Military & Veterans

Military & Veterans Health Law

Military and Veterans

LSC “Justice Gap” report describes nation’s unmet legal needs

A new report unveiled June 14 by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) revealed that low-income Americans receive inadequate or no professional legal help for 86 percent of the civil legal problems they face in a given year. At an event on Capitol Hill, LSC President James J. Sandman said the report, The Justice Gap: Measuring the Unmet Civil Legal Needs of Low-income Americans, showed that the “vast majority of low-income Americans have significant civil legal needs that affect their families, their livelihoods, and their safety, and that our civil legal system fails, overwhelmingly, to meet those needs.”

Senate bill would help provide legal services to homeless veterans

Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) recently introduced bipartisan ABA-supported legislation to enhance the availability of legal services to homeless veterans. S. 1072 is similar to H.R. 1993, which was introduced in April by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). Both bills would allow the secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) to partner with public and private entities to provide legal services to veterans who are homeless and those who are at risk of homelessness.