Blueprint pro bono free#
The award recognized their achievement as the nation’s most outstanding pro bono project for cooperative delivery of free legal services to the poor. In 1991, the Ozark Legal Services collaborated with the Bar Associations from Baxter, Benton, Boone-Newton, Carroll, Celburne, Madison, Marion, Searcy-Van Buren, Stone, Tri-County, and Washington Counties to win the prestigious Harrison Tweed Award from the American Bar Association. In 1977 when LSC money became available, Clinton applied for a grant and the clinical program expanded to become Ozark Legal Services. Hillary Rodham Clinton created the program. Ozark Legal Services initially began in 1974 as a clinical program at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville.
EALS had a long history of systemic and impact litigation for clients in East Arkansas. Later offices opened in Helena and Blytheville. The first branch office was in Forrest City. After the first case in Crittenden County in 1978, the organization began opening branch offices to provide better access to its services to people in rural areas who lacked public transportation. The program covered Crittenden, Cross, Phillips, Mississippi, Lee, Monroe, and St. Residents of Crittenden County applied for a grant from LSC to create East Arkansas Legal Services, Inc. The program reduced to one office in Newport and an additional office in Jonesboro. As technology and communications developed and funding ebbed and flowed, it was no longer necessary to have so many offices. In 1980, the coverage area grew to include Sharp, Craighead, Greene, and Clay Counties.īy 1984, satellite offices were opened and at one time, every county in the service area had an office. In 1978, the program took on Randolph County. The name changed to Legal Services of Northeast Arkansas, Inc. The board of directors added Lawrence, Woodruff, Poinsett, and Independence Counties to its coverage area. In 1977, ten years after the Jackson County Legal Services Project began, the one-attorney operation grew into a major law firm in Northeast Arkansas. was formed in 1970 as a domestic non-profit with the purpose of “…apprising the poor of their rights and remedies under the law and encourage them to assert those rights in the courts through the Legal Services Program.” In 1969, the directors of the project decided to incorporate. It was originally funded through the Crowleys Ridge Development Council, Inc., a community action program. In 1967, a program in Newport received federal funding to create Jackson County Legal Services Project. In 1965, Arkansas got its first legal services program - the Legal Aid Bureau of Pulaski County, which received one of the first eight grants from the OEO. Elsewhere in Arkansas, it was simply up to local attorneys to decide whether to donate time or resources when a person needed representation but could not afford it. In the 1930s, a part-time lawyer sometimes served indigent people in Pulaski County.
The First Legal Services Programs in Arkansasīefore federal funding for legal services became available, opportunities for poor Arkansans to find representation were limited. LSC expanded upon the existing program by strengthening its providers, enhancing the support structure, and expanding the reach of the program into every county.
Blueprint pro bono full#
Each program was designed to be self-sufficient and to handle the full range of advocacy for its clients. In 1965 the federal government started a legal services program to encourage lawyers to find solutions for the causes and effects of poverty funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The OEO provided funding for local providers that offered full-service representation with a goal of ensuring equal access to the legal system. That program would eventually become the Legal Aid Society of New York. In the United States, the first civil legal assistance program for low-income people was founded in New York City in 1876. The organizations were formed in 2002 when six legal services providers merged. Legal Aid of Arkansas is one of two nonprofit law firms funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in Arkansas, the other being the Center for Arkansas Legal Services (CALS).
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