Pro Bono News

Why General Counsel Oppose Trump's Legal Services Cuts

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

"President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut to zero the budget of the Legal Services Corp., the largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans, garnered widespread opposition. On Tuesday, 185 in-house counsel added their voices in a letter urging Congress to preserve the LSC’s budget.

The in-house attorneys, representing numerous industries and some of the country’s biggest companies, asked Congress to grant the legal aid nonprofit $450 million in FY 2018. They said in the letter that LSC is the “cornerstone of equal justice in America” and lauded the group for supporting “countless hours of pro bono representation provided by corporate legal departments and in-house attorneys.”

Many of the volunteer hours that in-house lawyers spend doing pro bono, the attorneys said, would not be possible without the funding and structure LSC provides for local legal aid groups across the country.
We reached out to several of the corporate lawyers who signed the letter to talk about the LSC and its connection to legal departments. The excerpts below are from those interviews..."

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