has had an opportunity to consider the design and the cost of the study. We have now made the necessary analysis.

Most of the funds requested for this item will be used to establish demonstration programs around the country to test various means for delivering legal services. The act mentions specifically judicare, contracts with private attorneys, prepaid plans, and vouchers. We expect that all of these techniques will be part of the demonstration effort. At the same time, of course, the demonstration projects will be providing essential legal assistance for the poor.

Second, $1.03 million is requested to permit the Corporation to continue grants for ten legal assistance programs for migrant workers. In the past, these programs were funded by the Community Services Administration with money appropriated for that purpose to the Department of Labor. When the Corporation submitted its budget request last July, it understood that the Department of Labor would continue to provide support to these programs. The Department of Labor, however, has not done so. The 10 migrant legal programs have all been carefully evaluated, and we are convinced that they must be continued if the minimal needs of migrant workers for legal assistance are to be met. The funds requested will be used to maintain legal assistance for some 60,000 migrant workers with about 15,000 legal problems each year.

Finally, the Corporation seeks $2.77 million to provide funds for 58 legal assistance programs throughout the country that have been supported by local initiative funds from Community Action Agencies. Last summer, the Corporation thought that this support would continue in fiscal year 1976, but the Community Action Agencies have indicated that the programs must now look solely to the Corporation. We are prepared to assume responsibility for them. The assistance they provide is clearly needed. All of the programs have been evaluated and, with very few exceptions, they are providing essential services. The amount requested will not only replace contributions from Community Action Agencies, but will also provide increments averaging $19,000 per program to make them effective legal aid offices.

REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 1977

The Corporation's request for $140.3 million for fiscal year 1977 represents a substantial increase in comparison to fiscal year 1976. This request is submitted with full awareness that both the President and the Congress are seeking to limit the Federal budget. But in our considered judgment, this request is the minimum required to comply with the congressional mandate to provide access to justice for the poor.

Approximately 29 million poor people live in the United States. They are unable to afford any legal services. These are the eligible clients within the meaning of the Corporation's enabling statute.

Studies made by the American Bar Foundation, and developed more fully by analyses by the Bureau of Social Science Research, indicate that approximately 23 percent of these 29 million people have a legal problem each year. Further, 2 lawyers for each 10,000 poor persons are required to provide the most minimal service. By contrast, 11.2 lawyers per 10,000 persons serve the Nation's population as a whole.

Nearly 12 million of the 29 million poor persons live in areas where they have no access at all to legal aid programs. Only a small fraction of the remaining 17 million poor persons are now provided with the minimal standard of 2 lawyers per 10,000.

As detailed in the formal budget submission, the Corporation has developed a 4-year plan to provide at least that minimal assistance to all poor persons throughout the country. Fiscal year 1977 marks the first critical step in implementing that plan.

About $21 million of the increase is needed to provide legal aid programs where none exist today, and about $5 million will be used to expand existing programs into areas where legal assistance to the poor is only theoretical. That theoretical coverage is exemplified by the State of Georgia, where only one legal aid attorney is available for every 22,700 poor people in the State.

Most of the remaining increase, $13.48 million, will be used to meet the critical need to improve existing programs. When the Corporation formally came into existence, it assumed responsibility for 258 legal services programs operating in 638 offices throughout the country. Those programs were involved in an estimated 1,000,000 cases per year. Yet empirical studies have shown that among the 17.25 million poor persons living in the areas served by the programs,

some 4 million legal problems arise every year. Three out of four of those problems, therefore, were unattended.

The map that is reproduced at the end of this testimony illustrates the problem graphically. The vast unshaded areas on the map are completely without legal assistance for the poor. Only a few areas offer adequate coverage. We have carefully designed a set of procedures for the maximum effective use of the $26.4 million to provide legal aid for the poor who live in areas where there is none.

First, each regional office of the Corporation will review the needs for legal assistance with the poor in various communities, with officials of public and private organizations, and with State and local bar organizations.

Second, the many applications for funding new programs that have already been received will be carefully considered. The Corporation's Regional Director will also determine whether programs may be feasible in areas where no group has yet formed to submit a new application, but where the need for legal services is critical.

Third, with the recommendations from the Regional Directors, the Corporation will allocate the funds based on two overarching priorities:

One: Priority will be given to regions that have the least coverage and, within regions, to States that are the least well served.

Two: Priority will also be given to new programs that can establish the most efficient management units for serving the largest numbers of poor people. Since the larger programs can generally serve more poor people more effectively, preference will be given to those programs.

On the basis of these priorities, the Corporation will review carefully the applications and, in consultation with interested groups, allocate the funds to provide legal aid for the maximum number of poor people.

We have also developed criteria for the most efficient use of the limited funds sought to improve existing programs. A substantial share of the increase$7.18 million-will provide a 10 percent increase for programs that demonstrate critical needs. These funds will be used, for example, to meet urgent office and personnel requirements.

An equalization fund of $4.5 million will be used to provide additional support for the most seriously underfunded and understaffed legal aid offices. Throughout much of the South, Southeast, and Southwest, the average expenditure is less than $2 per poor person living where there are legal aid programs. Some of the Midwest and other parts of the country as well are also grossly underfunded on a comparative as well as an absolute basis. The result-inadequate access to justice is obviously unfair to the poor in those areas. The equalization fund will enable the Corporation in fiscal year 1977 to move toward eliminating the disparity.

Finally, the Corporation will use a relatively small portion of the requested increase $1.8 million-to meet special situations in which a relatively modest amount of money will substantially improve the lawyers' ability to assist their clients. Examples include the consolidation and merger of existing programs for more efficient management and to provide a higher quality of assistance. The Corporation has kept its requests for other priority needs to an absolute minimum. The items listed are all, in our considered judgment, needed to insure that the assistance provided is quality assistance, and also to find more efficient and effective ways to deliver legal assistance at the lowest possible cost. We are convinced that substantial economies may be possible through contracts with private attorneys, use of paraprofessionals, and better training and technical assistance, as well as through the use of various delivery systems as supplements and alternatives to existing staff attorney programs. The funds requested under these categories are essential if the requirements of the act are to be carried out with maximum efficiency and economy.

Those, in summary, are the Corporation's needs for increased funding to provide legal assistance for the poor. The Legal Services Corporation is now in place and ready to meet its responsibilities. We respectfully urge the Congress to approve the full amount of our request so that we can get on with the task of insuring equal justice under law.

[The map follows:]

Mr. EHRLICH. Until last fall, Mr. Chairman, I was the dean at the Stanford Law School. In that role, one of my primary obligations was to look into the future to try to see what would be the needs for legal services in this country, and what kinds of roles lawyers ought to be serving in this country.

In that position, I became increasingly concerned about the lack of legal services for the poor. Just after I left law school I was a law clerk for Judge Learned Hand. It was he who coined the commandment, "Thou shalt not ration justice." In my role as a dean, I became increasingly troubled that we were not following this commandment. When the Board asked me to become President, I saw an opportunity to help insure that this country does not ration justice. In my view the Legal Services Corporation has an extraordinary opportunity to meet the obligation to provide access to justice for the poor, to ensure that all in this country can utilize the legal system and make use of the law just as we require them to live within it.

ROLE OF LEGAL SERVICES CORPORATION

The concept of a new corporation impressed me for four key reasons. First, it is, as Dean Cramton said, exclusively concerned with legal services. We are not part of a war against poverty. We are not part of any other Government program. It is our exclusive mandate to provide legal services for the poor.

Second, we are particularly responsible and particularly accountable to the Congress. We are not part of the executive branch. We come directly to the Congress, as we are this afternoon. The Office of Management and Budget can advise the Congress, as it did on our budget-advice that, if followed, would have the crippling impact that Dean Cramton suggested-but it is with the Congress that we deal directly on our budget.

Third, this Corporation was created at a time when there is, across the country, enormous support for legal services on the part of the organized bar and on the part of the legal profession itself. We are trying to take every possible advantage of that support.

Finally, it seemed to me clear, in the mandate of the Legal Services Corporation, that we should take nothing for granted except the basic importance of legal services itself. We should evaluate each program that we have, and evaluate it carefully and fully, before we fund it. We should be absolutely sure that we are making the most effective and efficient possible use of our resources. That is precisely what we are doing.

When the Corporation came into existence last October it assumed responsibility for some 258 legal assistance programs with some 600 offices across the country. Each one of those offices is located in a very poor section-urban or rural-of the country. They are basically storefront offices in which 2 or 3 or 4 lawyers each handle some 300 to 500 cases a year. These are primarily cases in the areas of domestic relations, housing law, consumer law, and administrative benefits.

Each one of those cases represents an individual human being with a real problem with the law, a problem as to which he or she doesn't know where to turn without the help of legal counsel. That is what we are about.

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Mainly in those areas of substantive law we are providing through our programs-assistance to poor people who have legal rights but do not know what they are or how to exercise them. Well over 80 percent of the matters are handled without litigation-handled by advise and counsel by lawyers or their staff. Thus relatively few go to court.

But it is also true, as Dean Cramton indicated, that those programs, in large measure because their budgets were frozen for 5 years, cannot now provide adequate service to the people they are supposed to

serve.

We are seeking in our 1977 appropriation $13.48 million—a major share of the increase we are requesting-to improve existing programs, to help bring them to a level where they can provide quality service to the poor, as they are called upon to do by the Legal Services Corporation Act.

A second, and in some ways even more serious problem, is that some 12 million poor people in this country are entirely outside the legal services system in the sense that there are no programs at all that serve them.

The map that is attached to my statement indicates where there is coverage and, sadly, where there is not. In the unshaded areas that make up most of the country there are no legal services programs at all.

Most of the remainder of the increase that we are seeking for 1977 will be used to provide service in those areas where there is now no service. A total of $26.4 million will be used to reach throughout the country to begin to establish that service. We have developed a plan whereby over a four-year period we will be able to provide throughout the country a minimum of service, the equivalent of two lawyers per 10,000 poor people. That doesn't sound like very much. It isn't very much. But it would give a minimum level of service everywhere to the poor who need it.

As the third key element of our 1977 budget request, we are seeking funds to insure that we are using the best possible means to deliver legal services-through use of paraprofessionals, contracts with private lawyers, and alternative and supplemental delivery techniques. We want to use every method we can to make maximum use of our

resources.

We are also seeking a $5.3 million supplemental request for fiscal year 1976. It covers three items. Two of those items are categories of legal aid programs that have been funded by other agencies in the past-in one case by the Community Services Administration and in the other case by the Department of Labor. We had expected that funding to be continued through the 1976 fiscal year so that we could assume responsibility for the programs in 1977.

But the two agencies involved, CSA and the Department of Labor, have concluded that now that there is a Legal Services Corporation, these programs should be within the ambit of the Corporation.

We agree, but we do not have the funds under our 1976 appropriation because we expected that the programs would be covered by those other agencies. That is why we must seek those funds in the supplemental.

The third item in the supplemental is to establish a series of demonstration projects so that we can carry out the mandate of the Congress