Legal Services Corporation 50th Anniversary Luncheon

Best-selling author and lawyer John Grisham joined leaders from 130 organizations funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) and other advocates for access to justice at a forum and gala Tuesday celebrating LSC’s 50th Anniversary. The forum and dinner at the Omni Shoreham brought together the nation’s foremost justice leaders, who spoke of their belief in the rule of law, but also underscored that the American ideal of equal justice under the law has not yet been realized for low-income Americans. In a Tuesday afternoon session, John Grisham sat down for a conversation about his early career as a lawyer in Mississippi and how it influenced his current advocacy and philanthropy. In his first year practicing law, he was approached by people living in a nearby trailer park who were being wrongfully evicted and had no money to pay an attorney. Having few other clients to speak of, Grisham took the case pro bono, and easily got the evictions thrown out. He knows that without representation, the outcome would likely have been very different. “When they realized that these poor people had a lawyer, everything changed,” said Grisham. “Low-income people get run over all the time, unless they show up with a lawyer—and I realized the power of a law license at that moment.” Dionne Dowdy-Lacey told the audience how Community Legal Aid (CLA) in Ohio enabled her to rebuild her life after acquiring a criminal record. Her legal aid attorney helped her with expungement services, driver’s license restoration and prevented bank foreclosure on her home. Now Dowdy-Lacey is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit United Returning Citizens, which partnered with CLA to offer an expungement clinic. The clinic allowed 152 Ohioans to clear their records, leading to improved access to career opportunities and housing. LSC Board Chair John Levi stressed the importance of directing resources to legal aid in order to close the persistent and growing justice gap that exists for low-income Americans. “I have no doubt that LSC’s founders would be so very proud of the work of our grantees, and the extraordinary network we have built across the country, but I think at the same time they would also be dismayed at the lack of appropriate funding,” said Levi. “Funding equal access to justice is not an act of charity—rather, it is an investment in the stability of the American democracy and the rule of law.”