Legal Services Corporation 50th Anniversary Gala – Remarks from ABA President Mary Smith [Video]

United States Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Attorney General Merrick Garland, and others joined leaders from 130 organizations funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and other advocates for access to justice at a gala celebrating LSC’s 50th Anniversary.

The dinner at the Omni Shoreham brought together the nation’s foremost justice leaders, who spoke of their belief in the rule of law, but also underscored that the American ideal of equal justice under the law has not yet been realized for low-income Americans. Each year, LSC distributes federal funding to 131 independent nonprofit legal aid programs with more than 900 offices. These organizations provide civil legal services in every U.S. state and territory. However, resources are inadequate to meet most legal needs experienced by low-income Americans. LSC’s 2022 Justice Gap report captured the severity of this justice gap, finding that low-income Americans received no or insufficient legal help for 92% of their civil legal problems. LSC-funded legal aid programs must turn away half of eligible requests for legal assistance because of a lack of sufficient resources.

At the gala, American Bar Association President Mary Smith pointed to this data as evidence that, “for large swaths of our population, the system simply is not working.”

“For decades, the American Bar Association has advocated for legal services funding as the embodiment of the federal government’s role in securing the core American value of equal justice under law,” Smith continued.