| What are your bar
leaders thinking? View our archives
of President's Page columns. |
"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Law," Speeches,
1913.
One of the MSBA's stated goals
is to ensure "… access to quality justice for all."
While I am a proponent of an individual's constitutional right
to represent him or herself, I also know that in many cases "quality
justice" can not be achieved in our legal system as it exists
today without adequately trained legal representation. Therefore,
the MSBA strongly supports ensuring that low-income clients throughout
Minnesota are able to receive basic, fundamental legal services
through legal aid providers. In order for this MSBA goal to
be more than a nice idea, there needs to be adequate funding
for civil legal services.
As I was putting the final touches on these pages, I heard on
the radio that our governor has come out and proposed, once again,
that we impose a tax on legal services and that the budget for
the Judicial Branch, including legal aid services, be reduced
by 5 percent. Being a fiscally conservative lawyer and
business person, I cannot help but be in full support of the
governor's laudable efforts to develop long term solutions to
bring the state's $2 billion deficit under control. We must
all take responsibility for carrying the budget deficit load
and the responsibility of not writing checks that we cannot cash.
With that said, anyone who is remotely familiar with the Minnesota
legal aid community knows that not only has it admirably taken
on the responsibility of carrying a heavy load, but it has been
doing so for quite some time without having a large enough wagon
(i.e., resources) to transport it. Cutting the budget to the
courts and legal aid by 5 percent will be tantamount to stripping
the wheels off an already too small wagon. I fear that the axiom
that you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip will be "turned
on its head" this legislative session.
The severe unmet need for civil legal services for low-income
persons was empirically documented in the 1996 Report of the
Joint Legal Access & Funding Committee ("Joint Committee"),
appointed by the Minnesota Supreme Court at the direction of
the Legislature. In its 2000 report, the Joint Committee found
that only 31 percent (36,000 cases) of eligible legal problems
were handled by legal services organizations, leaving a significant
unmet legal need of 69 percent (83,616 cases). Because of the
recession, the stagnation in public and private funding, and
rising costs, Minnesota's legal aid programs anticipate losing
at least 15 attorney positions statewide in 2002, even without
the governor's recent proposed budget cuts. It is fair to ask
what does all this mean in terms of the human reality? It means
an even greater number of:
Children and families facing domestic abuse will go without
much-needed legal representation to protect their safety;
- The heart and soul of our economy, farm families, will not
receive the much-needed legal assistance to work with government
programs and private lenders to keep their farms or make the
hard adjustments to keep farming;
- Homeless veterans going without legal representation necessary
to obtain their much-deserved disability benefits that they have
earned;
- Senior citizens left without legal assistance to persuade
an HMO administrator that, although it may not appear totally
cost-efficient, they need their emergency medication.
As a direct result of the governor's new budget proposals,
I have made it the Bar's number one priority to educate and persuade
appropriate parties why it is not in the interest and well-being
of the state to: 1) tax legal services, or 2) reduce an already
inadequate court budget and, possibly, thereby reduce funding
for legal aid. As we well know, while taxing legal services
may have some sex appeal on its face to the public, it is really
a hardship tax and burden on the average working person barely
able, today, to scrape together enough money to pay for essential
legal services.
The governor's proposal, while I am sure well-intended, would
have the unfortunate double-whammy impact of making it even harder
for the average working person to pay for legal services, and
also of forcing an even greater number of low-income persons
to go without any legal aid assistance. This issue is much too
important for the legal profession to go quietly into the night.
Therefore, I am appointing a working committee (an "A-Team")
to ensure that our voices are heard on these issues, so extremely
important to the profession and to the public. By my next President's
Page I will be in a better position to share with you the committee's
focus, strategy, and composition.
Call me old-fashioned but I do believe that our legal profession
is truly a great one. But, as Oliver Wendell Holmes so correctly
cautioned us, that this can only be true if we greatly
pursue it. To remain a great profession, we must greatly pursue
those challenges that threaten to make our jurisprudential system
any less than the envy of the world. As Minnesota Supreme Court
Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz eloquently pointed out:
One of the major challenges to our judicial system is that
for many citizens it remains inaccessible. This fact erodes
the public's confidence in our justice system and underscores
the importance of Minnesota's civil legal services. Our statewide
delivery system is a wonderful model of public and private partnership.
It needs and deserves our strong support.
|
JARVIS C. JONES is president
of the Minnesota State Bar Association. An attorney with experience
in business and in private practice, he now serves as an executive
with the St. Paul Companies, where he is responsible for a new
start-up business.
|
