Corporate Counsel
by Rebekah Mintzer
March 29, 2017
President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut to zero the budget of the Legal Services Corp., the largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans, garnered widespread opposition. On Tuesday, 185 in-house counsel added their voices in a letter urging Congress to preserve the LSC’s budget.
The in-house attorneys, representing numerous industries and some of the country’s biggest companies, asked Congress to grant the legal aid nonprofit $450 million in FY 2018. They said in the letter that LSC is the “cornerstone of equal justice in America” and lauded the group for supporting “countless hours of pro bono representation provided by corporate legal departments and in-house attorneys.”
Many of the volunteer hours that in-house lawyers spend doing pro bono, the attorneys said, would not be possible without the funding and structure LSC provides for local legal aid groups across the country.