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Legal Needs of The Poor: Problems, Priorities and Attitudes *
Author(s) -
MEEKER JAMES W.,
DOMBRINK JOHN,
SCHUMANN EDWARD
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
law and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.534
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-9930
pISSN - 0265-8240
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9930.1985.tb00352.x
Subject(s) - legal service , order (exchange) , dilemma , corporation , service (business) , population , legal research , business , public relations , legal opinion , law , political science , law and economics , marketing , economics , medicine , finance , environmental health , black letter law , public law , private law , philosophy , epistemology
The Legal Services Corporation is faced with the problem of allocating limited resources in order to meet the legal needs of the poor. It is forced into the dilemma of setting priorities, creating workable regulations to meet an ambiguously defined and elusive concept of legal need. Recently enacted regulations require annual reports by legal services programs that are based, in part, on the assessment of eligible clients' needs as expressed by their attitudes. These regulations are premised on unarticulated implicit assumptions relating attitudes, problems experienced, and legal need. This study examines these assumptions in an analysis of perceived problems, help seeking behavior, attitudes toward the allocation of legal services resources, and how these have changed over time for the eligible client population of one legal service program in California.