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The NLADA marks our centennial celebration, having influenced nearly every major court decision and policy matter that impacted justice in America. NLADA prepares for the next 100 years, with our "Blueprint for Justice: Rethink. Retool. Rebuild."
http://www.nlada100years.org/
NLADA creates a Lifetime Achievement Award and names it in honor of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who also became the first recipient. We honor heroes each year at our annual conference to express appreciation to those who have worked to deliver equal justice to all in America.
Jo-Ann Wallace succeeds Lyons as NLADA President and CEO in 2005, NLADA plays a leading role in revising the ABA Standards for the Provision of Civil Legal Services for the Poor, which had not been updated since 1986.
NLADA, together with AARP and numerous other organizations, file an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) program. The IOLTA program funds legal aid services to the poor. In the case of Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, the plaintiff argues that the IOLTA program constitutes a “taking” in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 2003, the Supreme Court issues a ruling affirming that the interest generated by the IOLTA program was property, but found that there was no taking because there was no pecuniary loss or adverse economic impact on the plaintiff. The decision preserved a critical funding source for legal services for low-income people.
The Open Society Institute funds the Project for the Future of Equal Justice, a partnership between NLADA and CLASP that launched the Civil Rights and Racial Justice Initiative among other projects established under its auspices.
NLADA entered into a new partnership with the ABA to sponsor an annual Equal Justice Conference, bringing together civil legal services providers, private attorneys, pro bono coordinators, jurists, law school clinicians, bar leaders, funders and other members of the equal justice community from around the nation.
http://www2.americanbar.org/calendar/equal-justice-conference/Pages/default.aspx
The Project Advisory Group, which had been created in 1967 by the US Office of Economic Opportunity to serve as the voice of legal services and their clients, merges with NLADA to form a new, stronger national entity to lead and represent the legal services community. The merged organization retained the NLADA name and PAG ceased to exist as a separate entity. NLADA adopted an elected governance structure modeled in part on the PAG model.
The association creates the NLADA Insurance Program to provide professional legal liability insurance to our members and serve as their advocate. The insurance program would serve more than than 1,100 NLADA members nationwide by 2011.
http://www.nlada.org/Insurance/Insurance_Home
The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 promises an era of support and increased resources for LSC. First Lady Hillary Clinton had served as the Chair of the LSC board in the 1970s, and the new president shares her high regard for legal services. Funding would rise to a high of $400 million for FY 1995. At its third Annual Awards Dinner, NLADA recognizes Hillary Clinton for her dedication and commitment to equal access to justice for all Americans.
1992 sees the establishment of NLADA’s Corporate Advisory Committee (CAC) under the leadership of Jack Martin, Vice President and General Counsel of Ford Motor Company. The CAC, a prestigious group of general counsel from major corporations, enlists the help of America’s corporate community in fostering national support for NLADA’s mission of ensuring the availability of quality representation to low-income persons unable to afford legal assistance. Under Martin’s leadership, the CAC is instrumental in helping to preserve funding for LSC.
NLADA holds our first Annual Awards Dinner in 1991 to commemorate the association’s 80th Anniversary, with former U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford as honorary co-chairs. That same year NLADA receives a grant from the Ford Foundation to coordinate the work of national and state support programs, regional training centers, the elder law community, and other providers of support for legal services advocates.
LSC funding increases from $91 million to $321 million in 1981 thanks in part to a study and a lobbying effort by PAG and NLADA that established a “minimum access” plan with the goal of providing funding in every area of the country that would support two lawyers for every 10,000 poor people.
NLADA is under attack after Ronald Reagan is elected President in 1980 and, with his Attorney General, Edwin Meese, vow to eliminate LSC and federally funded legal services. NLADA works to defend LSC and to thwart President Reagan’s efforts to nominate and confirm LSC board members who mirror his goals. President Reagan would make 44 recess appointments to the LSC board before a board is finally confirmed in the mid 1980s. Along with the ABA, NLADA mounts a huge lobbying effort to save LSC. NLADA’s staff work closely with Senator Warren Rudman (R-NH), his staff and numerous other Senators whose support is crucial. Through those efforts, LSC survives, although the appropriation for FY 1982 is cut by 25 percent and numerous restrictions are imposed on LSC funding.
With support from NLADA, the ABA and numerous others, Congress passes the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) Act to fund civil legal services programs nationwide. The LSC Act creates a nonprofit corporation controlled by an independent, non-partisan board, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. LSC would receive funds appropriated by Congress and made grants to independent, local legal aid programs to provide civil legal services to low-income people in their service areas. NLADA had worked on the design of LSC, lobbied for its passage, was engaged in the political and policy maneuvering surrounding its establishment, and participated in the drafting of the national standards and regulations that governed LSC and the local legal services programs funded by LSC.
www.lsc.gov
The National College of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Public Defenders is established in Houston, Texas with LEAA funds. The college had been championed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and NLADA.
NLADA files an amicus curiae brief in support of the plaintiff special education students in the case of Mills v. Board of Education. Plaintiffs succeed in their argument that a school board’s actions in excluding plaintiffs from public school violated their due process rights.
A study finds that from 1969 to 1971, the defense function received less than 1 percent of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration funds. The monograph titled "The Dollars and Sense of Justice: a Study of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration as It Relates to the Defense Function of the Criminal Justice System" notes that LEAA's enabling legislation did not specify the funds to be used for prosecution or defense of criminal cases.
The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) is created under Title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to help states improve law enforcement. By January 1969, each of the 50 states establishes a State Planning Agency (SPA) to disburse LEAA funds in accordance with its own approved plan. The LEAA, operating within the U.S. Department of Justice, retains a portion of its appropriation for disbursement at the national level. Through the Illinois Defender Project, which includes public defenders from each Illinois appellate district in the state, Illinois has the nation’s first large-scale defender project financed with LEAA funds.
NLADA files an amicus curiae brief in In re Gault, holding that there is a right to appointed counsel in juvenile delinquency proceedings. Marshall Hartman writes in the brief that a probation officer should not represent a youth in court because probation officers work for the judge and therefore are required to disclose confidential information to the court. The high court rules in favor of mandating the provision of counsel in juvenile delinquency proceedings.
Congress passes the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the blueprint for President Johnson’s War on Poverty. The Office of Economic Opportunity funds and oversees the development of numerous antipoverty programs, including the neighborhood legal services program. As part of its 1965 annual meeting, NLADA would help refine the overall design of the OEO local legal services delivery system.
NLADA receives a $6.1 million grant from the Ford Foundation to establish legal defense programs for the poor to implement the Gideon decision. The grant, dubbed the "National Defender Project" ("NDP"), operated as a semi-autonomous program within NLADA and was not under the supervision of Defender Director Michael Getty. Between 1964 and 1969, the NDP would organize and fund 78 legal defense systems throughout the country, including assigned counsel programs using private lawyers appointed on a case-by-case basis as well as public and private defender programs.
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court guarantees the right to counsel in state courts to all persons accused of felonies. Justice Hugo Black delivers the opinion in the watershed case of Gideon v. Wainwright. The Court says: “reason and reflection require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. This seems to us to be an obvious truth.” Finding that “lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries,” the Court holds that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel is a fundamental and essential right made obligatory upon the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.
http://www.nlada.net/library/article/na_gideonvwainwright
NLADA begins an organized national effort to expand legal clinics in law schools. Using funds provided by a grant from the Ford Foundation, NLADA creates the National Council on Legal Clinics in coordination with the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools.
NLAA reorganizes and changes its name to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) to mark the specific inclusion of poor persons accused of crimes in our goal of assuring the availability of quality legal services for poor people.
www.nlada.org
NALAA formally establishes a Defender Section, institutionalizing work that had been part of the organization since the early 1920s. This same year, NLAA is given official status as an affiliated organization in the ABA, with representation in the ABA House of Delegates.
www.americanbar.org
NALAA moves its headquarters into the newly constructed American Bar Center, home of the ABA, on the campus of the University of Chicago
The National Legal Aid Association (NLAA) succeeds NALAO, and Harrison Tweed, the president of the Legal Aid Society of New York from 1936-1945, is elected NLAA’s President. He will serve in that role until 1955. NALAA moves its headquarters into the newly constructed American Bar Center, home of the ABA, on the campus of the University of Chicago in 1955.
Emery Brownell becomes Executive Director of NALAO and will provide strong leadership for more than two decades, serving until 1961.
The United States Supreme Court rules in Johnson v. Zerbst, that "the Sixth Amendment withholds from the Federal Courts, in all criminal proceedings, the authority to deprive an accused of his life or liberty unless he has or waives the assistance of counsel."
Statement of NALAO's mission.
During the 1920s, NLADA’s predecessor organization, led by John S. Bradway, becomes the first national organization to be involved with law school clinics and law students.
On June 7-8, 1923, a constitutional convention is held in Cleveland with delegates from 23 legal aid programs. A new constitution and by-laws are adopted unanimously, and the National Association of Legal Aid Organizations (NALAO) formally succeeded NALAS. Records of the proceedings noted hat that the new organization is intended to be a new beginning, based on a clearer conception of the underlying principles of legal aid work, a new start toward fulfillment of those plans, which were abandoned during the war and a fresh determination to make the legal aid organizations of the United States a more perfect instrument for bringing Justice within the reach of the poor. Chief Justice William Howard Taft is elected honorary president of NALAO.
The American Bar Association (ABA) establishes the Special Committee on Legal Aid Work, the predecessor to the Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense (SCLAID).
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching engages Reginald Heber Smith, an attorney for the Boston Legal Aid Society, to undertake a study and report on legal aid in the United States. Smith’s work, "Justice and the Poor", the first nationwide study of legal aid, eventually is published in 1919. The study challenges the legal profession to consider it an obligation to ensure that access to justice is available to all, without regard to the ability to pay. “Without equal access to justice,” he writes, “the system not only robs the poor of their only protection, but places in the hands of their oppressors the most powerful and ruthless weapon ever invented.” Smith would become a driving force of the organization for decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_and_the_Poor
Los Angeles County establishes the nation’s first public defender office. Shortly thereafter, defenders are appointed for municipal court representation in Portland, Oregon and Columbus, Ohio. In 1917, the Connecticut legislature authorizes superior court judges to appoint a lawyer to be paid with public funds. Most of the early programs for provision of criminal defense services use unpaid volunteers. With more lawyers representing poor defendants, demand will increase for public defender offices.Clara Shortridge Foltz, California's first woman lawyer, had introduced the idea of the public defender's office, called "Foltz Defender Bill," at the Congress of Jurisprudence and Law Reform in Chicago in 1893.
The National Association of Legal Aid Societies, the precedessor of National Legal Aid & Defender Association., is officially created when members adopt Articles of Organization, including a constitution and by-laws. The NALAS holds its first formal Convention. Arthur Von Briesen, a German immigrant who grew up in poverty and had led the Legal Aid Society in New York, becomes the first NALAS President.
Fifteen legal aid societies sent delegates to meet in downtown Pittsburgh for the first such national gathering, highlighting the growth of a movement. The delegates had been called together by M.W. Acheson, Jr., the Vice President of the Allegheny County Bar Association, to discuss the advisability of establishing a national organization of legal aid programs. Arthur von Briesen, President of the Legal Aid Society of New York led the discussion of the need for a national organization, and a committee was appointed to draw up a plan for a permanent central organization.
Before the organization that would become the National Legal Aid & Defender Association was founded, legal aid societies emerged in the late 19th century, mostly to protect the rights of new immigrants who were unable to afford private lawyers. The German Immigrant Society, the predecessor to the Legal Aid society of New York, was founded to provide legal aid to the rapidly growing immigrant population of New York City.
Legal aid societies emerge in major U.S. cities in the late 19th century, mostly to represent poor immigrants who are facing exploitation in their new homes. In 1876 the German Immigrant Society, the predecessor to the Legal Aid Society of New York, is founded to provide legal aid to a rapidly growing immigrant population in New York City.
http://www.nlada.org/About/About_HistoryCivil#early
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