries shows that the U.S. spends about 191 percent of the median on health care, 116 percent on education, and only 8 percent on legal aid. In fact, as far as we can tell, legal aid is the only human service on which the U.S. spends less than the median. As a consequence, the World Justice Project has ranked the US 64th in the world in "access to civil justice" -- behind countries like Senegal, Nigeria, China and Malawi. See "Rule of Law Index 2017-2018," World Justice Project, 2018.

But what does this mean on the ground? One of our clients, Martina (name changed), is an immigrant and a mother of two children. As a teenager, she was pressured into marrying an abusive man and endured eight years of violence. She was assaulted twice a week and even hospitalized once.

None of that mattered when the police came. Her husband called the cops, said she had hit him, and they arrested her and brought her to jail. She was released without charges, but was hit with a restraining order that prevented her from going home, getting her clothes, or getting any money. She ended up homeless in San Francisco and with a trial looming that would determine whether she could return to her home. She went to five different legal aid agencies and desperately sought help. They all turned her away, citing a lack of funding, insufficient capacity, or said it was not the kind of issue they handle.

Here is the hard truth: There are millions of Martinas in the United States. The costs of not helping these people are staggering. Imagine the health, mental health, child protective and homeless services that would be expended just because Martina couldn't get legal help. And then there's the issue of deterrence; because Martina cannot get legal help, bad actors do not face consistent consequences for their actions, resulting in more bad actions. This is shown, for example, by one study that found that access to civil legal services is the only intervention that actually reduces the domestic violence rate in a community. See "Explaining the Recent Decline in Domestic Violence," Contemporary Economic Policy 21(2):158-172, 2003.

To combat this problem and show that the law can work for everyone, Open Door Legal has pioneered the country's first system of universal access to civil legal representation. Starting five years ago, we raised money, built an infrastructure, and hired amazing staff to provide legal representation in over 35 areas of law -- everything from child custody to consumer fraud. We do not turn away anyone who cannot afford an attorney. To make it all work, we custom-built a case management application that handles intake, time tracking, pro bono management, and much more. We currently serve three zip codes in San Francisco, but we are planning to aggressively expand in the near future.

Fortunately, Martina lived in our service area. She came to us three days before her first hearing. We represented her at the hearing, and then at a three-day trial. We got her back in her home, got her husband out of the home, got her child support, and got her a divorce -- all for a fraction of what homeless services cost in San Francisco. More importantly, she hasn't been abused since.

By providing legal services, you can have a double effect: You help your client directly and deter future harm. This double effect is the reason why legal aid is among the most cost-effective ways to address poverty. In fact, we estimate that for every $1 spent, $21 in direct benefits and deterrence is obtained.

We hope to expand the system we have built city-wide over the next three years, make San Francisco the country's first city with universal access to civil legal representation, and become a model for national replication. We believe that we will never win the war on poverty in America unless we solve this problem first.