The True Impact of Eliminating LSC for Everyday Americans

Episode Notes

Transcript

Judge Lora J. Livingston:

The level playing field that the court provide will soon become an insurmountable heel to climb without a rope, without climbing shoes, without any benefit, or help to climb the hill. If we take away their most valuable resource, and that’s a lawyer to fight for them, our level playing field is no longer level and justice will not be served. We need legal aid. We need legal aid lawyers. We need legal aid funding. In order for us to maintain that level playing field and to ensure justice for all.

Announcer:

Equal access to justice is a core American value. In each episode of Talk Justice and An LSC Podcast, we’ll explore ways to expand access to justice and illustrate why it is important to the legal community, business government, and the General Public Talk. Justice is sponsored by the Leaders Council of the Legal Services Corporation.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Hello and welcome to Talk Justice. I’m Ron Flagg, president of the Legal Services Corporation and your host for this episode. On May 30th, the Trump administration announced its proposed federal budget for 2026. In it, the White House calls for the elimination of Legal Services Corporation. As the federal budget moves through the House and Senate’s appropriation process. Over the next few months, many will be weighing in about funding priorities and which services are vital. Today we’re here to talk about what the loss of LSE funding would mean. Now, we often talk about these sorts of issues as abstractions from 30,000 feet, all about dollars and numbers of people served. It becomes quite mind numbing if you look at it from that perspective. Today I’d like to talk about the loss of LSCs funding in human terms on the ground. What would the impact be on everyday Americans facing challenging legal problems?

What would happen to the services provided by the 130 civil legal aid programs that LSC funds all around the country? And what would the loss of LSC funds mean for our courts and access to justice in the United States? Joining us today are three incredible guests who can provide this human perspective. Athena Gough was a client of community legal aid in Ohio and now serves as a member of Community legal AIDS board. Tom Fritzsche is the executive director of Pine Tree Legal Assistance. Pine Tree is a statewide legal aid provider in Maine, which is funded in part by LSC and Judge Lora Livingston serves as a senior judge for the District Court of Texas. She’s worn many hats throughout her career, including her tenure as the local administrative judge for Travis County Courts. Her service on the boards of the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation, Texas Access to Justice Commission, and the Texas Center for the Judiciary. Let’s start from there. And Judge Livingston, let’s start with you. You’ve been a dedicated leader, provider, and supporter of Access to Justice throughout your career. When you think about the White House’s proposal to stop investing in civil legal services, what concerns you most?

Judge Lora J. Livingston:

Well, the first thing that comes to mind, Ron, is that I think it would be a devastating loss to our country and to the people that need legal assistance in our country. But I will say that I love the fact that you think about this question in terms of the investment that we’ve made as a country in justice, in access to justice and the justice system as a whole. Investing is a really great choice of words because federal funding for legal services is an investment in the rule of law. It’s an investment in our constitution. It’s an investment to our fidelity, to the rule of law, to our democracy and to our citizens. The day-to-day people who benefit from legal services, they benefit from the promise of justice for all that we’ve made as a society. It’s also an investment in a real sense of that word, in a financial way.

We have invested dollars from the federal government in local communities that benefits those communities in terms of the legal services that are provided, but also in terms of the local economies when people are working because a lawyer has helped them keep their job, that’s an investment and we can see a return on that investment when we keep those people working. We keep those people paying taxes. When we keep people off welfare and able to take care of themselves and their families and pay for clothing and food and other services and products for their families and for their children. That is a return on a good investment. When we keep people productive and able to spend money, our economy is stronger, our society is better, and we can do all of those things if we invest in the legal services that keeps the machine moving. So when a person is about to be evicted, we can prevent them from being homeless if they have a lawyer to help them when a person, a particularly elderly person is being scammed out of their house or some other financial fraud is about to them, but a legal aid lawyer can step in and prevent the scam and prevent the fraud, that is a return on an investment.

So lack of funding in this way really is a lack of investment in our society, in our justice system, in the people of our country. And so we can demonstrate an incredible return on the investment of just a few dollars from the federal government. The return on that investment is enormous.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thank you. Tom, could you help us set the table for our listeners by talking about what kind of services LSC funds and for whom what makes a client eligible to receive LSC funded legal services and what are the biggest categories of legal problems that Pine Tree and other organizations like yours are commonly addressing? I know as a lawyer I’ve asked an improper compound question, but I’ll trust you to parse it out.

Tom Fritzsche:

Yes, thank you very much Ron. So Pine legal assistance like other LSC grantees, screens every potential client during our intake process to make sure they’re eligible to receive services from us. And a couple of examples of that eligibility screening include for income eligibility. So to be eligible for LSC funded legal services, our clients need to have an annual income below 125% of the federal poverty guidelines. And so those guidelines vary by someone’s household size. But to give an example, just for context, in 2025 in the lower 48 states, 125% of the federal poverty level is $26,437 per year for a household of two. Just to give an example, another example of the eligibility screening we do is to ensure that our clients are eligible under citizenship or immigration status, so ensuring that clients are US citizens, lawful permanent residents or in one of the other strictly limited other groups of immigrants who are eligible for services.

And so to speak a little bit about the type of services we provide in 20 24, 60 4% of pine tree legal’s cases involved housing matters, and I know that’s part of a trend nationwide of an increase in housing legal needs for folks in every state. Our housing work includes helping our clients avoid eviction, avoid foreclosure or enforce laws that protect safe housing conditions or anti-discrimination laws. The second biggest category of services we provide is in family law. Last year, 18% of our work was in family law with a focus on protection from abuse and other protections for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and for the non-offending caregivers of child sex abuse survivors. We also provide legal services for consumer protection, access to veterans benefits, access to education, and much more. In some ways, we often say it’s easier to say what we don’t cover, which is primarily criminal defense.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thanks, Tom. Judge Livingston, hearing these legal problems, which Tom has mentioned, housing, family issues and others, when these problems make it to court, how frequent is it? How common is it to see people facing them without a lawyer and what are the consequences of people dealing with these things on their own, both for the court and of course for the litigants ability to get justice?

Judge Lora J. Livingston:

Well, unfortunately, Ron, it’s very common for self-represented litigants to come to the court, and it’s also sort of a sad state of affairs when that happens. Unfortunately, when people come to the courthouse without legal training, without the benefit of a lawyer, very often they are lost, confused. They find it difficult to identify their legal problem. They don’t know where to go, they don’t know who to turn to, they don’t know what to say about why they’re there. They don’t exactly know what’s going on in the legal process. They don’t understand the complexity of the process, they don’t understand the language that we use. Sometimes when we refer to people that come without a lawyer as a pro se litigant for example, they don’t know we’re talking about them. So we’re trying to be creative and innovative and accommodating by changing the way that we use language when people come without lawyers and talk about them as being self-represented litigants for example.

But that’s just one minor way in which we’re trying to help. It’s not very effective when it comes to understanding the complexity of legal problem that they are there to resolve. Court cases are incredibly complex and difficult and the more complex and difficult, the more you need a lawyer to assist you and you need a lawyer that’s not only competent and knowledgeable, but one that has some level of expertise in the specific area of your legal issue. So not every lawyer can handle every client in an eviction case. There are very specific rules. If you live in public housing, the eviction rules that apply to your next door neighbor who’s not living in public housing are very different and very complex and very challenging to understand if you’re not a lawyer, not every lawyer who handles evictions is an expert in public housing evictions. So the complexity is enormous.

And so for those that are coming by themselves without the benefit of legal training, find themselves in a very dazed and confused state of mind and it’s very, very difficult for them to navigate the problem. I’ll also tell you that just by way of example, there’ve been a number of studies that show that, for example, in eviction cases when a litigant is in court with a lawyer, the court takes more time. The process, the hearing is a lot longer. When people come representing themselves because they don’t know what to say, they don’t know what papers to file, they don’t know when to stand and sit and speak and not speak and so forth. Those hearings tend to be very summary proceedings. They’re very fast, they’re over very quickly and very often justice is not done and it’s because they haven’t been able to articulate the legal issues that they need to be able to articulate to get the court’s attention.

That’s a sad state and that’s not really what we want justice to look like from the court’s perspective. It’s also challenging even though people have a right to represent themselves. The difficulty from the court’s perspective in part is that the courts can only go so far to provide information to people. We can’t provide advice to people. And so even though we might be able to understand what someone is trying to accomplish, we can’t try the case for them as a judge, right? The court system can’t become advocates, so we simply sit back and oftentimes watch people drown in a sea of legal complexity and we can’t really throw them much of a lifeline. That is not what justice looks like. And so for those that are coming to the courthouse without the ability to navigate the complexity of the process, the system is just not set up to help them really. So from a court efficiency standpoint, from the docket strains that we experience, all of the problems that happen before they even make it to the courthouse door, all of that is overly complex for people that show up without a lawyer. We need lawyers, we need competent lawyers, we need lawyers with expertise in all the systems that clients have to deal with in order to really find justice in our courthouses, and that doesn’t happen when people come unrepresented.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thank you, Athena. I believe your story will help our listeners really gain a deeper understanding of what Judge Livingston has just described. Could you share with us the difficulties you faced at the outset?

Athena Gough:

Absolutely. Thank you. Legal Aid has actually helped me with three important issues, one being protection order renewal against my ex-husband for domestic violence. They also helped me get my divorce and they’ve also helped me win an escrow case from a bad property management company. When I first came to Legal Aid, it was right after I had to report my ex-husband to the police for violating my domestic violence protection order that had in place for about nine months. He had been reaching out the entire time, but I was afraid to report it. I was afraid he would take it as some kind of escalation and want to retaliate. When he was arrested for violating the protection order, I decided to go to the courthouse and look into filing a divorce, filing for divorce because I thought that a divorce would send just a more solid message since apparently the protection order was not deterring him from trying to contact me.

When I went to file, I found out just the cost of filing the paperwork myself was going to be close to $300. And while I was making enough money to take care of my kids and my family, I definitely did not have enough spare money to file for divorce, let alone trying to hire an attorney to help me with the process. So that day I walked out of the courthouse and I was very discouraged and a little bit scared, but when I got home, I remembered that I had some connections that had mentioned community legal aid. At first, I assumed it was just a service for people who had no income. I thought for sure, maybe I made too much money to get help, but it turned out that I was in the right income bracket to still be able to receive help. So my legal aid attorney, Susan Fitch, is really what turned things around in my situation.

Once I did my intake and legal aid really took over and made the process of getting the divorce very smooth and my attorney was kind and strong and she made me feel less afraid every step of the way through the process what the judge mentioned, it’s pretty terrifying to kind of go into the courts on your own without the knowledge of what you need to say and what you need to do to obtain a better outcome. The divorce process took about 18 months because my ex was a bit difficult to deal with and for myself, I never would’ve been able to afford to keep an attorney on retainer while this process played out. After that, my legal aid attorney, Jeannie Charles, helped me to secure 10 more years so far for my protection order against my ex-husband. And it’s also just been such a rock in helping me navigate getting further protection orders and just the system in general.

In Ohio, you have to go back every five years to try to renew your order and the process, it is a bit scary. It can be a bit paralyzing, and having legal aid around to help me continue to navigate this has been just immensely helpful and it’s reduced the anxiety that I felt when I was trying to renew the orders on my own. Additionally, the Legal Aid was able to offer some support about four years ago when I was dealing with a very bad property management company and my legal aid attorney Tim, helped me win my escrow case, which allowed me to have some funds that helped improve my life situation and actually helped me secure better housing and has put me on the road to home ownership. So that’s basically my story with how Legal Aid has helped me through the years.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Well, that’s a tremendously compelling story, and let me thank you for your courage in sharing your story. It’s so important. I’m hopeful that others in your shoes will hear your story and will learn from it and will get the sort of benefits and empowerment that you’ve been able to enjoy. You’re now the board at Community Legal Aid, which is fantastic. So you’re well aware that already due to funding shortages, legal aid can’t help everyone that needs assistance. And now of course we’re talking about what will happen if legal aid organizations across the country face funding elimination or cuts. How challenging would it have been to navigate the various legal proceedings you’ve described without a legal aid attorney?

Athena Gough:

It would’ve been incredibly difficult. I can honestly say that I would’ve walked away from trying to pursue the divorce just due to the expense and the fear if I had not gotten help from Legal Aid, it was really the divorce motion that helped solidify things, I think to my ex to back off. And I honestly can’t imagine what I would’ve done if I had have called in for assistance and Legal Aid has said, well, normally we would be able to help someone in your position, but due to funding cuts, we can’t. And I worry about anybody else that would be calling in out for a situation like mine and that they’re getting turned away because there’s not enough funding to help them. So just there’s things that my legal aid attorneys have been able to address that I wouldn’t have thought of as well in my cases, such as making sure that the supervised visitations that were under the protection order were also being documented under the divorce agreement, which is a reason why my ex was contesting the case just to try to end that.

But the protection order had that in place and we just needed to make sure that it was also put in place for the divorce decree. And in terms of trying to continue to pursue protection orders, I think I would’ve just in general, I just would’ve stopped trying to pursue anything because I know in the state of Ohio they say unless there’s another incidence of violence in 10 years, they don’t really like to renew it. But my attorneys with legal aid have set the precedence that this is still a necessary thing to have in place. And in that they’ve also set a precedence for other survivors who need orders that go beyond five years to get their orders renewed as well. You never know what to talk about in court. You never know how to represent yourself or what to say, and it’s just incredibly empowering to have someone there that knows the system that is helping you speak up for yourself.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Athena, again, thank you so much for sharing your story. It is so powerful, and unfortunately we know that there are thousands of people in our country with similar stories. They had a problem that seemed too big to overcome and nowhere else to turn, but legal aid, and that’s why LSC is so committed to supporting the programs across the country. The 130 legal aid organizations that LSC supports really are uniquely situated in their states and communities, and those states and communities provide widely varying access to alternative funding, alternative to federal funding. For some of our programs, LSC funds are just one piece of the pie. For other legal aid programs, they literally wouldn’t be able to maintain a program without their funds. So the services that Athena described would not be available, but all of the programs I think would agree that the federal funding through LSC is a vital resource that makes a difference in the lives of thousands of people. Tom, could you help our listeners understand the impact that LSC grants make for your program and others like it?

Tom Fritzsche:

So for Pine Tree Legal Assistance, LSC grants make up almost 25% of our total budget, and nearly every dollar is spent on direct services to people in our state counting our LSC funding and other grants that we receive. We serve about 18,000 people every year in the households whom we serve through direct legal representation or advice. And so thinking about a year with no LSC funding, for us, that means at least an additional four to 5,000 people per year we would need to turn away whom we could not serve. And unfortunately, due to limitations on resources, we already need to turn away many people each year who need and deserve legal services. And in a scenario with no LSC funding, that means we would turn away at least an additional four to 5,000 people who need help. And that means more folks who would face homelessness, who would be unable to escape abusive relationships or dangerous situations who would be saddled with burdensome and unlawful debt, and who generally would find themselves would know where to turn during some of the hardest and worst and scariest days of their lives. And I think the ripple effect, in addition to the human impact on our clients whom we couldn’t serve, extends even further beyond that because the legal services corporation’s funding for Pine Tree legal assistance for over 50 years now has been an anchor and helped us build stable and effective infrastructure that enables us to make the most efficient and impactful use in direct services to clients of other grant programs as well.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thank you Tom. Judge Livingston. States like Texas and many others are dealing with legal deserts, vast rural areas without enough lawyers to serve the communities. Often legal aid is the only oasis in these deserts. What are your concerns about the types of problems that rural Americans will be facing if the lifeline of legal aid is taken away?

Judge Lora J. Livingston:

People in rural need, in many cases the same kind of legal help that people in big cities need. The difference is that people in big cities can go around the corner to get it, and people in rural communities must travel miles and miles and miles away from their home and their communities to get it if they can get it at all. In some rural communities, it might be miles to the nearest lawyer, and if that lawyer doesn’t practice the kind of law that you need, then you have to go more miles and miles away from your home to try to find a lawyer who can help you. In rural communities, people are miles and miles and miles away from resources, libraries, information centers, access to technology, all kinds of resources that might be available for healthcare or for educational services or special needs for your children that might be suffering from some sort of disability or other special need.

None of those things are readily available in rural communities typically, as opposed to the more readily available services and resources in metropolitan areas. In rural communities, you might be miles and miles and miles away from a courthouse. Not only that, you might be days, weeks, and months away from a judge coming to the one courthouse in your community because oftentimes in rural communities, they share a judge. A judge is writing a circuit, and so they might be in your county one day a month, not five days a week, every month. And so to call it a desert is a really apt description, and you are absolutely right that a legal aid lawyer that is willing to come out to that community is in fact a lifesaving person and a lifesaving program and a lifesaving benefit to a rural community. It is in fact an oasis Without legal aid, the people in these legal deserts simply will suffer more than they do.

Now, I want to also point out that oftentimes we hear well, there’s this pro bono aspect that we should consider. Won’t lawyers just step up and provide some pro bono service? Well, let me remind you that in rural communities, there are not very many lawyers, let alone one with an expertise that might be able to handle the problem that you’re facing, but they’re just not that many lawyers and they’re not available always to help all of the people that need help in these rural communities. Lack of access is real everywhere in our country, but a lack of access to a lawyer in a rural community is a real acute problem. So if funding goes, goes the lifeline to those people in rural America, and that is not what justice looks like.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Tom, we just heard about legal deserts in Texas, Maine is a highly rural state. Is there anything you would add about rural legal services in Maine?

Tom Fritzsche:

Yes, absolutely. Ron. As you noted, Maine is one of the most rural states in the country, and in fact, Aroostook County in the northern part of Maine, it’s the largest county by land area east of the Mississippi River, and our Gale office is an anchor for folks across Arista County who need legal help, where there’s really nowhere else to turn. And that’s true statewide. Really, Maine is rural from north to south and east to west, and a lot of our most rural communities folks can feel not just isolated, but even abandoned as there are very few attorneys, but also even many other services like healthcare services have become increasingly difficult to access over the last few decades. And it is incredibly meaningful for folks in our most rural communities that Pine Tree legal assistance is still there, ready to serve and help folks out on some of the worst days and hardest days of their lives.

And I think one of the reasons why we’re so impactful in doing that is that we are part of the community, not just our offices in accessible community locations like on Main Street and Pres Kyle up in Arista County or across from the courthouse in Machias, Maine, but also our staff are part of the community. Our paralegal who works in Machias has been with Pine Tree for over 20 years and knows the community and the issues folks face like the back of her hand, and there’s really no replacement for that if we went away. We have six offices around the state serve folks in all 16 counties, all 27 district courts, and in the tribal courts of Maine’s indigenous communities, including the Penobscot Nation, pa McQuade Tribe, Holton Bend of Mals, and the Mcma Nation. And we do our best to serve everyone we can and in communities like our indigenous communities like Caribou, like Skowhegan, it’s pine tree or it is nothing unfortunately. And so our commitment and presence to serve every part of Maine, including our most rural communities, has been a longstanding part of who we are as an organization and something we’re committed to for the long haul in the days ahead too.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thanks, Tom. Tom, sticking with you for a moment. The reasoning the White House gave for why they proposed to eliminate LSC is based on austerity saving taxpayer dollars, suggesting that in effect, any dollar invested in legal aid is lost after that. Could you tell us about the return on investment that legal aid generates?

Tom Fritzsche:

Yes, absolutely, Ron. In fact, the facts show that investment in legal services for low-income folks is actually a highly efficient way to spend taxpayer money. Our study in 2016 here in Maine found a return on investment of over $15 in return to the community from every dollar invested in services and the legal services corporation’s. Recent analysis of 50 statewide studies between 2003 and 2023 found a nationwide average return on investment of $7 for every dollar invested in legal services for low-income folks. And that can come in the form of increased earnings for households of our clients and much more. To give a specific example from local research here in Maine about our work on eviction legal services studies here in Maine have found that the public cost of experiencing homelessness is about $28,000 per year per person in the greater Portland area, and it’s about $18,000 per person in rural parts of Maine. When you compare that public cost for someone who’s experiencing homelessness with what it takes us to serve someone in an eviction case, which is just $525, not thousand $525 per household for our legal services that can ensure housing stability and prevent disruption to education for kids in the household, help our client avoid job loss and stay housed, that’s an incredibly efficient way to invest our public money to keep our communities safe and stable.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thank you, Tom. That’s a very compelling set of information you provided. Athena. I’d like you to humanize some of the numbers that Tom just described. How did legal aid change the trajectory of your life, including your career?

Athena Gough:

Just being able to get representation, that’s thousands of dollars worth of hours to try to represent the challenging cases that I’ve had to deal with. It allowed me to obviously not have to forcibly spend resources I did not have that I would not have been able to take care of my family. Additionally, just having the situation with my ex-husband just settled, I was able to feel more confident in pursuing better opportunities and in that it helped me to get into better neighborhoods. And it’s a ripple effect of being able to get legal help and not having to spend resources that you don’t have when you’re in a lower income bracket on trying to make things right for your situation.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thank you. I hear from time to time people saying they don’t think civil legal aid is a good use of federal funds, and I think what Tom and Athena just described directly refutes that, and I hear from time to time that legal aid is a partisan political issue. And again, I think anybody who has heard Athena’s story understands these are human issues, these are core constituent services issues from the perspective of members of Congress, and again, again, thank you so much for sharing your story. Tom, any final thoughts about the impact of losing LSE funds or the importance of Legal aid services?

Tom Fritzsche:

Yes, thank you, Ron. There’s two additional themes I think are important to consider related to this topic. One is our services for veterans, and our second is the way that the Legal Services Corporation supports innovation by organizations like Pine Two Legal around the country. I want to note that here in Maine, one in 12 out of the household supine, two legal assistance serves each year includes a veteran or active military service member. And that’s a critical part of our work where folks with housing needs who are veterans, but also any of the other many civil legal services that we provide who are veterans is a priority area of work for us. And second is innovation that pinery legal assistance, like our sibling organizations in other states has worked hard to adapt and innovate over time to be as efficient as we can with the services we deliver to our communities, but also how we make information available to members of our communities.

And so examples of that include the work we do to maintain accessible legal information available to the public for free on our websites written in plain language that our team talks about it like having a warm friend who will sit down at your kitchen table and talk you through the legal question that you’re worried about. And specifically, the Legal Services Corporation supported an innovation by Pine Tree in partnership with other organizations back in 2009 with seed funding to launch stateside legal.org. That website includes legal services information for veterans and military service members, not just in Maine but around the country. And actually folks stationed around the world continue to access the site. 16 years later, that site has served over 4 million veterans and military service members using the resources on stateside legal.org. And it’s been an incredible point of pride for Pine Tree to work with LSC to get that innovation off the ground and to maintain it over the years.

And it certainly stood the test of time. And so when I think about those issues about what it would mean if Legal Services Corporation funding went away, first and foremost, it’s the impact on our clients who’d have to turn away in the present. But for many of our clients, the impact of not being able to get legal aid when they needed it in 2025 or 2026 may stay with them for a long time, including for the rest of folks’ lives in the case, for example, of kids who navigate an eviction and the trauma and disruption to education that can entail. But on top of all those things, I also think about the impact on the future of our legal services infrastructure. There are other projects underway at Pine Tree and in other organizations around the country thinking creatively and in conjunction with LSC about projects like stateside legal.org that if LSC maintains stable funding are going to be here 15 years from now or 20 years from now, helping folks in our country that would be at risk if funding went away.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thank you, Tom. And thank you for your service. Judge Livingston will give you the last word. What has your time on the bench shown you about the need to invest in access to justice?

Judge Lora J. Livingston:

Well, my time on the bench is pretty clearly demonstrated that if we do not invest in access to justice, we will not see justice in our courts. The legal system is set up to operate with lawyers. So if you take lawyers away now, you’ve created a challenge for the legal system. My view from the bench has allowed me to really see it all. And what I’ve seen when people come in without lawyers are people with no job, no money, no food, no transportation, no healthcare, no good educational opportunities, their quality of life suffers, their ability to contribute to society and to the economy and in the ways that we’ve already talked about today, all of that goes away when their basic civil legal needs are not met. We have created an underclass of people when we don’t give them equal access to the justice system.

And when we do that, people living in poverty in the richest country in the world mind, you will not be in a country where justice is served and that we can guarantee justice for all. At the courthouse, we see children in very vulnerable situations. Some of them are in dependency court where we’re dealing with situations where there might be abuse or neglect or just a lack of resources in the family, and we need to provide a community safety net to rescue those children. We see it in schools, we see it in mental health patients, we see it in the elderly who are another really important vulnerable population. You’ve heard Tom talk about, and Athena too, about domestic violence situations in which legal aid lawyers have been able to rescue and not just save someone from their current circumstance, but put them on a path to betterment, put them on a path to a better way of life and pull them up out of a situation and see them on the road to success.

The level playing field that the courts provide will soon become an insurmountable heel to climb without a rope, without climbing shoes, without any benefit or help to climb the hill. If we take away their most valuable resource, and that’s a lawyer to fight for them, our level playing field is no longer level and justice will not be served if we don’t provide lawyers and we don’t provide the ability for someone to seek legal redress for a wrong that’s been committed to them. And that would just be no way for us to maintain the justice system that we’ve become so very proud of and we hold up as a model around the world. We need legal aid, we need legal aid lawyers. We need legal aid funding in order for us to maintain that level playing field and to ensure justice for all.

Ronald S. Flagg:

Thanks, judge. And I think Athena’s story shows how legal aid helps working Americans get a fair shake from a system that’s really set up on the assumption that people will have lawyers as they use the system. I want to thank Athena Tom and Judge Livingston for joining us today and sharing their important perspectives on the impact of defunding lsc. I would encourage anyone who wants to learn more about this topic to visit lsc.gov/act a ct. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Talk Justice Stay Well

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