Legal Services Corporation

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The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is a private, non-profit corporation established by the United States Congress to seek to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing civil legal assistance to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it. The LSC was created in 1974 with bipartisan congressional sponsorship and the support of the Nixon administration, and is funded through the congressional appropriations process.

LSC is one of the organizational descendants of the former Office of Economic Opportunity.

As part of a comprehensive "reform" of federal welfare laws beginning in 1996, LSC imposed restrictions on the types of work that its grantee legal services organizations could engage in. For example, LSC-funded organizations could no longer serve as counsel in class action lawsuits challenging the way public benefits are administered. Additionally, LSC grantees faced tightened restrictions on representing immigrants. However, non-LSC funded organizations are not subject to these restrictions. This has led the legal services community to adopt a two-track approach: LSC restricted counsel taking on individual clients but not engaging in class actions, and non-restricted counsel (using private donor funding) both taking on individuals as well as engaging in otherwise restricted litigation. Poverty lawyers in both tracks still work together where they can, being careful not to run afoul of LSC restrictions.

In December 2006, the corporation changed the generous expense policies for its top officials, after the Associated Press reported in a series of stories in August and September how the corporations's top executives spent freely for such things as chauffered rides in Washington DC and board meetings at an upscale hotel a few minutes away from the corporation's headquarters.^[1]