One More Narrow Escape

By Bennett H. Beach

But Reagan's battle to kill legal services goes on

Like two knights locked in endless com bat, Ronald Reagan and legal services lawyers are undying adversaries. During his eight years as Governor of California, Reagan constantly urged the Nixon Ad ministration to end all federal support for free legal services for the poor in civil cases. In 1970, the Governor vetoed a $1.8 million grant to California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) because a Reagan-requested inquiry had found 135 apparent incidents of misconduct by the group's lawyers. CRLA survived that threat when a three-judge commission declared the charges "unfounded and without merit."

So it was no surprise that when he be came President, Rea gan again went for the kill: he proposed zero funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the independent federal agency that provides 85% of the money spent by legal services groups across the U.S. But last week his nemesis once more ducked the federal blow. Acting on a bill that had already passed the House, the Senate cleared the way for continued fed eral support of legal services, although it cut 1982 funding by 25% to $241 million.

Sixteen years ago, the Government began providing funds for low-income litigants in civil cases. It was a Great Society program intended to supplement the constitutional guarantee of a lawyer for poor defendants in criminal cases, and it worked. Last year 6,200 poverty lawyers won close to four-fifths of the cases they brought on behalf of 1.5 million eligible poor clients. (For a family of four, income must be below $10,563.) Almost all the cases involved routine problems like evictions, repossessions, divorces and discontinued Social Security payments.

But over the years what has won headlines, and riled the right, are class-action suits attacking general problems facing poor clients. In President Reagan's view, Government money should not pay for lawsuits "which are, in reality, attempts to enforce a judicial resolution of political and public policy issues properly left to the electorate."Also nettlesome to conservatives is the lobbying that poverty lawyers occasionally engage in. In California, for example, an air-conditioning company foreclosed on a purchaser's home if he missed payments; legal services attorneys persuaded the state legislature to outlaw the practice. Under the rules set last week by Congress, both class actions-and lobbying will be all but eliminated.

Of course, legal services has some committed admirers too, and it was their fervent lobbying on Capitol Hill that apparently kept LSC alive. The American Bar Association and other elements of the legal community enlisted every silver tongue and strong arm they could muster--from former Attorney General Elliot Richardson to former General Motors Chairman Thomas Murphy. Another boost came from a New York Times-CBS News poll showing that 83% of Americans opposed reductions in legal services spending. The President is surely unhappy with the outcome, but he is not expected to veto it, because the appropriation will be only a small part of a larger funding bill.

Reagan is still stalking LSC, however. By early next year he will have replaced the corporation's eleven board members with people who question much of the LSC's current thinking. Ronald Zumbrun of Sacramento is expected to be announced shortly as Reagan's choice for the LSC chairmanship. "The poor will have their own James Watt," groans CRLA'S Al Meyerhoff. Zumbrun frequently tangled with CRLA over funding cuts when he was a deputy director of Reagan's department of social welfare and more recently in his position as head of the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation. Charges outgoing LSC President Dan J. Bradley: "Zumbrun has never demonstrated that he gives a damn about low-income Americans."

Zumbrun will find an already weakened work force when and if he takes over. In anticipation of the federal funding cut, programs across the country have been scaling back their operations, especially in hard-to-cover rural areas. The West Virginia Legal Services Plan recently closed six of its 14 offices and trimmed its staff of lawyers (average salary: $15,500) from 31 to 17. Evergreen Legal Services in Washington State, which has laid oft" 52 employees, plans to decrease its caseload by at least 40%. The cut backs come at a particularly difficult time, contends LSC's Bradley. Reason: major changes in welfare and other entitlement programs have created a large pool of would-be clients who will want to challenge benefit losses.

Who will take up the slack? Conservatives, pointing out that nongovernmental groups financed legal services in earlier times, contend that private practitioners can represent clients now served by poverty lawyers. The A.B.A. insists that the demand for services is too great and that most lawyers are inexperienced in the types of cases that legal services attorneys specialize in. As for local government support, states and cities are hardly likely to dip deeper into their own pinched purses, especially not to fund groups that are often suing them. Jim Martin, director of the West Virginia program, is pressing his state legislature to help by raising the $10 filing fee charged to plaintiffs above the poverty line, but few observers believe he will succeed. Facing harder financial times and a harder board of directors, legal services clearly has more fights ahead, but last week's victory demonstrated it is still up to the challenge. --By Bennett H.Beach. Reported by Evan Thomas/Washington

With reporting by Evan Thomas

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