I have been coming here for more than a decade, and I have never written a diary. Until now. I had an experience this evening that I want to share. I am a legal aid lawyer. I have devoted my career to providing free legal help to folks who otherwise could not afford a lawyer: low-income families facing eviction, survivors of domestic violence desperately trying to escape the cycle of abuse, special needs kids trying to access the educational services that they are entitled to under the law, and so many others. It is immensely rewarding work, although of course not in the financial sense :-) It is also, as you might imagine, work that is not without its political adversaries. From the very beginning, there have been strong forces in the political arena who are opposed to legal aid because they fear that it is contrary to their political agenda or because they don’t believe that it is the government’s role to help pay for lawyers for poor people. Pretty much every year, there is a bill in Congress to totally defund legal aid. Fortunately, those bills have not succeeded. Yet.
I am currently in Washington DC where the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the quasi-federal agency that is the primary federal funder of legal aid work around the country, is celebrating its 40th Anniversary. At a reception this evening, Hillary Clinton was the special guest speaker. She spoke with passion and humor about her life-long involvement with legal aid. At Yale, Hillary was one of the first students to work on behalf of poor clients in that school’s legal aid clinic. In her late 20’s, when she moved to Arkansas and became a professor at the University of Arkansas’s Law School, she oversaw the creation of that school’s legal aid clinic, and it was a wild success despite the opposition of a powerful local judge who told her at their first meeting that he did not have time for “lady professors” or legal aid. And then, at just 30 years of age, President Carter appointed Hillary to become the Chairman of the Board of LSC, a position she held until the early 80s and in which she helped put the organization on solid footing for the battles that were soon to come in the Reagan years. Among other accomplishments, she helped triple LSC’s annual funding to more than $300 million! When Reagan tried to zero out the funding for LSC early in his first term, and when he subsequently tried to pack the LSC board with ideological opponents, Hillary helped to successfully lead the fight against these moves. And later, as First Lady, she helped lead the fight against the effort to eliminate LSC that was part of the Contract on America.
Almost 20 years later, LSC is still here and it is still a key player in the battle to make Equal Justice for All a reality in this country. And it isn’t a stretch to say that for almost the entire 40 years, Hillary Clinton has been a passionate, invaluable general in this battle to make sure that the poor and underprivileged enter the legal arena on equal footing with those who can afford legal counsel. When she spoke tonight of this work, Hillary talked warmly about how it was some of the most important work she has ever done. Just for this fight alone, we owe her a debt of gratitude. I know that I am thankful that she has been on our side.