Out of Adversity, an Enduring
Record of Advocacy for the Powerless
In the past thirty years, operating on a
shoestring, New Hampshire Legal Assistance (NHLA) has made our
poor and elderly clients’ voices heard on most of the major
issues that have dominated public policy debate in this state.
NHLA was created in 1971 through the merger of two smaller
programs, Southern New Hampshire Legal Services and Tri-County
Legal Services, which served the North Country. Throughout its
existence, NHLA has enjoyed the steadfast support of the New
Hampshire Bar Association and the New Hampshire judiciary.
NHLA brought the lawsuit that led to the closing
of the Laconia State School and eventually catapulted New
Hampshire from a position of shame to the role of national model
in the de-institutionalization of the developmentally disabled.
In an era of tumultuous change in health care, we have fought in
the courts, the Legislature and in the bureaucracy for policies
that protect and enhance access to basic health care. Our
advocates for the elderly are now in the forefront of the debate
over the future of long-term care in New Hampshire.
Our housing lawyers have successfully challenged
exclusionary zoning, helped protect and create affordable
housing across the state, and forged new statutory protections
for tenants in the courts and in the Legislature
As welfare reform has unfolded nationally, our
advocacy in the Legislature and with successive administrations
has resulted in a welfare reform program in New Hampshire that
is aimed at clearing away obstacles to gainful employment
instead of isolating and stigmatizing welfare recipients. In the
new world of electric and telephone deregulation, our advocates
at the Public Utility Commission and in the Legislature have
shaped statutory and regulatory protections for low-income
consumers that are a creative blend of long-standing rules that
were in danger of being swept away and innovations that will
preserve access to these basic services.
We have undertaken this crucial policy advocacy
at the same time as our lawyers and paralegals have handled tens
of thousands of individual cases for disabled children, factory
workers laid off in the midst of recession, elderly homeowners,
nursing home residents and their spouses, the homeless, and
other desperate and vulnerable citizens of our state. Our
program has a reputation for fearless, high quality advocacy
that continues to bring us referrals from lawyers, judges, and
other social service providers across the state, who have come
to expect that we will step in to seek justice for the poor and
elderly.
NHLA has achieved this record in the face of a
relentless series of political and legal attacks aimed at ending
our very existence or eviscerating our power to be effective
advocates. This long term trial-by-fire has taught us well that
we must be creative, and indeed, daring, in order to survive
unfettered in our ability to be advocates for our otherwise
voiceless clients. These attacks culminated in 1996 with the
slashing of the federal funds for legal services and, at least
as ominous, the imposition of restrictions on these funds that
would have barred us from undertaking the legislative advocacy
and large scale litigation that are sometimes necessary to
protect the rights of the poor and elderly in this state.
Faced with a terrible choice between turning
away funding that was our lifeblood or accepting outrageous
limitations on our ability to be effective lawyers for our
clients, we assembled a coalition of stakeholders in the legal
community and led them to a bold response that has since been
emulated across the country. We declined the federal funds,
which had totaled $800,000 in 1995, approximately half of our
budget. However, we helped create a new entity, the Legal Advice
& Referral Center, to accept the remaining $500,000
available in 1996, so this funding was not lost to New Hampshire
but targeted to worthwhile activities that were within the new
restrictions.
As we knew it would, this decision resulted in
significant short-term pain, the closing of two of our five
community law offices. However, within two years, freed from
federal restrictions, we have replaced all of the lost funds
with an aggressive and creative drive to expand and diversify
our funding. We obtained a series of competitive federal grants,
persuaded the Legislature to provide us with state funds for the
first time in our history by promising to use the money to
re-open an office in the North Country, and learned how to raise
$100,000 per year in attorney fees
A New Era of Collaboration
In late 1997 NHLA, LARC, and Pro Bono recognized
the need to review and adjust the 1995-96 restructuring plan.
The planning process that had created the 1995 plan demonstrated
that a careful and comprehensive planning process is critical to
the survival and viability of legal services in New Hampshire.
From our subsequent efforts to manage our new, more complex, and
much more interdependent structure, it has become clear that
on-going statewide planning is essential. Without regular
evaluations and review of our system it becomes increasingly
difficult to maintain a cooperative, integrated delivery system
that makes the most efficient use of our very limited resources.
New issues, like integrating technology, have
emerged since 1995, and old issues, like intake, have resurfaced
in new forms. In grappling with this combination of novel and
familiar challenges, the three organizations have learned and
relearned the value of collaboration and interdependence. While
we are firmly convinced that an integrated system will benefit
our clients, it requires considerable planning and cooperation
among organizations that previously have functioned
autonomously.
Over the past three years we have learned that
each legal services provider’s effectiveness depends to a
greater or lesser extent on the effectiveness of the other
providers. When one program makes changes in its program
priorities or staffing pattern, the others feel the effects. If
communication systems break down or tensions arise between
programs or individuals, consequences can be felt through out
the system.
Reaffirming our Core Ideals
In May 1998, NHLA, LARC, and Pro Bono held a
joint meeting of their boards to inaugurate the planning
process. After a meeting the next month with a variety of
stakeholders, a smaller group made up of staff and board members
from all three programs and the Bar Foundation began to meet
quarterly. In September 1998, using funds from a special
planning grant from the Bar Foundation, the committee hired
Ellen Hemley, a planning consultant from Newton, Massachusetts,
with significant experience advising legal services programs
across the country.
The committee’s approach has been to:
As a first step, the committee restated our core
beliefs about legal services in New Hampshire. We created the
following "Mission Statement," "Guiding
Principles" and "Values."
Mission: We, the New Hampshire legal
services programs shall use our resources, in partnership, to
efficiently and economically develop statewide a full range of
high quality legal services in all forums, in an integrated
fashion, to meet the legal needs of New Hampshire’s low-income
people.
Guiding Principles:
Partnership: Coordinate planning,
priorities, and delivery mechanisms among the three legal
services programs.
Efficient and economical service: Avoid
inefficient and undesirable duplication. Coordinate intake,
case evaluation and referral. Maximize economies of scale and
promote effective use of existing and emerging technologies by
developing necessary and appropriate organizational
structures.
Client-centered: Ensure that services are
easy to access and available statewide.
Sustaining: Develop programs/structures
that are "built to last" and that can attract and
retain effective staff and volunteers.
Values:
Access to justice is a basic human right
.
All low-income people in New Hampshire should have access to
all legal remedies in all forums as appropriate to resolve
their legal problems, regardless of income, status or current
popularity.
Provision of legal services to low-income
people is the responsibility of the entire legal community,
including the private bar, the judiciary, the legislature, and
the legal services community.
Provision of legal services can make a
meaningful difference in low-income peoples’ lives, by
assisting individuals on the day-to-day legal issues that
affect them and by working with others to address underlying
causes of poverty.
Low-income people should be involved in
helping legal service providers identify the highest priority
legal needs of low-income people in New Hampshire.
Legal services should be provided in a manner
that enhances the dignity and independence of low-income
people.
