The corporation funds by grant the entities that provide civil legal assistance. We represent them before the Legal Services Corporation and before Congress in trying to get funding. LSC funds one grantee per geographic area, so by and large we're not representing groups with conflicting interests. One of your missions is to revitalize and transform the legal services program. Now it's more like 40 percent, and the rest comes from state and local money.
People see it as a Cleveland program, rather than an Ohio program.
What we're trying to do is create in each state an integrated system of delivery. That doesn't necessarily mean one program, but it means people working together in a comprehensive system. A system that ultimately tries to provide some form of legal assistance and advice to people in need. Part of the danger is that there are other parts of the state of Ohio where the poor don't have the same access to legal aid that the poor do in Cleveland. The framework has really shifted from the federal to the state level on many problems that affect poor people.