Community Legal Services history

In 1967, a group of these programs came together so they could better coordinate their advocacy, training and funding administration.

Henry Freedman on Please help the NEJL with photo identification from 1968 Conference on Welfare Law in NYC, part 1

President Nixon, who took office in January 1969, sent a special message to Congress in February, saying that “the blight of poverty requires priority attention” and asking Congress to extend appropriations for OEO.

The president made the memo public in February 1971 and in May sent a special message to Congress proposing establishment of the Legal Services Corporation.

In 1972, Western Massachusetts Legal Services (WMLS) was created out of a consolidation of four pre-existing organizations providing legal services in Western Massachusetts.

Earl F. Landgrebe wrote in the June 1973 “minority views” section of the House report on the LSC legislation.

President Nixon signed the LSC Act on July 25, 1974.

Later, pursuant to the findings of the Delivery System Study completed in 1980, LSC encouraged the development of pro bono programs and subsequently required programs to use 12.5% of the funding for private attorney involvement, most of which went to increase pro bono efforts.

Since East Palo Alto’s incorporation in 1983, the legal services offered to the community have continuously expanded in response to evolving needs.

The resulting consent decree, in effect until 1997, transformed the department.

In 1998, in response to New York State’s adoption of a mandatory continuing legal education requirement for attorneys, our Legal Support Unit became a state-accredited provider of Certified Legal Education (CLE) and now provides CLE training to over 2,500 individuals each year.

Since 2004, CLSMF has grown to provide civil legal assistance to residents of Brevard, Citrus, Flagler, Hernando, Lake, Marion, Orange, Osceola, Putnam, Seminole, Sumter, and Volusia counties, making us one of the largest nonprofit law firms in the state.

The LSC Board of Directors marked the 35th anniversary of the law’s enactment on July 24, 2009, at an observance at the Brown v.

Nearly three hundred (300) organizations employed over 400 full-time lawyers with an aggregate budget of nearly $5.3 million (or approximately $40 million in 2015 dollars).

In 2018, over 860 volunteers donated more than 28,000 hours of legal services (with a market value of over $10.9 million) to local community members.

CLSEPA is a $5.7 million dollar (FY 2020) organization that operates in six locations in the Bay Area including in East Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Burlingame, Mountain View, Redwood City, and San Francisco.