Legal Service Population
• Low-income veterans and other military personnel seek professional legal help for 21% of their civil law problems and receive insufficient or no professional legal aid for about 88% of all their problems.b In 2010, there were 8,951 public libraries in all 50 states and the District of Columbia with 17,078 branches of public and biblio-mobile libraries. These public libraries served 297.6 million people in the United States, or 96.4% of the total U.S. population. The FY 2010 PLS shows how libraries can do more with less – with local government taking on a larger funding role as government support declines. Most descriptive data for the population below 125% FPL comes from the one-year estimates of the 2015 American Community Survey (ACS). Most figures are based on data in Table S1703: Selected characteristics of people who reached certain levels of poverty in the past 12 months. In some cases, additional tables were used to provide estimates noted in the endnotes. To estimate the number of Americans under 125% FPL for each of the groups featured in the report, we used the percentage of the population estimated to be less than 125% FPL and the estimated total number of people making up each group. Figures on the estimated number of veterans with a rate of less than 125 per cent of FPL are not readily available and had to be calculated. We estimated this number by calculating the ratio between the number of people under 100% FPL and the number of people under 125% FPL nationally. We applied this ratio to the total number of veterans living under 100% FPL to estimate the total number of veterans living under 125% FPL nationally. | Special emphasis | Civil law problems are common among the groups highlighted in this report, and many have experienced several problems. Households with survivors of domestic violence or sexual assault are particularly likely to have civil law problems.
Ninety-seven percent experienced at least one problem in addition to their violence-related problems. In addition, compared to other households, households with survivors tend to have more problems over the course of a year and are more likely to have problems in most of the problem areas covered by the survey. In response to the growing need for legal aid among veterans, the Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP) partnered with the Georgia State Bar`s Pro Bono Resource Center in 2009 to create the Military Legal Assistance Program website, which serves as an online resource to support volunteer lawyers who assist veterans and active military personnel. The site provides lawyers with support materials, online training, and other resources to help them assist veterans and military personnel in Georgia with civil law issues. Generally, LSC funds can only be used to meet the legal needs of individuals whose family income is at or below 125% of the federal poverty line.10 This section describes this population of Americans. It looks at how many people have family incomes at this level, how they are distributed in the United States, and some key demographic groups of this population. Georgia`s mobile legal units place two lawyers with laptops in municipal areas, where they provide legal information and assistance to the elderly, residents with limited English proficiency, and low-income groups in rural Georgia. • Common types of civil law issues among low-income households with recent survivors include: consumers and finances (66%), health (62%), employment (46%), rental housing (45%), income support (44%), and family (40%) (in addition to DV/SA issues)b.b 13 U.S. Bureau of the Census, American Community Survey, 2015 1-year estimates, Table S1701, Poverty situation in the past 12 months. This estimate is based on the total population for which the poverty status is determined. The Volunteer Lawyers for Veterans program has been very helpful in allowing KCAV to connect with other Kentucky legal aid organizations — streamlining their efforts — and ensuring that it applies to all attorneys in all 120 Kentucky counties. As shown in Figure 5, people who receive help from lawyers are more likely to receive this help in the form of legal advice.
Two out of five (40%) issues receiving professional legal aid are dealt with through legal advice. People report that 21% of these questions provide help filling out legal documents or forms, 20% of them are represented in court by a lawyer and 14% of them receive help hearing a case. Other common categories of civil law issues include rental housing, children and custody, and education. Each of these categories of issues affects more than one in four low-income households when the issue is relevant (e.g., rental housing problems affect 29% of households living in rental housing). Income security and disability issues affect one in five households. Our forecasts likely underestimate the number of eligible questions presented to LSC Fellows. While the vast majority (89%) of reporting fellows said their admission during this six-week period was typical in terms of the number and type of problems encountered, 12 fellows said they were working on fewer issues than normal due to staff shortages, office closures, or other reasons. Three other fellows reported that it was atypical in other respects, including one who said he experienced more traffic than usual.
In addition, one fellow (out of a total of 133 fellows) did not report data for the number of admissions, so issues he worked on during the six-week period are not reflected in the sample counts or 12-month projections. Finally, LSC grant recipients counted individuals (not problems or case services) when counting admissions, and it is possible that an individual may seek help with more than one civil law issue. Generally, to be eligible for LSC-funded legal aid, a person must have a family income equal to or less than 125% of the federal poverty line (FPL), and their civil law problem cannot be related to matters for which the use of LSC funds is prohibited, such as abortion, euthanasia or class actions.43 We will discuss civil law issues that meet these criteria. referred to in this section as «Eligible Problems» or «Eligible Civil Law Problems». People are more likely to seek professional legal help for issues related to children and custody, as well as wills and estates. Low-income Americans seek such help for 48 percent of their civil law issues related to children and custody and for 39 percent of their wills and estates issues. SB-3 Of all the civil law issues examined in the survey, those in these categories are more demonstrably «legal». Issues related to children and custody, for example, usually have to be decided or approved by a judge. Similarly, matters relating to wills and estates include legal documents and often also lawyers. If we make assumptions about the extent to which these problems will be addressed, we can arrive at a number of estimates. We find that between 62% and 72% of all eligible questions submitted to LSC fellows do not receive legal advice or receive a level of support that should not fully meet the client`s legal needs. This equates to approximately 1.1 to 1.2 million eligible civil issues that are expected to remain unserved or underserved in 2017 alone.
The FY2016 LFS shows that public libraries are evolving to meet the changing needs of the community. More than 171 million registered users, more than half of the roughly 311 million Americans living in a public library area, visited public libraries more than 1.35 billion times in 2016. Public libraries offered half a million more programs in 2016 than in 2015; 113 million people participated in 5.2 million programs in 2016. In addition, the number of electronic documents continued to grow, with public libraries offering more than 391 million e-books to their customers in the United States. Finally, panel weights are collected on external population counts associated with age, sex, education, race or ethnicity, length of residence, telephone status, and census department. The total population figures for the outside population come from the current demographic survey. Low-income Americans report that they seek legal help for only 20% of their problems. Interestingly, people are only slightly more likely to seek professional redress for problems that affect them significantly (24% of problems that affect them very strongly or severely) than problems that do not affect them much (17% of problems that affect them moderately or easily).
The findings presented in Section 2 «Civil Law Experiences» are drawn exclusively from the 2017 Justice Sector Gap Measurement Survey. Respondents were presented with a long list of specific issues, which generally raise civil law issues. They were asked if they had experienced any of these problems in the past 12 months and if anyone else in their household had experienced them. Section 4 presents the distribution of the types of questions for which LSC fellows provided case services in 2016. The data on this subject come from the Grant Recipients Activity Report (GAR) of the Société des services juridiques.