Current Event 5 (3rd Quarter)

• The current system for legal aid to the poor is broken. It is broken and beaten. It will not be working for very long in its current state, anyways, and then it will shatter into a million pieces. Once this has happened, the legal aid will be nonexistent and thus lead to the multitudes of poor Americans to roam around the streets of the cities without even the current amount of pennies they receive. Thus our Legal Services Corp. must be fixed quickly before it fails. The current problem is that the Law firms, which traditionally provided most of the Legal Services’ money, are now being hit very hard by the economic crisis and are thus lowering the amount they are giving to the Legal Services. The government has started off well as Obama’s omnibus bill has provided some aid to Legal Services, even though it is not considered enough to make up for the firms’ shortfall. If the government goes a step farther and decides to free the Legal Services from its current burdens of business, such as its inability to ask for recovery fees in court cases, the system would be able to make enough money to keep itself afloat in this time when most programs require massive amounts of government aid.

• The current legal system needs to be fixed quickly, in my opinion, especially due to the fact that the current economic crisis may lead to many people who used to barely live on their own to go out to Legal Services to ask for aid now. If the system stays in its current state of burdensome schedules and shackled cases, it will not be able to keep providing for the lives of the millions of Americans who will be in dire need of financial aid to support themselves and their families.