For the Poor

In a nation that professes equal justice for all, U.S. jurists have long been troubled by the fact that reality seems to provide quite a bit less justice for the poor. This concern is at the root of the Office of Economic Opportunity's $25 million program of legal services for the indigent. During the past year, federal cash has funded no-fee "neighborhood law offices" in 28 major cities, with 22 more cities on the way. The nation's second biggest such project has just received an independent appraisal from a dispassionate Philadelphia judge.

Early this year, the Philadelphia Bar Association organized Community Legal Service, Inc., a nonprofit corporation financed by nearly $750,000 in OEO funds. The service proposed to open twelve neighborhood law offices under a 20-man board of directors, including four leading lawyers and seven representatives from the slums. When a sizable minority of lawyers opposed the plan, the issue was turned over to Judge Raymond Pace Alexander of the Court of Common Pleas. After long hearings, Judge Alexander handed down a detailed decision upholding the service as not only lawful but also thoroughly beneficial to the community.

Prone to Trouble. Judge Alexander, 67, a Negro who worked as a waiter, dining-car chef and Pullman porter in his teens and then graduated with honors from Harvard Law School ('23), first analyzed the question of need. He noted that the poor "are just prone to legal trouble. It is, in a sense, a way of life with them." As a judge, Alexander has "seen at first hand the helplessness and bewilderment of the poor when faced with the legalities of our complex society." The poor need lawyers not only to stay out of jail, he said, but also to contend with landlords, bureaucrats and faceless welfare agencies. Forever trapped in a "debtor's spiral," said Alexander, the poor constantly face repossession because of a single missed payment, as well as wage attachments that often lead to their being fired. The poor, Alexander held, need more legal aid than any other class in the nation--and get less of it.

In weighing the objections, Judge Alexander discounted the fear of feder al control since "it is clear that the local communities are the ones to initiate a program, design it, and then operate it after it is founded." He pointed out that lawyers who already serve the poor on a contingency basis need have no fear of financial loss, since the C.L.S. would not take cases normally handled by lawyers for a contingent fee. He dismissed the alleged loss of the poor man's free choice of a lawyer, since that choice usually amounts to little more than leafing through the yellow pages of a phone book. Judge Alexander noted that none of the objecting lawyers actually opposed "the purposes of the war on poverty," and he hailed that fact as evidence of a "rekindling of the American conscience." Said he: "It is in the public interest that this program go forward. Let it begin--now."

Another Goal. As if echoing that sentiment, the 25,000-member American Trial Lawyers Association last week reversed its previous opposition to the OEO plan as "costly, wasteful and inferior." Meeting in Los Angeles, the association warmly endorsed the idea and offered the aid of all members.* Even more approvingly, the American Bar Association last week urged Congress to double the OEO legal-aid budget to "a minimum" of $52 million. The goal is not only equal justice for the poor, said the A.B.A. It is also urgently needed "respect for law" in the "greatest breeding ground of the criminal world, the slum."

* In another image-improving move, the A.T.L.A. banned flamboyant Melvin M. Belli from its convention program. Belli, who once headed A.T.L.A., snorted: "This organization became great because it was once a vibrant force representing grass-roots lawyers who fought for the underdog. Now it's getting stuffy like the American Bar Association."

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