Virginia Public Radio

Each year, thousands of people who can’t afford a lawyer turn to Legal Aid for help.  Some are trying to collect child support.  Others are desperate to save their homes or keep abusive spouses away.  Legal Aid, offers free or low cost assistance,  but its funding is now in serious doubt.

For one Virginia woman, who asked us to conceal her identity, the last few years have been a nightmare.  She separated from an abusive husband who divorced her and demanded joint custody of their 13-year-old daughter.  To protect the child, she says, she turned to the courts.

“I had used some attorneys the year before, and it cost me like $3,000 for two small little court appearances, and they wiped me out of everything I had saved.  I had been middle class, owned my own businesses and everything, and I married this man, and he ruined my credit.  He ruined everything,” she said.

Unable to find a private lawyer who would take her case without charge, she went to legal aid to keep her x-husband from having unsupervised visits and to get child support.  Now, her attorney may be laid off, because legal aid – like so many of its clients – has fallen on hard times.  Its revenues from various sources have dropped by more than $6 million a year  since the recession hit.

“At the same time the funding’s been going down, the poverty population in Virginia has increased by over 30%,” says David Beidler, General Counsel for the Legal Aid Society of Roanoke Valley.  He says 120 lawyers work for legal aid in Virginia, but without help from Richmond, many will lose their jobs.

“The poor are going to be trying to resolve their problems by going through the courts without attorneys.  What that is going to do is place a very heavy burden on the courts as these people sort of wallow through the procedural mischief that one who’s not trained is going to encounter,” says Beidler.  That’s why he’s asking the state to require that lawyers use special accounts that generate interest which has, historically, paid legal aid.

“The trust accounts themselves are bank accounts that lawyers put their clients’ money in, usually, for a very short period of time.  For example, during the sale of a home, the funds for the sale go into an account for maybe a day or two days, and then they’re dispersed out, but when you do this day in and day out over the course of a year, it potentially generates a huge amount of interest.”