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Lawyers and Neighborhood Legal Services: Social Background and the Impetus for Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Howard S. Erlanger
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Abstract

Many commentators have explained the shift in policy from the quietude of Legal Aid to the aggressive advocacy of Legal Services by pointing to a change in personnel. This paper presents data on the background of a national sample of Legal Services lawyers in 1967, and through a variety of analyses argues that, though Legal Services differed from Legal Aid, neither the organization as a whole, its reformist elements, nor its local administrators were dominated by a “new breed” of activist lawyer with elite credentials. Instead, Legal Services in both 1967 and 1972 was characterized by a remarkable heterogeneity of staff. Implications of these findings for the delivery of lawyers' services to the poor are discussed, and it is suggested that the “radical” character of the program is due more to the opportunities Legal Services has offered lawyers to pursue client interests than to background characteristics of personnel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Winter 1978 , pp. 253 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This paper is part of a broader study of legal rights activities, written in collaboration with Joel F. Handler and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth. I am grateful to them and to our earlier collaborator, Jack Ladinsky, for their extensive work on all phases of the project and for their advice on the present paper; to Jack Katz, Richard Abel, and Mayer Zald for their comments on an earlier draft; and to Irene Rodgers, Pramod Suratkar, Anna Wells, and Nancy Williamson for research and programming assistance.

This work was supported by funds granted to the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin by the Office of Economic Opportunity pursuant to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Responsibility for what follows remains with the author.

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