NCJ Number
74667
Date Published
1980
Length
238 pages
Annotation
This report examines the existing staff attorney program under Section 1007(g) of the Legal Services Corporation Act and alternative and supplemental methods of delivery of legal services to eligible (i.e., indigent) clients.
Abstract
The 38 demonstration projects testing a variety of approaches to the delivery of legal services to the poor were studied. The demonstration projects, all of which used attorneys in private practice, included three types of judicare (pure judicare, judicare with a staff attorney component, and judicare as a supplement to a staff attorney program), as well as five other delivery models -- contracts with law firms as supplements to the staff attorney program, prepaid legal insurance, organized pro-bono projects, legal clinics, and voucher. A sample of existing staff attorney programs was included in the study to provide a standard of performance on cost, client satisfaction, quality of service, and impact on a broader client population against which the alternatives and supplements were measured. The study concluded that a model was viable for consideration for local use if the model demonstrated its feasibility and if all or most of the projects did as well or better than the staff attorney programs on the four performance measures in the study. The text includes tabular data, graphs, and explanatory footnotes. Three appendixes give a description of the private bar delivery models, legal problem categories, and types of cases handled by delivery models in the study.