Would You Invest a Dollar if Society Would Receive $21 of Benefits?
The case for investing in legal aid.
Every dollar invested in universal legal services results in $6.6 of benefits to the clients in question and $14.7 in benefits to the larger community. At least that’s the case when it comes to the services provided by Open Door Legal in California. Open Door thinks of itself as a general hospital for legal help—a one stop shop for ensuring that someone with a legal need receives the appropriate attention.
The cumulative benefit of $21 from Open Door’s services shows that investing in legal services is one of the most robust anti-poverty measures available to policy-makers (Open Door goes as far as to claim that legal aid is the most effective anti-poverty intervention). Food kitchens, by way of comparison, generate $6 in social returns on investment (SROI) for every dollar donated.
The massive SROI from legal services is possible because of the substantial spillover effects of helping one client facing a tricky legal situation. For example, imagine a tenant dealing with a less than ideal landlord. If that one tenant raises a number of potential violations against the landlord, then that landlord will likely not only improve conditions for that tenant, but also for the entire community.
A high SROI is also a product of the excessive barriers imposed on the supply of lawyers. There’s just one lawyer per every 8,302 community members in poverty. Some pragmatic legal scholars, such as Dean Brian Gallini of the Willamette University College of Law, are trying to lower those barriers by making it easier for law school students to become legal practitioners.
Despite this high SROI, the federal government (as well as most states) have continually underinvested in legal services. Whereas the federal government spent $495.80 billion on Medicaid in 2015, it spent just $0.38 billion on legal aid. Even when adding in funds from local and state governments, legal aid is “the least funded human service in the United States,” according to a report by the Robin Hood Foundation.
The idea of investing in legal aid writ large may sound like a subsidy for lawyers. If policy-makers are skeptical of supporting a field typically associated with big salaries and wealthy practitioners, then they should start with investing in the public provision of lawyers for estate planning and housing law — these two areas represent the fields with even higher SROI.
The bottom line is that legal aid is an underappreciated anti-poverty tool. The cities and states that lead in turning their law school grads into agents of change will see immense direct and societal benefits.
Oregon can and should be one of those states. Three out of every four Oregonians live in a household that experienced a legal problem in the previous 12 months, according to an Oregon Law Foundation survey. For poorer Oregonians, these legal encounters can snowball: the typical low-income household in Oregon experienced 5.4 legal problems in the last year. Yet, nearly all Oregonians (84%) facing legal issues did not have any legal assistance.
Lawyers are usually the butt of the joke. As a soon-to-be lawyer, I get it. The law is an industry in which ego can be an asset and principle can be placed behind profit. But, not all lawyers subscribe to the law as a means to protect the status quo. If my classmates are at all representative, I can tell you that we’re eager for opportunities to wield our legal skills in the battle for a better world — Will Oregon give us the opportunity?
Kevin Frazier edits The Oregon Way. He is a third-year student at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Born and raised in Washington County, he’s a proud graduate of the University of Oregon.
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