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STATE PLANNING

A FIVE-YEAR

OVERVIEW
President 

John N. Erlenborn 

Board of Directors 

Frank B. Strickland 

Atlanta, GA 

Chairman 

Lillian R. BeVier, Vice Chair Michael McKay 

Charlottesville, VA Seattle, WA 

Robert J. Dieter Thomas R. Meites 

Boulder, CO Chicago, IL 

Thomas A. Fuentes Maria Luisa Mercado 

Lake Forest, CA Galveston, TX 

Herbert S. Garten Florentino A. Subia 

Baltimore, MD El Paso, TX 

David Hall Ernestine P. Watlington 

Stoughton, MA Harrisburg, PA 

Office of Programs 

Randi Youells 

Vice President for Programs 

Michael Genz 

Director, Office of Program Performance 

Legal Services Corporation 

3333 K Street, NW 3rd Floor 

Washington, DC 20007-3522 

Phone 202.295.1500 Fax 202.337.6797 

www.lsc.gov 
State Planning: 

A Five-Year Overview 

 

The Legal Services Corporation 

(LSC) launched State Planning in 1995 

to resolve serious deficiencies in the 

national legal services delivery system. 

The project soon languished in the 

tumultuous wake of Congressionallyimposed funding cuts and restrictions 

on certain services and activities. Then 

in 1998, to help programs cope with significant funding and policy changes, LSC revived 

the initiative and achieved a critical infusion of new ideas, funds and partners into the 

national legal services community. 

 

Through state planning, LSC hoped to ameliorate the plight of thousands of 

clients denied access to civil justice. It aimed to radically revise the way legal services 

programs operated, moving them from a marginal role in a state’s justice community to a 

centerpiece function that delivered services in a linked collaboration with other 

stakeholders. At the same time, state planning also transformed LSC from funding 

agency to reformer and equity partner capable of effecting large-scale reorganization, 

consolidation and change. In the space of five years, state planning achieved its initial 

goals and more. Opponents have become allies, resources have grown dramatically, and 

technology is not only integrated into the daily life of legal services programs, but has 

spawned innovative improvements. Finally and in varying degrees, state planning helped 

legal services programs clarify and strengthen their participation their state’s equal justice 

efforts. 

 

 

LSC is a private, non-membership, nonprofit corporation in the District of 

Columbia. Eleven voting members, appointed by the President with the advice and 

consent of the Senate, compose its Board of Directors. By law the Board is bipartisan: no 

more than six members can be of the same political party. 

Introduction 

Backdrop 

State planning transformed LSC 

from funding agency to reformer and 

equity partner capable of effecting 

large-scale reorganization, consolidation and change. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 2 

Congress created LSC in 1974 to address the “need to provide equal access to the 

system of justice in our Nation for individuals who seek redress of grievances.”1

 Today, 

LSC and its grantees play a central role in providing low-income Americans with access 

to legal assistance and information concerning critical civil legal problems. LSC is 

guided by its Congressionally-mandated mission “to provide high quality legal assistance 

to those who would otherwise be unable to afford adequate legal counsel.” This mission 

is especially vital when LSC’s budget is juxtaposed against the most recent national study 

on the legal needs of the indigent estimating that approximately 80 percent of lowincome Americans do not have access to an attorney when faced with a serious situation 

where a lawyer’s assistance could make a difference. LSC does not itself provide civil 

legal assistance to eligible clients, but distributes federal funds to grantees to every state 

and territory and charges them with the responsibility of providing civil legal assistance 

to low-income people in their service area. Today, LSC funds organizations in every 

state as well as in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and 

Micronesia. 

 

The history of federally funded legal services is marked by years of support and 

expansion, followed by those in which survival was in deep doubt. During parts of this 

period, LSC actively lobbied for the abolition of federally funded legal services for 

indigent Americans. As a result, many LSC grantees grew to distrust LSC and fine-tuned 

a practice of ignoring, if not actively resisting its initiatives and directives. Isolation was 

not limited to LSC’s relationships with its grantees. Individual programs also operated in 

a vacuum. It was not uncommon for legal services staff in a state not to know staff at 

other LSC-funded entities in the same state. Work and training collaborations rarely 

occurred. LSC programs in the same state often competed against one other for scarce 

resources. The marginalization of legal services programs extended beyond LSC entities, 

and many programs maintained only limited and superficial relationships with law firm 

and judicial colleagues. Nationally, the legal services delivery system was equally 

fragmented, marked particularly with strong disagreements among program leaders on 

whether and how to change the divisive and self-defeating status quo. 

 

 

Into this rocky and complex environment, LSC launched state planning. 

Anticipating severe federal cuts in program funding, in 1995 LSC sent a letter to each 

grantee asking them to review existing systems and consider any changes that would 

improve and streamline the provision of services. LSC also offered to help strategize on 

how to stretch dollars so that all low-income clients in the state would have equal access 

to effective assistance. Grantee reaction was uneven. One or two programs crafted new 

civil legal services systems that reflected the changing times. Several forged partnerships 

with the judiciary and the private bar to strengthen local bases of support, while others 

 

1

 Public Law 93-355; Public Law 95-222. 

State Planning Roll Out 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 3 

aggressively sought out alternative funding sources. A few embraced the new 

technology, and explored how computers and related innovations could improve access 

and enhance quality. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority did nothing. 

 

By 1997 the legal services situation was more fragile. Declining federal funds 

could barely keep outdated delivery systems running. Outmoded infrastructures 

combined with recent federal restrictions on essential activities left programs unable to 

meet many eligible clients’ urgent legal needs. Even assuming that most providers 

recognized the importance of investing in complicated technology, most lacked the 

experience required to make appropriate decisions and ensure that staff used these 

technological resources effectively. Grantees were being told to diversify funding bases 

and lessen their dependency on diminishing LSC dollars, shocking many program 

directors who saw themselves as lawyers, not rainmakers. Demographic changes in client 

neighborhoods created new challenges for providers who were faced with the need to 

incorporate cultural and linguistic differences into their programs. Although all grantees 

operated with fewer dollars than was thought essential, many operated at wildly 

inefficient levels. Of greatest concern, however was the unevenness throughout the 

country of the quality of legal services. Quite naturally all of these problems combined to 

undermine morale and innovation, and many creative, energetic staff sought other 

employment. Longtime legal services supporters were pessimistic about whether the 

national delivery system could recapture the vibrancy of its early years. 

 

The need to change how the national legal services delivery system functioned 

was tremendous, but the obstacles to change were even greater. Threats to the survival of 

legal services over long periods of time undercut grantee efforts to set long-term goals. 

Reduced federal funds plus the checkered relationship between “the field” and LSC 

meant any call for change was seen as a threat. Clients and client communities, whose 

understanding of the American legal system was colored by the constant adversity 

besetting their legal services programs, had grown cynical about the federal commitment 

to civil legal services for poor people. 

 

In September 1997, the LSC Board of Directors hired John McKay to serve as 

President. President McKay was committed to establishing confidence in the 

permanence and professionalism of legal services. Recognizing that a central purpose of 

LSC is to "insure that grants and contracts are made so as to provide the most economical 

and effective delivery of legal assistance 

to both urban and rural areas,"2

 McKay 

announced his intent to create a national 

legal services delivery system grounded in 

fundamental concepts of fairness and the 

rule of law, and dedicated to providing 

efficient, effective and high-quality 

services to vulnerable Americans. 

 

 

2

 LSC Act of 1973. 

While state planning initially aimed 

to increase client access, it has come 

to encompass a variety of activities 

undertaken as part of the 

reengineering of the civil legal 

services delivery system. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 4 

The highest priority for President McKay and the LSC Board was to improve 

access to legal services by low-income persons and to ensure that each state’s civil legal 

services delivery system was both of high quality and efficient. Since less than 20 percent 

of more than 43 million low-income Americans eligible for legal services can secure 

legal assistance when faced with a civil legal problem, it was clear that new ways were 

needed to enable the delivery system to respond effectively to client needs, regardless of 

who the individual is or where in the state one lives. While state planning initially aimed 

to increase client access, it has come to encompass a variety of activities undertaken as 

part of the reengineering of the civil legal services delivery system. 

 

In January 1998, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) issued Program Letter 98-

1, which built upon and expanded on earlier letters issued in 1995.3

 The central message 

of Program Letter 98-1 was that LSC, in the exercise of its statutory responsibility to 

“insure that grants and contracts are made so as to promote the most economical and 

effective delivery of legal services to persons in both urban and rural areas,”4

 would 

require its grantees to engage in broad based planning to develop in each state a 

“comprehensive, integrated statewide delivery system” through which civil legal services 

could be provided to indigent residents. It was made clear that this planning project was 

to include, at a minimum, all LSC grantees in a state, bar organizations, law schools, the 

judiciary, IOLTA programs, client eligible persons and other providers of similar or 

related services to present and potential indigent clients. 

 

LSC Program Letter 98-1 set forth seven subject areas that state planning was to 

cover including: enhancing client access; efficiently delivering high quality legal 

assistance; effectively using technology to expand access and enhance services; 

promoting client self-help and preventive legal education and advice; managing legal 

work and training staff; coordinating and collaborating with the private bar; developing 

additional resources to support legal services delivery; and streamlining their state’s legal 

services delivery configuration so as to enhance services, reduce client barriers and 

provide high quality products. The seventh of these — and the one that has received the 

most negative attention around the country — was: 

 

Where there are a number of LSC-funded programs and/or the presence of 

very small programs, how should the legal services programs be configured 

within the state to maximize the effective and economical delivery of high quality 

legal services to eligible clients within a comprehensive, integrated delivery 

system? 

 

Grantees were required to submit a state plan covering all seven elements by 

October 1 of that year (1998). 

 

3

 See Appendix A for Program Letters 98-1, 98-6, 2000-7 and 2002-3. 

4

 42 USC 2996f(a)(3) 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 5 

Program Letter 98-1 was quickly augmented by Program Letter 98-6. Read in 

tandem, these two program letters challenged LSC grantees to reassess their practices and 

policies, restructure their legal services systems, and reallocate and build on legal 

services dollars to construct a system that depended on the smooth functioning of many 

interlocking pieces. Grantees were to expand their horizons from "what's best for the 

clients in my service area" to "what is best for clients throughout the state." While it 

seems logical now, the consideration of the needs of low income people on a statewide 

basis and meeting them with coordinated comprehensive responses was not only 

revolutionary in the late 1990’s legal services world, but could not have been 

contemplated — much less achieved — without several developments that began years 

earlier. First, the last quarter of the twentieth century saw the creation of a number of 

advocacy organizations, not funded by LSC, including advocates for immigrants, 

children, victims of domestic violence and homeless people. These boutique

organizations existed in every state but, in the main, operated outside of the LSC-funded 

system. A central tenet of state planning is that the legal services delivery system cannot 

be LSC-centric. Contributions of non-LSC providers are essential to the broader legal 

services delivery system. 

 

Second, in the mid-1990’s, Congress required LSC to set up a process for 

dispersing grant funds on a competitive basis. Until then, federal money distributed by 

LSC was given to programs annually, and required only a pro forma application process. 

Generally, the same programs were funded each year without much thought given to the 

quality and purpose of their work. LSC oversight focused primarily on determining 

whether recipients followed federal regulations governing record keeping, provision of 

services and organizational structure rather than quality of services, board leadership and 

the professionalism of the legal work. Under the new competition rubric, LSC sought and 

received proposals replete with substantive information on the applicant. Competition 

also allowed LSC to look at the quality of an applicant’s efforts on behalf of clients, and 

compare and contrast it with that of other nonprofit applicants serving similar populations 

in the state. 

 

Third, a monumental social and technological transformation was underway, 

although legal services clients and, for the most part, legal services programs were not 

participants. The race down a super-information highway toward a global village where 

information is instantly available bypassed low-income people and their advocates. Even 

as the legal profession, including the courts, geared up for computers, e-filing and 

internet research, legal services programs and poor clients remained marginalized by 

poverty, culture and language barriers. And that was a concern to many equal justice 

leaders. 

 

Finally, over the past 25 years there has been a vast change in immigration and 

cultural patterns, and legal services clients became more diverse. Clients are different 

from what they were in 1976. Many work full-time; they live in suburbs and other 

venues outside the central city. Their opportunities to visit a legal aid office and even 

talk to a lawyer on the phone are limited by workplace environments. Immigration trends 

have brought novel legal issues and clients who may not speak English very well. New 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 6 

laws and federal programs affecting legal services clients have emerged, such as those 

protecting youth and children or addressing concerns of homeless people, while others 

have totally changed or disappeared, such as AFDC. 

 

From 1998 on, LSC made participation in statewide civil legal services delivery 

systems a condition of its funding. In partnership with other members of the legal and 

advocacy community, grantees were expected to meet the most compelling needs of 

eligible clients, ensure the highest and most strategic use of available resources, and 

maximize the opportunity for clients throughout the state to receive timely, effective and 

appropriate legal services. Grantees were told to help create statewide delivery systems 

that: 

 

Identified and addressed the most important legal needs of eligible 

clients, as determined by appropriate needs assessments, taking into 

account the diversity of persons and needs in the state and its various 

communities; 

Provided low-income persons throughout the state broad and equal 

access to legal services regardless of such obstacles as disability, 

geographical isolation, culture and language; 

Provided high quality legal services to clients throughout the state, 

regardless of regional distinctions in demography, the economy, or 

the presence or absence of other local resources to provide or support 

the provision of legal services to low income persons; 

Encouraged innovation in the delivery of legal services accompanied 

by appropriate assessment of results; 

Minimized duplication of capacities and administration and made the 

best use of resources available to the delivery system as a whole and 

its component parts; and 

Had the capacity and flexibility to respond effectively to new client 

needs and other changes affecting the delivery of legal services to 

the poor. 

In addition to program letters and other written directives, LSC also engaged in 

planning by pledging to become an active equity partner in each state’s activities. 

Experienced staff, committed to a strategy of planned change, helped state justice 

communities with all aspects of planning. LSC publicly highlighted promising practices 

of visionary grantees, and at LSC Board meetings, local events and national conferences 

showcased exemplary planning efforts. Internally LSC calibrated units so that every 

programmatic effort advanced state planning, and redirected discretional funds toward 

state planning technical assistance projects to help states with particularly challenging 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 7 

aspects of planning. Grant-award decisions and visits to assess program quality focused 

on the efficacy of statewide systems and collaborative efforts. Grantees were required to 

invite representatives from all key stakeholders involved in the delivery of services to the 

low-income population in each state to form a state planning oversight group, and submit 

periodic planning reports to LSC. 

 

 LSC reinforced planning with a fourth program letter, issued in 2000, requiring 

grantees to evaluate their planning activities. In essence, Program Letter 2000-7 required 

states to evaluate the progress they had made in developing a service delivery system that 

provides relative equity in the ability of clients throughout the state to access services; 

relative equity in the capacity of the system to meet the legal needs of clients; relative 

equity to serve client communities in all their diversity; and relative equity in the 

investment of resources (federal, state, private and in-kind/pro bono) throughout the state. 

Program Letter 2000-7 required state planning bodies to report to LSC on the extent to 

which a comprehensive, integrated client-centered legal services delivery system had 

been achieved; the extent that intended outcomes of a comprehensive, integrated and 

client-centered legal services delivery system had been achieved, including but not 

limited to service effectiveness, quality, efficiency, equity in terms of client access; the 

involvement by members of the private bar in the legal lives of clients; the status of 

client-community empowerment; and whether the best organizational and human 

resource management configurations were being used. 

States were asked to respond to LSC with specific details concerning the states’ 

efforts and effectiveness in evaluating and implementing elements of their state plans. 

States were asked to address very specific areas of evaluation and improvements in the 

integration and expansion of services.5

 In this way LSC hoped to not only understand 

the changes that planning had brought to each state, but to allow grantees and their 

partners a glimpse of how their initial plans had achieved the mark or pointed to new 

challenges and concerns. Responses reflected the ability of programs to judge their 

efforts over time and the seriousness with which they had approached the call to 

restructure the state’s civil legal services delivery system. To allow LSC and individual 

states make more refined and complex assessments of a given state’s progress in state 

planning, LSC subsequently inaugurated a comprehensive state planning evaluation 

instrument. Designed by leaders from legal services programs around the country, in 

partnership with LSC and other national organizations, the instrument sets out the 

standards for state justice communities and contains criteria that will allow LSC to 

analyze and make conclusions about the civil legal services delivery system within each 

state. The instrument will reveal the strengths of each state justice community and state 

legal services delivery system, establish benchmarks against which further progress can 

be measured and gather data on which to base comparisons of state delivery systems. 

 

 

5

 In 2002, LSC issued yet another program letter, Program Letter 2002-3, that covered state planning. This 

program letter centered almost exclusively on configuration. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 8 

 

State planning has been successful 

beyond our best hopes. It is important to 

remember that “state planning” is really 

only about five years old. In the five years 

since the promulgation of Program Letter 

98-1, 32 statewide delivery systems have 

been created or improved so that each will 

be able to serve every eligible client in a 

state, despite existing geographic, cultural and physical barriers. In the past five years, 

relatively equal levels of high quality client representation in the urban, suburban and 

rural areas in each state are being achieved through appropriate use of technology, selfhelp materials, private attorneys, new intake systems and multi-cultural staff to reach 

underserved clients. There is now a high degree of involvement and commitment on the 

part of private attorney, the judiciary and the community-at-approximately 42 states. 

Most states now have a configuration of legal services providers that makes sense given 

the need for programs to operate efficiently and effectively, the need for federally-funded 

programs to minimize their administrative costs so that scarce dollars could be diverted to 

direct client services, and the need to end turf wars among and between federally-funded 

legal services programs. These states benefit from statewide delivery system in which 

federally-funded legal services providers coordinate their work with other people and 

organizations within a state including groups historically considered funding 

"competitors" (other non- profit organizations and non-LSC legal services programs) or 

"unlikely partners" (judges, legislators, bar leaders).6

 And states are learning how to 

carefully use existing resources to expand direct client services and a planned effort to 

bring additional and diverse non-federal resources into the state's legal services delivery 

system. 

 

 

 

Resistance to state planning usually centered on LSC’s call to examine and 

modify existing delivery systems. Programs challenged this aspect of planning, and 

accused LSC of trying to do away with small programs and create single grantee systems 

in each state. While this was not planning’s purpose, it is equally true that oftentimes the 

smallest programs were the least effective and most set in traditional approaches. They 

 

6

 For example, LSC technology grants support 49 statewide websites that are an indispensable 

resource throughout the state justice community giving lawyers, advocates, social service 

organizations integrated, and collaborative online resources, and expanding client access to justice. 

State Planning Achievements 

Reconfiguration 

Statewide delivery systems have been 

created or improved so that each will 

be able to serve every eligible client 

in a state, despite existing geographic, cultural and physical 

barriers. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 9 

were frequently the cause of the uneven quality of services throughout the country. LSC 

exerted pressure on stakeholders to undertake unvarnished studies of each LSC grantee in 

their state and make the difficult decision about how best to serve clients in their areas 

and in the state as a whole. It was not unusual that this required merging two or more 

programs and creating larger, stronger organizations that used a merger’s synergism to 

improve client services, relations with stakeholders, funding opportunities and 

incorporate technological advances into their modus operandi. 

 

Congress mandated a system of competition for federal funds in 1996, replacing 

presumptive refunding with a process that allowed LSC to condition grants on 

demonstrable progress in planning, the strength of their application and the quality of 

their work on behalf of clients, allowing LSC to use competition as a way of assessing 

performance and structuring mergers of weak organizations with more effective 

competitors. Over the course of state planning’s implementation (1997 to 2004), and in 

conjunction with state planners, the number of LSC grantees will have dropped from 261 

in 1997 to 138 carefully selected legal services providers, while the quality of services to 

clients has uniformly improved.7

 (See the charts in the appendix for more detailed 

information.) 

Calendar Year BFG 2004 

Service Areas 

Calendar Year BFG 1997 

Service Areas 

Service Area 

Changes 

Totals 138 261 -123 

Service area reductions as a percentage ===> -47% 

 

Over the last five year and in a surprisingly brief period of time, state planning 

completely transformed the national civil 

legal services delivery system. Since 1998, 

LSC has initiated and overseen a 

remarkable structural reconfiguration of 

LSC programs to make delivery systems 

more powerful and effective. In many 

states, legal service staff coordinate work 

on behalf of their clients. They enjoy 

 

7

 See Appendix B for maps and charts illustrating changes. Henry L. Woodward, General Counsel, Legal 

Aid Society of Roanoke Valley points out in “Restructuring of the Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley – 

A Review of the First Year” “Client service did not suffer from the transition and has improved in absolute 

numbers and in numbers of extended representation cases.” See MIE Journal (Summer 20001) pp 7 – 12, 

at 12. 

State Planning’s Legacy 

The most enduring legacy of the state 

planning initiative, at least in terms 

of its first five years, has probably 

has been its success in fostering 

cooperation among stakeholders. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 10 

expanded opportunities to improve skills and benefit from the expertise of many more 

colleagues. Client outcomes have improved. There is greater access to services and 

increased use of telephone and computer intake, allowing clients to more easily 

communicate with advocates from locales throughout the state. Programs are seeing an 

infusion of non-LSC resources, many from new funders and unexpected local sources 

such as state legislators, bar associations and foundations. Enhanced private bar 

engagement in the delivery of legal services, better training and support for advocates, 

and faster program response to emerging legal needs not only serves clients better but 

gives staff a greater satisfaction in their work. 

 

 The most enduring legacy of the state planning initiative, at least in terms of its 

first five years, has probably has been its success in fostering cooperation among 

stakeholders. In 1998, 10 states had designated state planning bodies dedicated to 

strengthening legal services. Today, over 45 states have such bodies. An essential 

function of these groups is establishing public-private coalitions to maximize grantees’ 

ability to leverage their federal investment. For example, in 2001, the engagement of 

judges, legislators and private bar members helped spawn appropriations for legal 

services in 25 states totaling $68.5 million – almost three times more than states 

appropriated in 1997. Meanwhile, private bar campaigns quadrupled their fundraising 

from $5.3 million in 1997 to $23.6 million in 2001. 

 

Ten years ago the private bar was either an adversary or a somewhat disfavored 

cousin in the legal services family. Like families with unsavory members, legal services 

programs tolerated pro bono delivery models because they were required and not as a 

way of augmenting client services. Today, in most parts of our country the partnership 

between legal services programs and the private bar are deep and true. Private lawyers 

have learned first hand about the critical work LSC programs perform for poor residents 

of their communities. In turn, grantees see the vital role private attorneys play in assuring 

that no client goes unserved. Ten years ago, a judge was someone a legal services lawyer 

saw behind the bench in court. Today judges from all levels, including chief justices of 

state supreme courts, speak out in support of quality legal services for poor people, and 

have been instrumental in ramping up pro bono efforts and bar association contributions 

to LSC programs. 

 

State planning has also made tremendous strides in expanding access for the 

fastest-growing client subgroup - non-English speakers. LSC works closely with groups 

like the African-American Project Directors Association to promote inclusion and multicultural competency in state delivery systems. Today legal services advocates are 

increasingly bilingual; more than 22 percent of staff in LSC-funded programs reports that 

they speak more than one language. And this number has grown continuously since 

1999. LSC state planning technical assistance funds and technology assistance funds 

have brought self-help, multilingual computer kiosks allowing Native Americans living 

on reservations, and Vietnamese and Spanish immigrants in California enforce their legal 

rights without speaking a word of English. 

 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 11 

Significant changes have occurred in 

each state. Through publications such as 

Building State Justice Communities and reports 

from conferences, LSC has documented many 

of these. Below are some highlights from the 

past few years. This does not represent the 

complete landscape nor does it begin to sketch 

out the new world state planning has created in 

each state’s justice community. Rather the 

indicators listed here, under headings reflecting 

state planning goals, give a glimpse into some 

of the creative projects and ideas that have 

transformed our legal services communities. 

Designated State Planning Bodies 

LSC state planning has institutionalized 

on-going, inclusive high level state planning in 

most states. State planning is an indispensable 

component of our grantees’ interaction with 

other advocates, the legal profession, state 

agencies, clients and funding sources. State 

planning is now so thoroughly integrated into 

the fabric of the legal services community that 

SPAN (a joint project of the ABA and 

NLADA) observed “state-level partnerships 

among the bar, the courts, legal services 

providers, and other stakeholders to improve 

and expand access to civil justice are 

flourishing across the country.”8[2] SPAN 

defines a state planning body as: 

 

an active Access to Justice Commission or a similar entity—a formal statelevel body dedicated to expanding and improving civil legal assistance in the 

state, composed of appointed representatives of the bar, the judiciary, and 

providers. Some include other stakeholders as well: legislators, state officials, 

clients, business and labor leaders, and representatives of law schools, 

community agencies and faith-based organizations. Typically these bodies 

were created by state Supreme Court rule. This group includes wellestablished entities ...and more recent ones.... 

 

8

 SPAN Report: Access to Justice Partnerships, State by State, Summary (April 2003). 

Indicators of Success 

INDICATORS OF SUCCESS 

Designated State Planning 

Bodies 

Increased Resources for 

Legal Services 

Increased Access to a Full 

Range of Legal Services 

Insuring High Quality 

Client-Centered Legal 

Services 

Establishing Relative 

Equity 

Achieving Integration, 

Coordination and 

Collaboration 

Developing Leadership and 

Supporting Diversity 

Informing, Educating and 

Creating Support for Legal

Services 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 12 

 

Building a state justice community demands continuous effort. The vigor and 

success of such an enterprise requires considerable attention along with dedicated 

resources and leadership. The benefit for clients and their advocates, however, is well 

worth the investment. 

One of the newest designated state planning bodies is the Alabama Access to 

Justice Commission, comprised of representatives from legal services programs, state and 

local bar associations, the Alabama Supreme Court and local courts, the IOLTA program 

and law schools. Financial and staff support from the Alabama Law Foundation 

supplements existing state bar resources. The Commission has embraced two goals to 

achieve by 2007 — annual doubling the number of clients helped and increasing legal 

services by four million dollars. Already the Commission’s work has so raised awareness 

of unmet civil legal needs that the incoming state bar president has pledged to make 

increasing legal aid for poor people one of his legacies. 

 

Created by the Arkansas Bar Association, the Arkansas Access to Justice 

Working Group recently petitioned the state supreme court to establish a permanent 

Access to Justice Commission of 15 members, appointed by the Supreme Court, the state 

bar and the governor. This high profile group is charged with devising a strategic plan 

for statewide delivery of civil legal services and educating the state’s residents about the 

importance of equal access to justice and of the problems many face in gaining effective 

access to the civil justice system. 

 

We agree that challenges continue to be complex even for well-established state 

planning bodies. But state justice communities demand much more than the formation of 

a state planning entity. At the request of the incoming state bar president, the Louisiana 

state justice community has undertaken a diversity and leadership training to deepen 

stakeholders’ understanding of the vital role inclusion and cultural competence play in 

attaining high quality service and equal access. Guided by visionary leadership and staff, 

Louisiana is also moving to build partnerships across regional lines that will open up 

funding avenues and lead to innovative projects targeting poor people in the southeast 

quadrant of the country. 

In Oregon, planners realized that a sophisticated and costly survey of client 

communities was necessary to design a delivery system that would effectively serve the 

present and future needs of the states’ poorest residents, particularly new Americans and 

those with nontraditional legal problems. Bold and innovative assessment instruments 

were developed and implemented. The state must now turn to the more demanding task 

of amending current protocols and structures to meet newly discovered demands. 

The Texas Access to Justice Commission was created by the Texas Supreme 

Court in 2001. Its membership includes three judges, two Texas State Bar Board 

members, representatives from the legal services programs in the state along with (in ex 

officio capacity) a state senator, state representative and the governor’s general counsel. 

The Commission soon realized its first legislative success, the dedication of $2.5 million 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 13 

annually for two years that allowed legal services programs to expand access for victims 

of crime. The Commission continues to seek legislative appropriation funds for legal 

services programs despite a troubling economic downturn. Commission members were 

instrumental in the state bar’s creation of an opt-out format for members’ Access to 

Justice Contribution, an effort that generated more than a million dollars in one year. 

Even as it maintains its catalyst role, the Commission faces new challenges, including 

implementing a statewide survey of clients’ legal needs, finding funds for loan repayment 

programs for poverty law advocates, and expanding access for self-represented litigants. 

It must also help the state justice community weather significant changes in its delivery 

system stemming from the reconfiguration of historical LSC grantees’ boundaries and the 

installation of sophisticated internet-based intake systems. 

Washington State’s equal justice community, one of the first in the country to 

establish a state planning oversight body and boldly address configuration problems, is 

facing what members perceive to be the highest level of fiscal uncertainty in years. Cuts 

in state funding and IOLTA have resulted in the loss of millions of dollars for justice 

initiatives; new legislation failed and costs for the provision of legal services to an 

increasingly diverse community are mounting. Nonetheless planners have maintained if 

not deepened their commitment to expanding access and providing the highest quality 

services to all who need them. The state will close the year by releasing a plan, based on 

the strong commitment of its Access to Justice Board and Washington’s Judicial 

Information Service, to achieve the highest degree of coordination in meeting the 

technological needs of the justice system to increase meaningful access for poor people. 

A summit, the culmination of a year-long effort, will produce an action plan to open up 

courthouses and their components via technology to self-represented litigants, low 

income clients and their advocates. Even as the AJT Board embarks on this enormous 

undertaking, it is also carefully examining the current delivery system for how it must 

pursue new directions and structures to accommodate both the rocky financial landscape 

and how technology is changing day-to-day program operations. 

 

State planners must be open to changing systems to accommodate unexpected 

events, problematic and fortunate. Ohio has been a model for illustrating how planning 

oversight and development must be incorporated into the everyday work of the justice 

community. As new issues and concerns arise, the Ohio designated state planning body 

does not shy from placing them on their agenda. Now configuration of LSC and nonLSC programs is on the table again even though the state examined its delivery system 

some time ago and significantly restructured it. Planners are also reviewing and 

considering changes in how the state approaches resource development, delivery of 

services and enhancing pro bono efforts. Ohio has learned that as client communities and 

needs evolve, new resources are found and planners must be alert to ways in which their 

communities of justice must adapt to new challenges. Two years ago, a commentator 

noted that “how programs are structured, how various providers are coordinated and 

integrated into an effective whole, and ultimately how civil legal assistance for low-
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 14 

income persons is provided, will be dependent as much on actions taken at the state as on 

the national level.”9

 Ohio is fulfilling this prophecy. 

Increased Resources for Legal Services 

As stakeholders deepen their understanding of the role that legal services work 

plays in the well-being of their communities, resources for it have increased across the 

nation. State planners’ creativity in developing novel approaches to address emerging 

legal needs and changing client demographics has moved traditional program-byprogram fundraising techniques to a coordinated statewide level that lowers costs, raises 

impact and produces more dollars. 

 

The New Mexico legislature established a Civil Legal Services Fund by adding a 

$25 fee on all civil filings. In May, 2002, the Fund awarded its first two year grants of 

$2.4 million to civil legal services providers in the state. Last year, the Pennsylvania 

legislature passed an Access to Justice Act which created a filing fee surcharge expected 

to generate $3.8 million. So widespread was the realization that legal services programs 

improved the state’s quality of life that the bill passed the Pennsylvania House by a vote 

of 189-8. A subcommittee of the Virginia Planning Assembly, the Funding Planning 

Committee, spearheaded the implementation of an action item in Virginia’s State Plan to 

double the existing filing fee surcharge of $2 per case. While the state’s legal services 

programs have received state general revenue appropriations for over twenty years, the 

filing fee surcharge had never been increased. 

For over 20 years, the Florida Bar Foundation and the Florida Project Directors 

Association tried unsuccessfully to obtain state funding for legal services. As state 

planning activities increased and emphasis on statewide considerations of client and 

funding needs grew, a legislative strategy emerged that reflected planners’ recent 

statewide perspectives. It was instrumental in passage of a bill appropriating two million 

dollars for legal services projects around the state. Similarly in Mississippi, as statewide 

planning efforts focused more and more on statewide solutions, the state legislature took 

notice and created the Civil Legal Assistance Fund. Planners anticipate that the 

legislature will authorize a $5 civil court filing fee surcharge and direct the funds it 

generates to legal services programs. 

 

Under the aegis of the New Hampshire Bar Foundation, three legal services 

programs in the state merged their fundraising initiatives into a single statewide 

Campaign for Legal Services. The goal is to increase participation as well as to increase 

the amount of individual donations. Over $500,000 has already been pledged or raised, 

and planners anticipate reaching their goal of $750,000 by the close of 2003. 

 

 

9

 “Civil Legal Assistance – Five Years Later,” Alan Houseman, Management Information Exchange 

Journal 23 – 33, at 24 (Fall 2000), adding that with state planning, “the legal services community has begun 

a long overdue transformation of its structure and work into a new and more effective civil legal assistance 

system.” 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 15 

Increased resources does not just mean money. Community engagement and 

support broadens political acceptance for and recognition of the critical nature of our 

programs’ efforts on behalf of the poorest people in our country. For example, the 

California legislature has enacted a law requiring all firms that have contracts with the 

state for over $50,000 to engage in pro bono work. In Indiana an enhanced volunteer 

pilot has engaged staff to recruit, train and organize recognition events for attorney and 

non-attorney volunteers. As a result volunteer participation has risen dramatically, with 

one small project producing 269 pro bono attorneys, 50 intake specialists, four support 

staff, three attorney assistants, three Spanish translators and three law students. The 

project has also allowed legal services programs to expand intake beyond traditional 

working hours and accommodate schedules of the working poor. Such community 

involvement has also increased donations. 

Increased Access to a Full Range of Legal Services 

Equal access to justice is grounded in fairness and a belief that the states have an 

affirmative responsibility to assure that everyone has the opportunity to seek the redress 

of their grievances within the legal system. Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6 instructed 

LSC grantees to address specific questions related to access within the context of state 

planning: What are the major barriers a low-income person faces in gaining access to 

justice in the state? What efforts can be taken on a statewide basis to expand client 

access to the courts, provide preventive legal education and advice, and enhance self-help 

opportunities for low-income persons? State justice communities juggle competing 

demands for scarce resources. While expanding access most frequently involves 

constructing and expanding telephone intake and internet systems that target clients and 

self-represented litigants, each state justice community must also consider the rising need 

for attorney representation in discrete legal matters, extended representation in complex 

matters and legislative and administrative advocacy. Partnerships have been as 

worthwhile as increased funds to planning bodies that are seeking to coordinate responses 

and build on the synergism of joint projects as they strive to attain the vision of their state 

plan’s promise of full access and effective services. 

State agency practices and procedures enormously affect access to justice for lowincome people. As much as its formal policies, a state agency’s culture can influence 

how well poor people obtain just resolutions for legal emergencies. Since 1999, Maine 

has been improving state government procedures affecting the legal rights of Mainers, 

especially low-income people, through the work of a task force, a partnership with state 

agencies, the court and legal services providers. The task force identifies best practices 

and publicly commends state offices with the best Web site, most responsive telephone 

services, and most user-friendly application process. Currently, the task force is drafting 

training materials for supervisors that not only discuss current laws, but contain 

suggestions for best practices including improved customer service. 

 

The Judicial Council or policy-making body for the California state courts has set 

access to justice as the first of six planning priorities. To that end, it has adopted an 

access protocol directing the courts to seek comment from the legal services community 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 16 

before implementing any new initiatives to ensure there is not undue interference with 

access. As part of the protocol, the Council must expressly consider the impact of 

proposed rules, forms, and other actions on low and moderate income litigants, identify 

and address existing barriers to access, and seek to prevent actions, rules, standards, and 

forms adopted by the Judicial Council from creating additional barriers to participation 

by low- and moderate-income litigants. 

 

Up to 40 percent of eligible callers to Utah Legal Services (ULS), a statewide 

program, did not speak with an advocate because ULS was unable to re-contact them 

after taking a message, or the client failed to keep a scheduled appointment for a 

telephonic or in-person interview. Resolved to reduce this number by having each 

prospective client speak with a knowledgeable advocate on the first call, the program 

installed advanced telephone technologies and now operates a successful centralized 

intake system based on cooperative partnerships around the state. “Lost” clients have 

markedly diminished over the past two years and most callers receive immediate and 

high quality legal assistance, and staff forge relationships with experts and resources 

heretofore unknown or unavailable. 

 

Last year Arkansas launched the Arkansas Legal Services Partnership (ALSP) to 

accelerate collaboration and achieve the goals of state planning by developing statewide 

legal education materials and piloting a statewide pro se divorce kit. Three existing 

websites will be folded into one that informs the public about legal services, legal rights 

and responsibilities and is a data repository and other informational resource for legal 

services advocates. Historically each legal services organization prepared its own 

educational and pro se kits. Now the new materials will be used by all legal services 

groups and available on the new website. 

In an unprecedented statewide collaboration to increase access, the Illinois State 

Bar Association in conjunction with legal services programs and educators established 

the Illinois Technology Center for Law & the Public Interest (ITC). Designed to offer 

important information via the internet to both the public and to legal aid advocates, the 

ITC furthers two state planning goals: increasing access for clients and improving 

coordination among providers. Through its public web site (www.illinoislawhelp.org), 

ITC provides a wide range of law-related resources such as a searchable directory to the 

most likely source of legal assistance, a comprehensive library of self-help information, 

and interactive multimedia presentations that walk a client through solutions to common 

legal problems. 

California’s I-CAN!, a web-based legal services kiosk, offers convenient, 

effective access to vital legal services. Developed by the Legal Aid Society of Orange 

County, I-CAN! creates properly formatted pleadings, provides court tours, and educates 

users on the law and how to pursue their matter. I-CAN! software facilitates completion 

and filing of forms for answers to governmental complaints regarding parental 

obligations, domestic violence restraining orders, orders to show cause, earned income 

tax credits, fee waivers, license denial reviews; paternity petitions, small claims matters 

and unlawful detainers. Users access the program for free on any computer connected to 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 17 

the internet and through kiosks in courthouses, legal aid offices, community centers, 

women’s shelters, and libraries. It serves hard to reach groups such as rural communities 

and individuals with limited or no English proficiency as some modules can be accessed 

in Spanish and Vietnamese. Partnerships with the courts, local government agencies, 

libraries and legal services organizations mean that I-CAN! modules are stationed in San 

Diego, Sacramento, Sonoma County and Imperial County. 

 

Insuring High Quality Client-Centered Legal Services 

One of the primary goals of the LSC Act is to insure and provide high quality 

legal services to poor persons, while the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility directs 

that legal services be client centered. Such services occur only with careful planning, 

sophisticated legal management structures, skilled advocacy and training, and diverse 

partnerships that combine to support high quality service even when it is unpopular to do 

so. Achieving this goal also means that many resources must be obtained and utilized in 

most effectively. When designing delivery systems to meet this end, planning considers 

the available and potential resources in the context of existing and new client needs. 

 

Legal need studies are useful not only in identifying the critical concerns of low 

income persons and allocating resources accordingly, but also for developing strategies to 

obtain resources and meet growing needs. Statewide, high level partnerships formed 

early on with the judiciary, bar, social services agencies, law schools and client groups 

prior to conducting a legal needs study, increase buy-in, improve the quality of the 

process and ensure the success of short and long term strategies. Legal needs studies 

conducted in Oregon and Washington have found data useful to both designers of state 

delivery systems and legislators. In Montana, a similar effort is underway building on the 

Oregon and Washington models. And recently, the Vermont Supreme Court surveyed 

low income people and members of the justice system and legal profession, and learned 

that 75 percent of Vermont’s low-income residents face their legal problems without 

help. An action plan with recommendations to the Vermont Supreme Court in three areas 

— direct legal services, pro bono services, and pro se assistance – is underway. 

 

Once legal needs are understood, staff must be trained to meet them appropriately 

and in a coherent statewide fashion. To achieve this, California planners organized 60 

training sessions for legal services representatives, court personnel, pro bono program 

staff, pro bono attorneys and others. Over 350 participants met to learn and begin or 

expand collaborations. The success of the first effort prompted planners to schedule 

another for 2005. 

 

Establishing Relative Equity 

Relative equity, the phrase and principles, were articulated by LSC first in 

Program Letter 2000-7 and later institutionalized in Program Letter 2002-3 setting forth 

configuration standards. Relative equity’s hallmarks include: 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 18 

Providing low income persons throughout the state broad prompt and 

relatively equitable access to legal services regardless of obstacles such as, 

geographical isolation as well as physical or mental disability, age, race, 

gender, sexual orientation. 

Promoting relative equity in the availability of the full range of client 

service capacities. 

Insuring relatively equal access to resources, expertise, information and 

experience necessary to provide high quality legal services consistent with 

state and national standards. 

Providing relative equity in the investment of civil equal justice resources 

(federal, state, private and in-kind) throughout the state. 

Promoting shared urban-based private capacity with rural and isolated 

clients. 

 

For planners, the push to make access more equally available to all poor residents 

of a given state most often involves efforts to enlarge capacities for legal services in rural 

communities and among groups of people for whom a lack of proficiency in English 

creates an insurmountable barrier. Programs around the country have attacked this 

problem in different ways, but most activities require stakeholders to find new partners, 

new venues and staff with cultural experiences that parallel those of the target population. 

 

An array of stakeholders helped Utah Legal Services establish an outreach center 

in collaboration with students from Brigham Young University Law School. The 

outreach project opened on the Ute Indian tribe’s Uintah & Ouray reservation and so one 

component of the training involved sensitizing the law students to the tribe’s culture and 

history. The Ute Tribal Court had no protective order statute, and so ULS staff and BYU 

students first helped the Court enforce other existing statutes against abusers. Ultimately, 

the project was so successful that the Tribal Council has adopted protective order 

provisions. Now ULS staff and BYU students regularly appear in Tribal Court 

representing victims. Participation in the project involved a 500 mile round trip commute 

to the isolated reservation during one semester, and over a dozen students made it on an 

almost weekly basis. Student engagement has increased and they now act as guardians ad 

litem for Ute children. The project’s collaborative roots are reflected in its funding base, 

also — a joint effort of ULS, BYU, the Tribal Court and Utah Office of Crime Victim 

Reparations. 

 

One result of community cooperation in Maryland is a multi-lingual public legal 

information website providing access to those with limited English proficiency. 

Information on legal rights, responsibilities and resources is posted in Spanish, Korean, 

Chinese, Russian, Tagalog and Haitian Creole. The site is the collective product of ten 

legal services providers and is funded in part by LSC technical grants. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 19 

Inspired by the ABA model for school-based legal assistance, Rhode Island Legal 

Services instituted an outreach project at an elementary school, enhancing the school’s 

Child Opportunity Zone (COZ), established in 1994. The COZ is an area within the 

school that houses a school-based health center; adult literacy service and other 

community resources designed to prepare children for school. The legal services 

component gives the Cape Verdean community legal assistance in Portuguese and Creole 

at their children’s school. 

 

In the same spirit, stakeholders in Indiana have established a special center for 

Spanish speaking clients. Advocates there have become expert in legal areas that affect 

poor Latinos, particularly migrants. Outreach goes deep into the community through 

churches and other venues where clients gather. Publicity spots on Spanish language 

radio and television programs also ensure that a wide group of potential clients is aware 

of the Center. In partnership with the Mexican Consulate, faith-based organizations, the 

Supreme Court and private bar, trainings in substantive areas of law and cultural 

considerations are on-going. LSC funds helped the state justice community launch 

Indiana’s first statewide Spanish language legal services telephone hotline. 

 

Achieving Integration, Coordination and Collaboration 

Integrated and coordinated approaches are critical to systemic change and equity 

of access for clients. Clients are better served and all programs in a state are more 

effective, economical and efficient when stakeholder resources are strategically combined 

to ensure that the most vulnerable have access to justice. Effective coordination improves 

the efficient use of resources, minimizes duplication and facilitates the appropriate 

division of labor. Several states have shown themselves to be models of integrated legal 

work, resource development and deployment, and staff training and support 

 

In 2000, Washington planners began replicating their statewide planning model at 

the regional level. In turn this led to a focus on strategies for addressing substantive 

client legal needs and allocation of resources at the local level. The process required three 

major regional justice conferences, an ongoing collaboration in the Seattle-King County 

region, and increased cooperation among the various providers of free legal services in 

the geographically vast agricultural regions of the state. The regional planning processes 

have helped young leaders emerge, as new voices articulated regional service delivery 

principles and goals. Regional planning has also leveraged new resources and local 

support for the advocacy efforts of participating organizations 

The Tennessee State Plan for Equal Justice calls for the Tennessee Alliance for 

Legal Services (TALS) to coordinate six substantive law task forces. Thus the Consumer 

and the Housing taskforces initiated joint work on predatory mortgage lending practices. 

Concurrently, the Tennessee General Assembly established a Joint Study Committee on 

Predatory Lending, TALS and members of the legal aid community were asked to work 

assist the Committee analyze the current law and identify clients willing to describe its 

effects on them. Legal Aid attorneys and TALS have responded to legislative requests 

for comments on draft legislation and the impact of current laws on the state’s residents. 

New legislation is expected this year. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 20 

 

Developing Leadership and Supporting Diversity 

Immigration has not only changed the workforce in our country, and enlivened 

our communities with new food, music, languages and ideas; it has also influenced the 

roles and expectations for legal services programs. Recognizing this, state justice 

communities have moved rapidly to become as diverse and multi-cultural as the 

communities they serve. LSC challenged each state to examine ways in which it should 

change to meet the overwhelming needs of disenfranchised populations, many of whom 

speak English less than proficiently. A renewed commitment to inclusion has marked the 

planning process in most states. 

Increasingly, legal services programs are discovering that offering loan repayment 

assistance to their attorneys is an attractive recruitment tool. The enormous burden of 

school loan repayments bars many new lawyers from sustaining a career in public interest 

law or from entering the field altogether. Some LSC grantees and IOLTA programs are 

pursuing the loan repayment or other cash incentive efforts designed to help new lawyers 

balance law school debt with poverty law careers. To this end, the South Carolina Centers 

for Equal Justice has adopted a loan forgiveness program that is further enhanced by 

aggressive efforts to recruit staff from national venues rather than from in-state only, as 

was the former practice of the state’s legal services programs. This has resulted in the 

hiring and retaining of several talented minority attorneys with views and experiences 

that invigorate the practice of poverty law. 

 

Last year the state’s IOLTA provider, the Legal Services Center of Virginia, 

conducted a diversity assessment of its grantees’ delivery systems, comparing staff and 

leadership to client communities. Then, LSCV committed itself and its grantees (LSC 

and non-LSC) to a year of diversity study and devised an agenda for quarterly trainings to 

which each program has promised to send staff. The goal is to raise sensitivity and 

commitment to inclusion, and promote a realization of how beneficial diversity is to staff 

morale, to client services and satisfaction, and to program leadership. Trainings are 

underway and participants have been pivotal in helping their organizations expand multicultural competence. 

 

Prompted by a similar realization, Legal Services of Oklahoma (LASO), in 

conjunction with the Oklahoma Bar Association (OBA), hosted a day long study of 

barriers to access that occur when diversity concerns are overlooked. Defining Diversity: 

with Liberty and Justice for All brought together the talents of many legal organizations 

and advocacy groups along with state and local government agencies in a first ever 

meeting of more than 150 people to raise awareness and examine internal and external 

diversity issues. Attendees included judges and members of the state legislature. 

Evaluations showed positive results. One non-lawyer wrote “I was seated with a group of 

other people from the community who were not lawyers and we all commented we had 

no idea the bar association was this concerned and this compassionate.” The conference 

is considered the first phase of an on-going project, with another planned for 2004. 

 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 21 

Approaching this challenge from another angle, the Washington State Northwest 

Justice Project and Columbia Legal Services are tackling diversity through staff 

workgroups. Teams are charged respectively with educating colleagues about ways of 

incorporating diversity into the workplace, creating and implementing strategies for 

expanding services to diverse populations and fostering a safe haven for staff to examine 

and resolve workplace diversity concerns. 

 

Informing, Educating and Creating Support for Legal Services 

No goals can be successfully achieved or sustained without broad community 

support. Increasingly planners see the role of sophisticated communications campaigns 

to inform, educate and create support for legal services among all constituents. 

 

Iowa, Texas and Pennsylvania were selected to participate in the Pilot States 

Project, an initiative of the ABA, LSC and NLADA. In 2000, the ABA commissioned a 

public opinion study that surveyed attitudes toward civil legal aid. Results revealed that 

almost 90% of the public supports the principle of legal aid but the work and existence of 

programs is hardly known. Only 13 percent of the public realizes that civil legal aid 

programs exist and can name one. Thus the Pilot States Project was launched to develop 

a statewide communications strategy framework in several states, form replicable models 

for equal justice leaders elsewhere, and encourage branding consistency for civil legal aid 

on a statewide and national basis. These states will craft strategies that will lead to 

greater recognition for their work and stronger visibility for clients and their issues. 

Already Iowans have seen more publicity on legal services efforts in print media, and 

lawmakers are learning how legal services programs benefit constituents of all economic 

levels. 

 

In Pennsylvania, merely branding of the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network has 

allowed the entire state justice community to enjoy the goodwill accrued by 

Pennsylvania’s legal aid programs. Additionally it has allowed those involved to 

construct consistent messages based on an amalgam of their materials. Communication 

collaborations highlighted the importance of the messenger as well as the message, as all 

too often a spokesperson’s inexperience undermines effectiveness. To ensure that legal 

aid advocates are skilled sources for reporters and convey powerful and persuasive 

messages to funders, two-day training was held involving role-playing for media 

encounters and funder meetings. Since the development of its communications 

framework, Pennsylvania advocates have seen more opportunities to advance their 

positive message through television coverage, published op-ed pieces, statewide honors, 

development of shared materials and a focused effort to garner media attention 

throughout the state. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 22 

 

 

When the LSC Board of 

Directors approved Strategic Directions 

2000-2005, it placed state planning 

squarely on the table as LSC’s primary 

tool for improving access to justice 

within its recipient community.10 Since 

its revitalization five years ago, state 

planning — a strategic initiative of 

national dimension — realized its goal. 

Civil legal services delivery systems in 

every state are now more capable of 

meeting the legal needs of this century’s 

clients, more efficient at turning novel 

technologies to this purpose, and far 

better poised to “provide equal access to the system of justice in our Nation for 

individuals who seek redress of grievances.” 

 

The effort has been extraordinarily difficult and challenging. At times, tension 

between LSC and the field rose dramatically. Learning curves existed, especially with 

technology innovations and with short-lived ramifications. Mergers demanded more time 

and attention than affected programs and LSC anticipated. But successes were soon 

visible and energized the state planning process, inspiring further work. 

 

The steadfast support of several key national organizations was critical to state 

planning’s accomplishments. The American Bar Association, particularly through its 

Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and the Commission on 

Interest on Lawyer Trust Accounts, was a dedicated partner. Success would not have 

occurred without the significant involvement of the National Legal Aid and Defender 

Association. We could not have achieved our goals in five years, and perhaps not at all, 

without their commitment. The Center for Law and Social Policy, particularly through 

its leadership, was equally engaged. We are grateful to each of these essential partners, 

and appreciate their commitment to the promise of state planning — a national legal 

services delivery system grounded in fundamental concepts of fairness and the rule of 

law, and dedicated to providing efficient, effective and high-quality services to 

vulnerable Americans. 

 

 

10 “The State Planning Initiative embodies LSC’s primary strategy for increasing access to and availability 

of services throughout the United States.” LSC Board of Directors, Strategic Directions: 2000 – 2005 

(January 28, 2000), page 5.

Conclusion 

In just five years, state planning 

realized its goal. Civil legal services 

delivery systems in every state are 

now more capable of meeting the 

legal needs of clients, more efficient 

at turning novel technologies to this 

purpose, and far better poised to 

“provide equal access to the system 

of justice in our Nation for 

individuals who seek redress of

grievances.” 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 23 

The true beneficiaries of LSC's state planning initiative are the low-income people 

seeking access to civil justice who cannot afford adequate legal representation, including 

those who need help with domestic violence, wrongful eviction, consumer fraud, denial 

of benefits, and child custody disputes. As illustrated in this report, state planning has 

ameliorated geographic inequities by redrawing program boundaries to fit today’s client 

communities. It strengthened client access to program offices by encouraging grantees to 

establish service environments built around client schedules, such as introducing evening 

and weekend hours for working clients. State planning’s emphasis on using technology 

to connect clients with programs created opportunities for clients to enter the legal 

services delivery system through shelters, churches, libraries, courthouses and other 

public spaces. State planning underlined the need for programs to consider the legal, 

linguistic and cultural needs of new Americans for whom our country remains the 

Promised Land, but where language and customs can interfere with realizing the promise 

of justice. 

 

It is widely acknowledged that the need to restructure an organization or delivery 

system is often triggered from the outside. Left to their own devices, organizations strive 

for stability and continuity. Before LSC placed the issues of revision, consolidation and 

change squarely on the table, few states had undertaken a principled evaluation of the 

civil equal justice delivery system's capacity to meet the full spectrum of client needs. 

With the inauguration of state planning, LSC catalyzed fundamental changes in the 

delivery of critical civil legal services to the poorest people in our society and reinforced 

the rule of law in our nation. 

 

For our clients, those who seek our assistance today, tomorrow, next week, next 

month and next year, justice is what we make it. It is no better than our efforts and 

dedication. And, while that is a wonderful gift, it is also a terrifying, awe-inspiring and 

humbling responsibility. 
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 

State Planning: 

A Five-Year Overview 

APPENDIX A
PROGRAM LETTER 98-1 

To: All LSC Program Directors

From: John A. Tull

 Vice President, Programs

Date: February 12, 1998

Subject: State Planning 

Summary

This Program Letter calls upon all LSC recipients to participate in a state planning

process to examine, from a statewide perspective, what steps should be taken in their states to

develop further a comprehensive, integrated statewide delivery system. State planners should

evaluate whether all programs are working in a coordinated fashion to assure that pressing client

needs are being met, that sufficient capacities for training and information sharing exist, that

programs are moving forward together on technology, and are collaborating to increase resources

and develop new initiatives to expand the scope and reach of their services.

In states with a number of LSC-funded programs and/or the presence of very small

programs, a key question to be answered is whether the current structure of the state delivery

system, and specifically the number of programs, constitutes the most effective and economical

way to meet client needs throughout the state.

The state planning process should develop a report to be submitted to LSC on or before

October 1, 1998. We will be guided by your recommendations when making our funding

decisions for FY 1999 and beyond.

Background

1995 Program Letter. In July 1995, in anticipation of Congressional action on LSC’s

1996 appropriation, we asked recipients in each state to participate in the development of a plan

for the design, configuration and operation of LSC-funded programs in the state. In view of
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

2

potential LSC funding cuts and Congressional restrictions on client services, we were especially

concerned that recipients work closely with other stakeholders (e.g., state and local bar

associations, IOLTA funders, the judiciary, client groups, non-LSC-funded programs, and others

with an interest in legal services) to develop an integrated delivery system to address client

needs. A subsequent August 1995 Program Letter outlined the issues and criteria the state

planning process should address. Included were integration of LSC-funded programs into a

statewide legal services system; advisability of consolidation of programs; consideration of

efficient intake and provision of advice and brief service; appropriate use of technology;

engagement of pro bono attorneys; and development of additional resources.

Responses to Changes in Laws Affecting Clients and LSC Recipients. Much has

occurred since August 1995. Fundamental changes have been made in laws and programs

affecting eligible clients -- changes which have increased clients’ need for legal information,

advice, and representation. At the same time, LSC appropriation measures have resulted in deep

funding cuts for many programs, elimination of LSC funding of national and state support

entities, and dramatic changes in the range of services LSC recipients are permitted to perform. 

In response, many states have initiated planning processes, developed new partnerships to

leverage resources, expanded funding sources, implemented new technologies, and launched

innovative methods for serving clients.

Efforts to develop and strengthen comprehensive delivery systems in order to improve

and expand client services continue in many states. Equal Justice Commissions, Bar sponsored

committees, and organizations of legal services providers continue to explore ways to maximize

services in a changed and changing environment. LSC supports these ongoing state efforts and

encourages others.

1998 Grant Decisions. In the 1998 LSC grant competition, we determined that grants in

several states that were eligible for three year funding should be made for a shorter period. For

North Carolina, grants were made for one year. For New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and

Virginia, grants were made for two years. The decision to award grants for a shorter period was

made for two reasons: (1) to encourage recipients in these states to develop further their plans

for a comprehensive, integrated statewide delivery system; and, (2) concern that the number of

LSC-funded programs in these states may not constitute the most economical and effective

configuration for delivering legal services to the low-income community.

1998 Program Letter. This Program Letter calls upon all recipients to re-examine and

adjust as necessary their state delivery plans in order to further improve and expand legal services

to eligible clients within the state.

A Comprehensive, Integrated Statewide Delivery System.
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

3

In re-evaluating delivery plans, recipients should examine the progress they have made in

the past two and one half years in developing a comprehensive, integrated statewide delivery

system. Careful planning and coordination is necessary to insure that pressing legal needs do not

go unmet and that resources are used wisely and economically. States must continue to innovate

and develop new strategies and alternative delivery models to make the most of scarce resources

-- to reach more clients, and to provide higher quality services through enhanced use of

information technology; centralized intake systems providing advice, brief services, and referrals;

expansion of community legal education, pro se, and other methods promoting client self-help;

better coordination with volunteer private attorneys; and other, similar initiatives requiring

substantial resources and expertise to undertake.

There are many ways for states to achieve these goals. Many excellent models exist of

statewide fundraising, integrated technology, statewide and regional hotlines, pro se projects,

taskforces and training. Recipients should evaluate which approaches will work best in their

states to achieve an even stronger, more effective system for addressing client needs.

Recipients must also examine how the present configuration of programs, and specifically

the number of programs, impacts upon the overall effectiveness of the state delivery system. In

this regard, it is especially important that each participant look at client services, not from the

view of just one city, or one county, or one program, but from a statewide perspective.

What Is Required by This Letter

In the past two and one half years, several states have undertaken extensive processes to

evaluate their delivery systems and have implemented, or are in the process of implementing,

many state planning recommendations. Additionally, some states have ongoing planning

processes involving a wide variety of stakeholders in the civil justice system. We do not intend

such states to repeat past, or supplant current processes. Instead, we ask recipients to either work

within ongoing processes or develop new ones appropriate to the situation in each state. In either

case, we hope recipients and other stakeholders will view this process as an opportunity to join

together to strengthen the delivery system and improve and expand services to clients.

In this context we call upon each LSC-funded program to share responsibility for

ensuring that a statewide planning process, whether ongoing or to be initiated, addresses the

questions discussed further below. For each question state planners should:

C assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current approach;

C establish goals to strengthen and expand services to eligible clients; and

C determine the major steps and a timetable necessary to achieve those goals.
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

1

 LSC will provide guidance at a later date on the format for this report.

4

A report should be submitted to LSC on or before October 1, 1998.1 If a state has

recently developed a plan which addresses the substance of one or more of the following

questions, for those questions, the state need only report on the pertinent section(s) of that plan. 

In exceptional cases, it may not be possible for a state planning process to fully address

all of the following questions. In such cases, recipients should contact the LSC staff member

responsible for their state.

The questions to be addressed are:

1. How are intake and delivery of advice and referral services structured within

the state? What steps can be taken to ensure a delivery network that

maximizes client access, efficient delivery, and high quality legal assistance?

2. Is there a state legal services technology plan? How can technological

capacities be developed statewide to assure compatibility, promote efficiency,

improve quality, and expand services to clients?

3. What are the major barriers low-income persons face in gaining access to

justice in the state? What efforts can be taken on a statewide basis to expand

client access to the courts, provide preventive legal education and advice, and

enhance self-help opportunities for low-income persons?

4. Do program staff and pro bono attorneys throughout the state receive the

training and have access to information and expert assistance necessary for

the delivery of high quality legal services? How can statewide capacities be

developed and strengthened to meet these needs?

5. What is the current status of private attorney involvement in the state? 

What statewide efforts can be undertaken to increase the involvement of

private attorneys in the delivery of legal services?

6. What statewide financial resources are available for legal services to lowincome persons within the state? How can these resources be preserved and

expanded?

7. Where there are a number of LSC-funded programs and/or the presence of

very small programs, how should the legal services programs be configured
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

5

within the state to maximize the effective and economical delivery of high

quality legal services to eligible clients within a comprehensive, integrated

delivery system?

1. Intake and the Provision of Advice and Brief Services.

How are intake and delivery of advice and referral services structured within the state? 

What steps can be taken to ensure a delivery network that maximizes client access,

efficient delivery, and high quality legal assistance?

A successful intake system is critical to effective and comprehensive delivery of legal

services. Over the past two years many programs have instituted centralized telephone intake

and delivery systems which provide high quality advice and brief service assistance, and

promptly refer clients whose problems require more assistance to program case handlers or other

resources. In a number of states, statewide or regional systems, using advanced telephone and

computer technology, have consolidated these functions in one location where trained,

experienced staff provide prompt access for clients and minimize the risk of multiple referrals or

loss of clients. These systems improve the quantity and quality of advice, brief service and

referral assistance while increasing the number of extended service cases which can be handled

by the program.

State planners should evaluate the current status of intake and delivery of advice and

referral services within the state and develop strategies for improvement. Consideration should

be given to developing regional and statewide intake and delivery systems which:

C Are client-centered, providing ease of access to legal services and prompt, high

quality assistance or referral;

C Use specialization to enhance case evaluation and provision of advice, brief

service and referral assistance;

C Make effective use of technology; and

C Provide oversight and follow-up to ensure high quality legal services and client

satisfaction.

2. Effective Use of Technology.

Is there a state legal services technology plan? How can technological capacities be

developed statewide to assure compatibility, promote efficiency, improve quality, and
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

6

expand services to clients?

Within individual programs, effective use of technology can reduce the cost and

substantially enhance the quality of services. Collectively, technology can dramatically improve 

the capacity of staff throughout the state to quickly exchange and share information, improving

their ability to stay current with the law, develop legal strategies, write briefs and otherwise serve

clients. In the past two years, many programs have significantly increased their technological

capacities. On a statewide level, programs have used new technologies to establish E-mail

communication with all legal services staff throughout the state; to connect with other service

providers; to exchange information with private attorneys participating in PAI efforts; to

establish centralized brief/pleadings/forms/manuals/ information banks; to create resource

centers for information on state law and policy developments; and to establish unified case

management systems which allow for data collection and outcome measures. New technologies

involving the Internet and advanced telephone and computer applications have also been used to

provide legal and program resource information to clients. 

Improving and staying current with technology is costly and makes it all the more

important that states take a unified approach and develop a technology plan that will maximize

collective capacity while minimizing cost. A state technology plan should establish reasonable

goals and set forth steps to:

C Assure that all programs have networked computer access for all staff; integrated

case management; computerized timekeeping; E-mail and the ability to

electronically transfer documents; computerized financial management systems;

and technological support;

C Develop or improve compatible technological capacities which will allow all

staff, statewide, to communicate with each other, share information, and take

advantage of other efficiencies made possible by computerization; and

C Use new technologies to provide legal and program resource information to

clients and other interested persons.

3. Increased Access to Self-Help and Prevention Information.

What are the major barriers low-income persons face in gaining access to justice in the

state? What efforts can be taken on a statewide basis to expand client access to the

courts, provide preventive legal education and advice, and enhance self-help

opportunities for low-income persons?

Pro se, community legal education and access to courts efforts have great potential to
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

7

address many of the legal needs of low-income persons. Programs in many states utilize these

methods to increase legal information available to the public, empower clients to advocate on

their own behalf, and increase access to the courts for all low-income people. Given the

intensive effort required to implement such strategies, and the influence state laws and rules have

on such initiatives, often these results can be realized more easily by coordinated state level

efforts. In several states, for example, collaboration with state bar committees and state judicial

administrations has resulted in rule changes, publication of pro se oriented materials and more

accessible court systems. Likewise, the development of self-help and community legal education

materials has benefited from concerted statewide efforts involving a variety of organizations

working to make justice more accessible.

State planners should evaluate the status of pro se, community legal education, and access

efforts in their state and determine what steps should be taken statewide to enhance their

effectiveness in meeting client needs. Consideration should be given to:

C Statewide coordination and/or production of pro se and community education

materials, such as brochures in multiple languages, videos, cable-access TV

programs, and projects designed to take advantage of new technologies such as

computerized pro se programs and the world wide web; and

C State level initiatives, including efforts with bar associations, the judiciary and

other interested parties to increase access to the courts.

4. Capacities for Training and Access to Information and Expert Assistance.

Do program staff and pro bono attorneys throughout the state receive the training and

have access to information and expert assistance necessary for the delivery of high

quality legal services? How can statewide capacities be developed and strengthened to

meet these needs?

In the last two years several states have developed new or strengthened existing capacities

to ensure that staff and pro bono attorneys throughout the state receive necessary training and

have access to information and expert assistance essential for the delivery of high quality legal

services. These states employ a variety of methods to provide staff and pro bono attorneys with

training on substantive law and skills development, practice manuals and related poverty law

materials, information on poverty law developments and strategies, and co-counseling for less

experienced staff and pro bono attorneys. Communication, planning and ongoing discussion

concerning major legal needs, poverty law developments, effectiveness of approaches, and

commonalities in legal work, helps ensure productive use of resources. The use of new

technologies has helped maximize the effectiveness of these efforts. 
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

8

State planners should evaluate current capacities for the provision of training and related

services essential for the delivery of high quality legal services. Planners should:

C Assess how a statewide approach can address the needs for these services of staff

and pro bono attorneys throughout the state; and

C Determine the steps necessary to provide these services as effectively and

efficiently as possible. 

5. Engagement of Pro Bono Attorneys.

What is the current status of private attorney involvement in the state? What statewide

efforts can be undertaken to increase the involvement of private attorneys in the delivery

of legal services?

In the past two years, several states have been successful in enlisting or re-enlisting the

state Bar, the judiciary and others in developing and supporting private attorney involvement

throughout the state. These efforts have helped local private attorney involvement programs

expand participation rates and the range and types of services available to clients. State planners

should evaluate the current status of private attorney involvement in the state and consider how

statewide strategies can increase engagement of pro bono attorneys and benefit clients throughout

the state, including areas of the state with lower private attorney involvement.

Consideration should be given to: 

C Renewed efforts to involve the Bar, the judiciary and other leaders in the legal

community in promoting private attorney involvement; 

C Providing greater opportunities for attorney participation in a full spectrum of

legal work, including advice and brief service, negotiation, administrative

representation, pro se classes, transactional assistance, and simple and complex

litigation;

C Providing greater opportunities for attorneys to assist programs with training, cocounseling and mentoring staff; and

C Providing greater opportunities for law schools, corporate counsel, government

attorneys, and other professionals to engage in pro bono activities.

6. Development of additional resources.
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

9

What statewide financial resources are available for legal services to low-income

persons within the state? How can these resources be preserved and expanded?

In the past two years, many programs have increased the resources available to them

through innovative grant projects, local fundraising and other efforts. Even more dramatic,

however, are the increases programs have received in many states through collective

development and/or expansion of statewide revenues such as state appropriations, filing fee

surcharges, state fundraising campaigns, state bar dues checkoffs and direct state bar grants. 

Whether new or expanded, these revenues have almost always been the product of thoughtful

planning with programs and other stakeholders working together.

State planners should evaluate the possibilities for further statewide resource

development and develop a statewide strategy to preserve, build, and/or create new financial and

non-financial resources in their state. Since program efforts to build such statewide resources are

more successful when many stakeholders participate, it is especially important for planners to

involve a variety of community leaders in these efforts. 

7. Configuration of a Comprehensive, Integrated Statewide Delivery System.

Where there are a number of LSC-funded programs and/or the presence of very small

programs, how should the legal services programs be configured within the state to

maximize the effective and economical delivery of high quality legal services to eligible

clients within a comprehensive, integrated delivery system?

In most states, the present delivery structure reflects national funding decisions made in

the 1970's. In many states, those decisions were not determined by analyses of what delivery

structure would yield the most economical and effective services to clients throughout the state. 

Moreover, those decisions were made before such major developments in legal services delivery

such as IOLTA funding, private attorney involvement, law school clinical programs, hotlines, the

emergence of other civil legal aid providers, and restrictions on recipients’ non-LSC funds; and

before the information revolution and the opportunities it presents with personal computers, Email, sophisticated telephone technology, and the Internet. In light of developments over the past

twenty-five years, and especially since 1995, it is time to take a fresh look and re-evaluate those

structures.

Re-evaluation is particularly critical in states with a number of LSC-funded programs

and/or the presence of very small programs. States with many programs often suffer from

uneconomical and inefficient redundancy of effort, or no effort at all, in technology, training,

fundraising, and development of client services such as intake, advice and referral systems or

client education materials. Similarly, small programs often lack the resources necessary to

develop proper staff supervision or appropriate specialization, or to acquire current technology
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

10

necessary for maximum effectiveness.

In addition, while individual programs may excel, a large number of programs or the

presence of small programs may result in unnecessary diversion of the state’s resources from

client services to administrative overhead. Each program, no matter how large or small, must

devote significant resources to A-133 audits, state and federal tax and wage reports, funding

applications, recordkeeping, personnel policies, purchase and maintenance of technology and

equipment, and other administrative tasks. Experienced and accomplished lawyers spend time

on program administration when they could be using their talents to represent clients, train or

mentor new lawyers and otherwise lead their program’s legal work.

Where these conditions exist, state planners must consider whether consolidation of

programs would make better use of resources available in the state.

There is no magic number of programs or a single delivery model that fits all states. In

some states, a statewide LSC provider makes the most sense; in others, a regional approach or

other configuration may be appropriate. Each state must examine what configuration, from a

statewide perspective, maximizes services and benefits for clients throughout the state. Factors

to be considered include:

C Size, complexity, cultural and ethnic diversity/homogeneity of client population.

C Geographic, physical, and historical distinctions and affinities within the state. 

C Variation in local client needs and ability to respond and set priorities accordingly.

C Assessments of programs’ performance and capacity to deliver effective and

efficient legal services in accordance with LSC and other professional criteria.

C Ease and efficiency of client access to services and opportunities for

improvement.

C Capacity to efficiently and effectively conduct community legal education, pro se

and outreach activities.

C Level, uniformity, and plans for further development of technological capacity.

C Current levels of private bar involvement and potential for expansion.

C The availability of training, expert assistance, and information about legal

developments.

C Current funding sources and potential to expand resources available to all

programs.

C Cultural and ethnic diversity of program leadership and management.

C Relative costs associated with fiscal and administrative responsibilities and

potential savings in management, board and administrative costs.

In making grants for FY 1999 and beyond, we will look closely at each state where there

is currently a number of LSC-funded programs and/or the presence of very small programs to
Program Letter No. 98-1

February 12, 1998

11

assess whether careful consideration has been given to consolidation of LSC programs. We

hope, and have faith, that in these states, this planning process will result in plans for merger and

consolidation of programs and integration of services on a broader scale than we have previously

seen, and that each state’s plan will result in a configuration that is efficient and effective in

providing access to justice for the state’s low-income clients.

Questions

LSC staff will be contacting recipients to discuss this Program Letter. In the meantime, if

you have questions, please contact the LSC staff member responsible for your state.
1

 Legal Services Corporation Act, Section 1007(a)(3).

PROGRAM LETTER 98-6

July 6, 1998

STATE PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS

Introduction

On February 12, 1998, the Corporation issued Program Letter 98-1 calling upon all LSC

recipients to participate in a state planning process to examine, from a statewide perspective,

what steps should be taken in their states to further develop a comprehensive, integrated

statewide delivery system. The Letter poses seven questions recipients are to address in their

planning processes and requests recipients to submit a report to LSC on or before October 1,

1998. Many recipients have asked LSC to provide further guidance and additional information

about how the state planning process will affect LSC grant decisions. Recipients have also

inquired about the format for the October 1 report. This Program Letter responds to these

requests.

State Planning Considerations

The attached State Planning Considerations have been developed to provide recipients

and other stakeholders with more information about statewide goals, capacities and approaches

recipients should consider in their planning processes. A number of other sources of

information that may assist state planners and upon which these Considerations draw

are referenced in the Planning Considerations. We hope these Planning Considerations will

help states develop effective plans to strengthen their delivery systems and services to clients.

We encourage recipients with any questions about the State Planning Considerations or planning

process to contact the LSC staff member responsible for their state.

How the State Planning Process Will Affect LSC Grant Decisions

The Corporation is directed under the LSC Act to “insure that grants and contracts are

made so as to provide the most economical and effective delivery of legal assistance to persons in

both urban and rural areas.”1 The state planning process will provide information that helps LSC

exercise this statutory responsibility.
Program Letter No. 98-6 Page 2

July 6, 1998

1. Competition

a. Duration of grants

The state planning process will provide information that helps LSC determine the

duration of grants for service areas in the 1999 competition, i.e., service areas that are

eligible for grants of up to three years commencing January 1, 1999.

In the 1998 LSC grant competition, we determined that grants in several states that were

eligible for three year funding would be made for a shorter period. The decision to award

grants for a shorter period was made for two reasons: (1) to encourage recipients in these

states to develop further their plans for a comprehensive, integrated statewide delivery

system; and (2) concern that the configuration of LSC-funded programs in these states

did not constitute the most economical and effective structure for delivering legal services

to the low-income community.

As with the 1998 competition, LSC will take into account state delivery plans and

configuration of programs in determining the duration of grants for service areas now

being competed. Where LSC believes states need to further develop their plans for a

comprehensive, integrated statewide delivery system or where LSC remains concerned

about the configuration of LSC-funded service areas, grants will be made for less than

three years.

b. Service areas

1. 1999 Competition

The state planning process will not affect decisions about the number, size or

configuration of service areas in competition this year.

2. 2000 and Future Competition Years

Information received through the planning process will affect future decisions

regarding the most appropriate number, size and configuration of LSC-funded

service areas to be competed for the year 2000 and beyond. This includes service

areas that become scheduled for those years because of one or two year grant

awards made in the present 1999 competition.

2. Grant Renewals

The state planning process will not affect decisions about the number, size or

configuration of service areas up for renewal or the duration of grant renewals, i.e.,
Program Letter No. 98-6 Page 3

July 6, 1998

2

 45 CFR 1634.11.

previously made multi-year awards which are now up for renewal. Decisions on renewal

of these grants will continue to be based upon a showing of the renewal applicant’s

continued ability “to perform the duties required under the terms of its grant.”2

Format for the October 1 Report

The attached Instructions for State Planning Reports provide information about the

structure and format of the reports due at LSC on or before October 1, 1998. Please contact the

LSC staff member responsible for your state if you have any questions.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR STATE PLANNING REPORTS

Please submit reports to the Office of Program Operations on or before October 1,

1998. Reports should be no longer than 35 pages and should contain the name and telephone

number of a contact person(s). The report should:

A. Briefly describe the state planning process and participants.

B. Address the following areas in the order presented. In addressing each area, please

consider LSC’s State Planning Considerations and:

C assess the strengths and weaknesses of the current approach;

C establish goals to strengthen and expand services to eligible clients; and

C determine the major steps and a timetable necessary to achieve those goals.

1. Intake, Advice and Referral

How are intake and delivery of advice and referral services structured within the state? 

What steps can be taken to ensure a delivery network that maximizes client access,

efficient delivery, and high quality legal assistance?

2. Technology

Is there a state legal services technology plan? How can technological capacities be

developed statewide to assure compatibility, promote efficiency, improve quality, and

expand services to clients?

3. Access to the Courts, Self-help and Preventive Education

What are the major barriers low-income persons face in gaining access to justice in the

state? What efforts can be taken on a statewide basis to expand client access to the

courts, provide preventive legal education and advice, and enhance self-help

opportunities for low-income persons?

4. Coordination of Legal work, Training, Information and Expert Assistance

Do program staff and pro bono attorneys throughout the state receive the training and

have access to information and expert assistance necessary for the delivery of high quality

legal services? How can statewide capacities be developed and strengthened to meet

these needs?

5. Private Attorney Involvement

What is the current status of private attorney involvement in the state? What statewide

efforts can be undertaken to increase the involvement of private attorneys in the delivery
Instructions for State Planning Reports Page 2

3

 States with only one LSC-funded program need not answer this question.

of legal services?

6. Resource Development

What statewide financial resources are available for legal services to low-income persons

within the state? How can these resources be preserved and expanded?

7. System Configuration

How should the legal services programs be configured within the state to maximize the

effective and economical delivery of high quality legal services to eligible clients within a

comprehensive, integrated delivery system?3
PROGRAM LETTER 2000-7 

TO: All LSC Program Directors 

FROM: Randi Youells ___________ 

 Vice President for Programs 

DATE: December 13, 2000 

RE: STATE PLANNING AND PERFORMANCE MEASURES 

(Building A Stronger Foundation: A Framework for Planning and

Evaluating Comprehensive, Integrated and Client–Centered State 

Justice Communities) 

_________________________________________________________________ 

 Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6 launched LSC's most recent state planning 

activities approximately three years ago. Pressured by funding shortfalls and the 

changing needs of clients and concerned with enhancing system efficiency, 

effectiveness and the ability to meet clients' legal needs, legal services programs 

throughout the United States were challenged by these two program letters to 

become actively engaged in a process of reassessing their delivery practices and 

policies, restructuring their legal services delivery systems and reallocating their 

legal services dollars. Essentially, LSC Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6 asked 

grantees to look at their roles in a new way -- to expand their horizons from 

what's best for the clients in my service area to what is best for clients 

throughout the state. Using this new lens, programs were asked to report on 

how they would coordinate and integrate their work in seven important areas -- 

enhancing client access, efficiently delivering high quality legal assistance; 

effectively using technology to expand access and enhance services; promoting 

client self-help and preventive legal education and advice; coordinating legal 

work and training staff; coordinating and collaborating with the private bar; 

developing additional resources to support legal services delivery; and designing 

a legal services delivery configuration that enhanced client services, reduced 

barriers and operated efficiently and effectively. 
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 2 

On January 28, 2000, the LSC Board of Directors approved LSC’s 5-year Strategic

Direction Plan.1

 This document commits LSC to dramatically enhance the impact of 

Legal Services programs throughout the nation by improving access to legal services 

among eligible persons while enhancing the quality of the services delivered. The Plan

highlighted LSC’s State Planning Initiative as the primary strategy for expanding access 

to and availability of services throughout the United States. 

Over the course of the last three years, many states have begun to develop 

comprehensive and integrated legal services delivery systems that: 

1) recognize that state justice communities must be broader than just LSC-funded 

grantees to include both LSC-funded and non-LSC funded sectors of the legal

services delivery system, and 

2) provide a continuum of services that encompasses individual representation, 

extended representation, advice, pro se advocacy, preventative education,

community involvement and support, and the use of technology to expand essential 

services to all low-income persons within a state. 

These are exciting developments. However, it continues to be apparent that in many

states and territories, the legal services delivery system remains a fragmented set of 

disconnected services. In many states we continue to find a wide divergence in the

availability of services, client access capabilities and civil equal justice resources. This

stands in stark contrast to our expectation that the statewide delivery system be

constructed and maintained to provide for: (a) relative equity of client access to the civil 

legal services delivery system throughout the state: (b) relative equity in the availability 

of the full range of client service capacities necessary to meet the full continuum of

client legal needs regardless of where in the state clients live; (c) relative equity in the 

capacity to serve client communities in all of their diversity; and (d) relative equity in 

the investment of civil equal justice resources (federal, state, private, and in-kind/pro

bono) throughout the state. 

A hallmark of an integrated delivery system is its flexibility to deploy resources in 

geographic or substantive areas so that quality of services is improved, funds are

increased and outcomes for clients are expanded in areas where they are weak. In this

context, then, relative equity considers the system’s various capacities throughout the

state, from region to region, and directs necessary resources to locales where 

 1

 To download a copy, go to http://www.lsc.gov/pressr/pr_pi.htm. 
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 3 

improvement of any sort is required to assure that all low-income people in the state 

have similar degrees of access to the full spectrum of equal justice services. 

 In this program letter we are announcing three strategies to advance LSC's efforts 

to create comprehensive integrated, coordinated, client-centered state justice 

communities in each state: 

 

1) The creation of a team within LSC specifically assigned responsibility for state 

planning; 

2) A period of self-evaluation by and in each state justice community, with an 

evaluation report to be issued to LSC at the end of the evaluation period; and 

3) The linking of state planning with the development of new performance 

measurement tools. 

The information received from the field on the State Planning Process and Program 

Letters 98-1 and 98-6 after publication of these two documents in the Federal Register 

and input derived from more than two years of on-site engagement by LSC staff and 

consultants in the field were instrumental in the development of these strategies. 

 The Creation of a State Planning Team within LSC 

 LSC's Strategic Plan emphasizes that LSC's State Planning Initiative is our primary 

strategy for expanding access to and availability of services throughout the United 

States. To stress the importance of this effort and to facilitate the development of state 

justice communities, LSC will create a planning team to coordinate our state planning 

activities. This team will be directly attached to and supervised by the LSC VicePresident for Programs. 

 A Period of Self-Evaluation by and in Each State Justice Community 

 We are in a period of significant transition moving from an LSC-centric legal services 

model to comprehensive, integrated and client-centered state justice communities. We 

acknowledge that the journey is not over and that significant effort remains to ensure 

that comprehensive justice communities exist and function within every state and 

territory. As we move forward with our efforts, we must remain conscious of the need 

to address several questions of fundamental relevance. These include: 
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 4 

1) To what extent has a comprehensive, integrated client-centered legal 

services delivery system been achieved in a particular state? 

2) To what extent have intended outcomes of a comprehensive, integrated 

and client-centered legal service delivery system been achieved including 

but not limited to service effectiveness/quality; efficiency; equity in terms 

of client access; greater involvement by members of the private bar in the 

legal lives of clients; and client-community empowerment? 

3) Are the best organizational and human resource management 

configurations and approaches being used? 

 We believe that the next several months are an appropriate time to try to begin to 

answer these questions. We have been involved in state planning activities for 

approximately three years, and LSC believes that states need a period of introspection 

about where they have been and where they are going. Moreover, we can all 

acknowledge that self-evaluation is a worthwhile and important part of our planning for 

the creation of comprehensive, integrated, client-centered legal services delivery 

systems within each state. We are, accordingly, requiring our grantees and requesting 

that other state planners begin a period of evaluation of their planning efforts and 

activities over the last three years using the above questions as a framework for the 

evaluation report. These self-evaluations will inform each state justice community and 

LSC of what has worked, what has not worked and why, what obstacles stand in 

planners path, and what steps and support might assist each state to better achieve a 

comprehensive, integrated, client-centered delivery system that delivers upon the 

promise of equal justice for all. 

 Evaluations can be performed by state planners themselves or by outside 

consultants hired to perform this task. We ask that a single evaluation report for each 

state be submitted to LSC on or before July 1, 2001 unless LSC has granted your state 

an extension of time in which to file the report. Please submit your extension requests 

no later than May 15, 2001, to Robert Gross, Senior Program Counsel for State Planning 

at LSC. Reports should be no longer that 30 pages (not more than 10 pages singlespaced for each area of inquiry) and should contain the name and telephone number of 

a contact person(s). Attachments will be accepted as long as they provide additional 

information that clarifies a particular issue or area of inquiry as identified in the body of 

the report. The report should assume that the effort to create state justice 

communities is ongoing and that we do not expect that you have completed your work. 

Self-evaluation reports should be a candid and honest assessment of the progress that 
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 5 

each state has made in creating a comprehensive, integrated and client-centered 

delivery system as well as of the work that remains to be done. Reports should address 

the following issues in the order presented: 

 

To what extent has a comprehensive, integrated and client-centered legal 

services delivery system been achieved in a particular state? 

Areas of exploration include: 

1) What are the important issues that impact upon low income people within your 

state? How is your state responding to these issues? 

2) What are the components of the delivery system? 

3) Has this system created mechanisms to assess its performance in relationship to 

commonly-accepted external guides such as the ABA Standards for Providers of 

Civil Legal Services to the Poor, the LSC Performance Criteria or some other set 

of objective criteria? What is the protocol for undertaking system performance 

review and when was a review last undertaken? 

4) Does your statewide system work to ensure the availability of equitable legal 

assistance capacities to clients -- regardless of who the clients are, where they 

reside or the languages they speak? How does your system ensure that clients 

have equitable access to necessary assistance including self-help, legal 

education, advice, brief service, and representation in all relevant forums? Please 

describe what steps you anticipate taking to ensure equitable access in the 

coming years. 

5) How does the legal service delivery system employ technology to provide 

increased access and enhanced services to clients throughout the state? What 

technological initiatives are currently underway and how will they support the 

integrated statewide delivery system? 

6) How has the legal service delivery system expanded its resources to provide 

critical legal services to low income clients including hard to reach groups such 

as migrant farmworkers, Native Americans, the elderly, those with physical or 

mental disabilities, those confined to institutions, immigrants and the rural poor? 
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 6 

7) What steps have been implemented within the legal services delivery system and 

among client communities to identify and nurture new leaders? Do the existing 

leaders reflect the diversity within the state and within client communities that 

your delivery system serves? Do your state’s equal justice leaders reflect the 

gender, race, ethnic and economic concerns of important but sometimes 

overlooked groups within your state? Does the leadership provide opportunities 

for innovation and experimentation; does it support creative solutions to meet 

changing needs; are new ideas welcomed; are clients nurtured as leaders? Has 

the leadership been given sufficient authority and resources to implement 

needed changes? 

8) What do you envision will be your next steps to achieve a client-centered 

integrated and comprehensive delivery system within your state or territory? 

How will clients be actively involved in the determination of these next steps? 

9) What has been the greatest obstacle to achieving a statewide, integrated, clientcentered delivery system and how was that obstacle overcome or, alternatively, 

how do you plan to overcome that obstacle? 

10)Has any benefit-to-cost analysis been made in terms of creating a 

comprehensive, integrated and client-centered legal services delivery system in 

your state? If yes, what does your analysis show? 

11)What resources, technical assistance and support would help you meet your 

goals? 

To what extent have intended outcomes of a comprehensive, integrated 

client-centered legal service delivery system been achieved including but 

not limited to service effectiveness/quality; efficiency; equity in terms of 

client access; greater involvement by members of the private bar in the 

legal lives of clients, and client-community empowerment? 

Areas of exploration include: 

1) In terms of the issues impacting upon low-income persons within your state, 

what strategies have you designed to address these issues and how do you plan 

to measure your future success in addressing your objectives?
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 7 

2) Has the legal services delivery system expanded access and services through 

coordination with providers throughout the state? Can this be quantified?

3) Has the quality of services provided by the legal services delivery system 

improved. How?

4) Since 1998, has there been improvement in the relative equity of client access 

throughout the state for all low income clients regardless of who they are, where 

in the state they reside, what languages they speak, their race/gender/ national 

origin, or the existence of other access barriers? How is this equity achieved?

5) Since 1998, has there been improvement in the relative equity in terms of the 

availability of the full range of civil equal justice delivery capacities throughout 

the state? What mechanisms have been developed to ensure such relative 

equity is achieved and maintained? Since 1998, has there been improvement in 

the relative equity in the development and distribution of civil equal justice 

resources throughout the state? Are there areas of the state that suffer from a 

disproportionate lack of resources (funding as well as in-kind/pro bono)? If so, is 

there a strategy to overcome such inequities? 

6) Does this legal services delivery system operate efficiently? Are there areas of 

duplication? 

7) Has the system expanded the way it involves private lawyers in the delivery of 

essential services to low-income persons? Does the system effectively and 

efficiently use the private bar to deliver essential services to low income people? 

Are the best organizational and human resource management 

configurations and approaches being used? 

Areas of exploration include: 

1) For calendar year 2001, what is the current configuration of programs (LSC and 

non-LSC) that deliver services to low income clients -- i.e., what are the components 

(size, areas of responsibility, governance) of the delivery system? What are the 

funding sources and levels for each of these components of the delivery system? 
Program Letter 2000-7 

December 13, 2000 

Page 8 

2) Since October 1998, what other configurations and/or approaches have been 

seriously explored? Were any adopted? Were any rejected? Are any changes 

contemplated in the coming year? 

3) Is there any identifiable duplication in capacities or services in the state? How many 

duplicative systems -- accounting systems, human resources management systems, 

case management systems, etc. -- currently exist? Does the service delivery system 

now in use minimize or eliminate duplications that existed prior to October 1, 1998? 

4) Since October 1998, what innovative service delivery systems/mechanisms/initiatives 

been adopted in the state? Have any been explored and then rejected? 

Linking State Planning with the Development of New Performance Measurement Tools

 

 Simultaneously with these self-evaluations, LSC will proceed to contract with a 

private research firm to formally evaluate legal services delivery systems in a selected 

number of states. LSC plans to select several states that we believe are at important 

stages of the planning-implementation process for an outside evaluation. If your state 

is chosen, you will not have to do the self-evaluation discussed in this program letter. 

Moreover, LSC will provide discretionary grants and/or technical assistance to assist 

with and help defray any in-kind program costs associated with this project. 

 The purpose of these evaluations will be to determine whether or not the delivery 

model in use in the state has effectively implemented the concepts and principles of a 

comprehensive, integrated and client-centered legal services delivery system. LSC will 

study the relationship between the structure of the delivery system and desired 

outcomes as articulated by the selected states in prior planning documents. The 

findings of these formal evaluations -- together with the material presented in the selfevaluations --will assist LSC and other interested stakeholders in understanding how 

best to conceptualize, design and deliver comprehensive, integrated and client-centered 

legal services. We will use this information to begin to develop new performance

measurement tools. 
Legal Services Corporation

America’s Partner For Equal Justice

 

PROGRAM LETTER 02-3 

President

John N. Erlenborn 

Board of Directors 

Douglas S. Eakeley 

Roseland, NJ 

Chairman 

LaVeeda M. Battle 

Birmingham, AL 

Vice Chair 

Hulett H. Askew 

Atlanta, GA 

John T. Broderick, Jr.

Manchester, NH

John N. Erlenborn 

Issue, MD 

Edna Fairbanks-Williams 

Fairhaven, VT 

F. Wm. McCalpin 

St. Louis, MO

Maria Luisa Mercado

Galveston, TX

Nancy H. Rogers 

Columbus, OH 

Thomas F. Smegal, Jr. 

San Francisco, CA 

Ernestine P. Watlington 

Harrisburg, PA 

TO: All LSC Program Directors 

FROM: Randi Youells ___________ 

Vice President for Programs 

DATE: January 22, 2002 

RE: STATE PLANNING CONFIGURATION 

STANDARDS

_______________________________________________________________ 

On November 17, 2001, the LSC Board of Directors adopted the Report of 

the LSC Task Force to Study and Report on Configuration of Service Areas.

The Board action codifies LSC’s standards for reconfiguration of service areas 

and amends LSC’s review process for configuration decisions. This Program 

Letter formally adopts and presents the attached configuration standards 

adopted by the LSC Board. As provided therein: 

“these standards shall guide the state planning process on 

reconfiguration and shall serve as the criteria for decisions by 

LSC. Under these guidelines, LSC will exercise its statutory 

responsibility to insure that grants and contracts are made so as 

to provide the most economical and effective delivery of legal 

assistance to persons in both urban and rural areas.”

 

750 First Street, NE 11th Floor

Washington, DC 20002-4250 

Phone 202.336.8800 Fax 202.336.8959 

www.lsc.gov
State Planning: A Five-Year Overview 

Legal Services Corporation 

State Planning: 

A Five-Year Overview 

APPENDIX B
`

`````

Basic Field General Service Areas Affected by Mergers and Consolidations - 

Arkansas

5 to 2

Arizona

4 to 2

California

21 to 11

P

Ohio

16 to 6 

Texas

11 to 3

South C

5 t

Louisiana

8 to 4

Tennessee

8 to 4

Colorado

3 to 1

Indiana

4 to 1

Kentucky

7 to 4

New Mexico

3 to 1

Illinois

5 to 3

Mississippi

6 to 2

Missouri

In Planning

Nebraska

3 to 1

West

 Virgin

3 to 1

Wisconsin

4 to 2

Wyoming

OSP

Iowa

2 to 1

North Dakota

2 to 1

Oklahoma

2 to 1

Oregon

4 to 3

South Dakota

3 to 2

Alaska

OSP

Georgia

2

Hawaii

OSP

Idaho

OSP

Kansas

OSP

Minnesota

In 

Planning

Montana

OSP

Nevada

OSP

UtahOSP

Michigan 

11 to 5

N

Washington

OSP

 In Planning ==> Merger Planning in Process

OSP ==> Original Statewide Program

Micronesia OSP

Guam OSP

Alabama 3 to 1(in 2005)

American Samoa

New Service Area 

for 2004
Legal Services Corporation

Basic Field General (BFG) Service Areas Affected by Mergers and Consolidations - 1997 to 2004

A B C D 

Calendar Year Calendar Year Calendar Year Cale

2004 BFG 1997 BFG Service Area 2004 BFG 19

State Service Areas Service Areas Changes State Service Areas Serv

1 Alabama (in 2005) 1 3 -2 32 Alaska 1 

2 Arizona 2 4 -2 33 American Samoa 1 

3 Arkansas 2 5 -3 34 Connecticut 1 

4 California 11 21 -10 35 Delaware 1 5 Colorado 1 3 -2 36 Dist. of Col. 1 6 Florida 7 12 -5 37 Guam 1 7 Georgia 2 2 0 38 Hawaii 1 

8 Illinois 3 5 -2 39 Idaho 1 

9 Indiana 1 4 -3 40 Kansas 1 

10 Iowa 1 2 -1 41 Maine 1 11 Kentucky 4 7 -3 42 Maryland 1 

12 Louisiana 4 8 -4 43 Micronesia 1 

13 Michigan 5 11 -6 44 Montana 1 

14 Mississippi 2 6 -4 45 Nevada 1 

15 Nebraska 1 3 -2 46 New Hampshire 1 16 New Jersey 6 14 -8 47 Rhode Island 1 

17 New Mexico 1 3 -2 48 Utah 1 

18 New York 7 15 -8 49 Vermont 1 19 North Carolina 1 4 -3 50 Virgin Islands 1 

20 North Dakota 1 2 -1 51 Washington 1 

21 Ohio 6 16 -10 52 Wyoming 1 

22 Oklahoma 1 2 -1 Subtotal 21 

23 Oregon 3 4 -124 Pennsylvania 8 19 -11 A 25 South Carolina 1 5 -426 South Dakota 2 3 -1 53 Missouri 4 27 Tennessee 4 8 -4 54 Massachusetts 6 

28 Texas 3 11 -8 55 Minnesota 5 

29 Virginia 6 13 -7 56 Puerto Rico 2 30 West Virginia 1 3 -2 Subtotal 17 31 Wisconsin 2 4 -2

Subtotal 100 222 -122

Totals 138 

Service area reductions as a percentage 

Merger Plann

Updated: November 7, 2003

Service Area Changes Original Statewid