NHLA, LARC AND PRO BONO have a long history of working collaboratively to maximize the number of people they help and target their limited resources in the most effective manner possible. It is through this solidarity that the Campaign for Legal Services was formed.

The New Hampshire Bar Foundation last year launched the Campaign for Legal Services, an ambitious joint fundraising campaign to increase NHLA, LARC and Pro Bono’s capacity to serve low-income New Hampshire residents. The campaign was created to alleviate the pressures of fundraising on the legal service providers so that their talents could instead be used to assist low-income citizens of NH. This coordinated effort has succeeded in raising more funds for legal services as a whole with fewer solicitations to potential donors.

To date, the Bar Foundation’s Campaign for Legal Services has raised over $780,000 in gifts and pledges through 2005 from leading law firms and individual members of the private bar. Ninety-seven percent of all contributions have gone directly to legal services.

At NHLA, funding from the campaign supported over 3,237 hours of legal services in 2003. This has enabled NHLA attorneys to help hundreds of low-income and elderly people preserve their housing and avoid homelessness, gain desperately needed subsistence income, protect themselves from abuse, and obtain medical care.

Funding from the campaign has made it possible for LARC to maintain its telephone advice and referral line at the present level of service. Without the campaign funds, approximately 150 clients would not have received the services needed to assist them in preserving housing, income, benefits or family stability.

At the Pro Bono Referral Program, the additional funding from the campaign has translated into approximately $190,000 of donated legal services by private attorneys. A recent Pro Bono client called the program a "life-saver."

Although the Campaign for Legal Services has been successful, much more needs to be done. In New Hampshire, although our general population and poverty population have increased significantly in the past two decades, our legal services programs have decreased considerably; there are fewer staff attorneys, fewer offices, and more narrowly-focused and restricted funding.

In recent years, NHLA has been forced to leave a number of attorney positions vacant, and in 2003, the organization had to lay off an attorney and a secretary. LARC has also suffered from cutbacks in federal funding. Two LARC staff members were laid off in 2003, and working hours for most employees were cut by 10 percent for the indefinite future. Such staff reductions obviously diminish an organization’s ability to provide services to the poor.

Despite decreases in legal services funding, the need for legal services in NH is palpable. There are approximately 6,000 eviction cases in New Hampshire district courts annually, most of which involve low-income tenants. NHLA is able to talk to fewer than 10 percent of these clients and to represent even fewer in court cases. The statistics are similar for domestic violence cases, and are even more stark in cases involving consumer debt collection or other civil legal problems facing low-income individuals.

Additional demands for legal services come from a growing poverty population and changing client community. A wide variety of new immigrant groups in the cities of southern New Hampshire present unique needs to legal service providers in terms of language barriers. An impending mandate from the Legal Services Corporation will require LARC to make its services accessible to all clients, regardless of their ability to speak English. Although LARC has Spanish and French speakers on staff, the new mandate will require LARC to provide translators in every language of NH’s client population—about 67 languages—and to provide written material in all of those languages regarding the availability of translators. This is an additional operating expense that will further strain the financial resources of LARC.

The increasing demand for legal aid services and decreasing funding underscores the importance of the Campaign for Legal Services, and the need to continue to raise more money to pursue the promise of equal justice for all in New Hampshire. With your support, the New Hampshire Bar Foundation can continue to provide stable funding for legal services, which will bring us closer to our vision of a justice system that truly works for everyone. For more information about becoming involved in the Campaign for Legal Services, contact David Snyder or Angela Yanski at the Bar Foundation office, 224-6942.

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