REMARKS OF
                ATTORNEY GENERAL JANET RENO
   ACCESS TO JUSTICE FORUM:  ENSURING AN AMERICAN IDEAL





                  Tuesday, March 19, 1996
                         4:20 p.m.





                    Baltimore, Maryland

                  P R O C E E D I N G S
                                               (4:20 p.m.)
          ATTORNEY GENERAL RENO:  It is a pleasure for me
to be here this afternoon.
          I particularly want to thank the organizations
that have made this forum possible.  The Maryland State Bar
Association, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year,
stands as a national model for striving to provide legal
services to both low- and moderate-income persons.
          The People's Pro Bono Action Center has done an
extraordinary job in the recruitment of attorneys to do pro
bono work.  As a result, the Maryland State Bar Association
has received the American Bar Association's highest public
service award for its achievement in this area.  The
University of Maryland School of Law is exemplary in its
efforts to train law students in public service work and
serve as laboratory for improvements in the legal
profession.
          I thank each of you for the marvelous work that
you are doing.
          I also want to acknowledge our fine United States
Attorney Lynne Battaglia.  I know the United States
Attorneys Office in Maryland has long supported community
service by its attorneys.
          As you may know, I was in Baltimore last week to
speak to the General Assembly's Summit on Youth Crime.  It
was so exciting to experience the bipartisan energy focused
on seeking solutions to this deep and troubling problem in
our society.  The same commitment to justice that makes all
of us probe for more effective solutions to youth violence
is the same commitment that brings all of us together to
wrestle with the question of how we can realize the American
ideal of ensuring access to justice for all our citizens.
          We, as lawyers, face extraordinary challenges as
we deal with this problem.  There are too many Americans who
do not have access to the law, who do not feel that they
have any voice, who think of it as remote and totally
irrelevant in their lives, and has no impact.  Distrust of
our justice institutions has prompted many to lose faith in
one of the guiding principles of our democracy, the rule of
law, and to feel disenfranchised from the legal system
itself.
          As the Bar Association marks its centennial, and
as we together approach the 21st century, no task is more
important to the lawyers of Maryland or for this Nation than
ensuring access to justice for each person.  Our challenge
is twofold:  first, to increase access to legal counsel; and
secondly, to change the nature of our legal institutions and
the processes that run them, so that people can solve their
problems without having to resort exclusively to the courts
and lawyers.
          Unfortunately, we find ourselves in a greater
crisis than ever in terms of delivering legal services.  The
American Bar Association's 1994 Comprehensive Legal Needs
Study surveyed 3,000 low- and moderate-income households
nationwide.  It found that 71 percent of low-income and 61
percent of moderate-income legal needs are not addressed by
the civil justice system.
          This, of course, is not new to most of you.  Your
legal needs study in the late 1980's found that less than
20 percent of Maryland's low-income population has access
to necessary civil legal services.
          The even more recent Mason-Dixon Legal Needs Study
also confirms the findings of the ABA study:  the working
poor and the lower middle class in Maryland have significant
areas of unmet legal needs.  The failure to meet the legal
needs of our low- and moderate-income citizens is being
exacerbated by the funding cuts and the restrictions being
imposed on the Legal Services Corporation which funds most
Legal Services programs.
          I strongly support the continued funding of the
Legal Services Corporation, and I oppose the proposals to
reduce funding for the further restrictions on block grant
legal services.  I have seen firsthand, both in my hometown
of Miami and in the city that I have come to love, the
District of Columbia, the tremendous dedication and
commitment of legal services lawyers.  I started my legal
career serving on the board of the Greater Miami Legal
Services Program.  I have watched people I have worked with
give their whole professional life and
commitment to Legal Services.
          To me, they are the heroes and the heroines.
          They labor in difficult settings, for little
compensation, to provide critically needed compensation for
the poor.  I commend those who have chosen to do this
important and oftentimes unrecognized work.
          Just a small thing.  As a prosecutor in Miami, I
picked up a phone.  A grandmother would be on the phone. 
Her daughter was a crack addict.  She did not know who her
father was.  She needed the legal process to be able to
represent the child and care for the child.  And she did not
know where to turn.  And to be able to call Legal Services
and have that can-do approach -- "Let me see what I can do"
-- and then to have the grandmother stop me on the street
6 months later and say that night, the lady you told me to
talk to really made a difference, and it is all working out,
and my grandchild is doing just wonderfully in school. 
Thank you.
          It was not thank me.  It was thank the Legal
Services Corporation, the Greater Miami Legal Services. 
And, in effect, thank all who volunteer.
          I have expressed my strong opposition to the
dismantling of Legal Services in correspondence to the
chairperson of the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate
Labor Committee.  Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick,
representing the Department of Justice, has testified before
Congress in support of the Legal Services Corporation.
          Only a few months ago, White House Counsel Jack
Quinn and I wrote to the chairpersons of the House and
Senate Subcommittees on Commerce, Justice, State, and
Judiciary, conveying in the strongest possible terms the
administration's view that the Corporation's funding should
be sufficient for it to continue to provide vital legal
services to the poor and low-income citizens and their
families throughout the country.
          I have been extremely impressed with the
commitment and diligence with which all parts of the legal
profession have responded to the crisis threatened by these
funding cuts.  The District of Columbia is very much in the
same situation as Maryland.  Even in the past, when
financial times were better, the combined efforts of legal
service providers, law school clinics and pro bono attorneys
have met less than 20 percent of the legal needs of the
District's poor.
          In the past few months, the D.C. Bar Association
and the four chief judges of the Federal and District of
Columbia courts convened a meeting of the largest law firms
in the city to discuss this crisis.  The law firms, large
and small, have responded to the call to expand pro bono
resources, all in the highest and best tradition of the
profession.
          I know that Maryland has similarly responded.  I
understand, Mr. President, that you have convened the
Maryland Coalition for Civil Justice to assess the potential
damage as a result of the funding cuts, and to develop
strategies to deal with it.  I applaud you for the
broad-based nature of this coalition, including not only
legal services providers, attorneys, judges, and law school
officials, but business, labor and other community leaders
as well.
          Ensuring access to justice is a particular
responsibility for us in the legal profession, but it is the
obligation of the entire society to protect and nurture this
foundation of our democracy.  In order for there to be a
society based on law, there must be an abiding respect for
law and legal institutions.  Without access to those
institutions, there can be no response -- only
disenchantment and alienation.  Local and State governments,
as well as the private bar, must step in to fill the gaps
left by Federal funding cuts.
          But what you have done in Maryland, in terms of
reaching out to other disciplines, to the private sector,
to the other professions, I think is a model for the rest
of the Nation and for other bar associations.  The lawyer
is not going to be able to deal with the problem of domestic
violence or with the clients experiencing problems
associated with domestic violence nearly as effectively as
the lawyer and the doctor who, working together, both from
a public health point of view and from a criminal justice
point of view.
          And so to see these alliances develop between
professions to begin to meet the needs of all Americans,
regardless of their ability to afford services, is
extraordinary.
          Pro bono activity by the private bar in Maryland,
just in and of itself, has been impressive.  The founding
of your Center by this association and its extensive
recruitment campaign to connect lawyers with pro bono
opportunities constitutes the largest statewide pro bono
effort in the country.  Between 1989 and 1993, there was
more than a threefold increase in cases handled by pro bono
attorneys through pro bono programs.  Individual voluntary
attorney participation that could be documented increased
by approximately 100 percent.
          You have so very, very much to be proud of.  The
Action Center is a true model for the entire country,
providing training, mentors, litigation funds, service of
process, court reporters, investigators, computer research,
and paralegal assistance -- not to mention an
extraordinarily diverse array of pro bono projects and
programs around the State.
          Providing pro bono legal representation for those
Americans who cannot afford a lawyer is one of the finest
contributions we as a profession can make.  It is also one
of our most important responsibilities.  But I do not expect
only lawyers in private practice to give of their time and
energy to improve access to justice.  It is the obligation
of public sector attorneys as well.
          Being a lawyer is not merely a vocation.  It is
a public trust.  And each of us has an obligation to give
back to our communities.  That includes public service
lawyers.
          In Dade County, they used to come in and tell me,
I have got 200 cases.  I am working 16 hours a day.  I am
not getting paid near what those lawyers are doing in
private practice.  But I did volunteer to do guardian ad
litem in another county.  I was so proud of the willingness,
particularly of young people coming into the profession, to
recognize their responsibilities, regardless of the fact
that they were in public service.
          When I was in Baltimore last month to address the
ABA House of Delegates, I announced the President's new
executive order on civil justice reform.  In that order, he
mandated that all Federal agencies develop appropriate
programs to encourage and facilitate pro bono legal and
other volunteer services by government employees, including
attorneys, to be performed on their own time, as permitted
by law.
          In this noblest spirit of our profession, in
response to the President's mandate and in order to join
with the private bars all across the country, which has so
generously responded to the call for more pro bono services,
I was pleased earlier this month to announce the Department
of Justice's pro bono policy.
          Given the significant unmet need for legal and
other community services across the country, it is the
policy of the Department to encourage and support efforts
by Department employees to provide pro bono legal and
volunteer services within their communities that are
consistent with applicable Federal statutes and regulations
governing conflict of interest and off-site activities. 
While service in the Department is one of the highest forms
of public service, the Department further strives to
increase access to justice for all and to strengthen our
communities.
          To this end, we are encouraging all Department
employees, based on the ABA Model Rules of Professional
Responsibility, to set a personal, voluntary goal of at
least 50 hours per year of pro bono legal and volunteer
services.  This policy extends to all Department employees
in Washington and all across the country, and encourages all
kinds of volunteer work, legal and nonlegal.
          As I indicated earlier, there is a second part of
our challenge:  There will never be sufficient government
funding for legal services or pro bono programs to meet the
legal needs of all Americans.  We must be willing to explore
changes in the very nature of our legal institutions so that
people can solve more problems without having to go to
lawyers.
          The ABA Legal Needs Study gave us information not
only about the extent and nature of unmet legal needs, but
also about why people do not utilize the legal system.  Part
of the problem is cost.  But there are other problems as
well.  Many low-income persons do not think going to the
justice system will help.  One of the reasons is that there
are very few people in the justice system that understand
the problems that some of the low-income people face day in
and day out, which cry out for common sense solutions, which
cry out for an understanding of arcane rules and
regulations.
          Many low-income people just stay home because they
think it will not do any good.  Many moderate income persons
either do not think the problem is serious enough to warrant
the attention of a lawyer or do not think the problem has
a legal solution, or they prefer to handle the problem
themselves -- try to handle the problem themselves -- and
only make it worse.  Those income groups share the view that
legal help may very well not make a difference.
          We must pay attention to these findings and
increase the options available to people for solving their
legal problems.  How many people have you known who have had
to work out a complicated social security problem for a
parent or a loved one, and made three or four trips down to
the social security office, trying to get it all worked out,
and come home as mad as a hatter, furious and livid because
they have not been able to do it?
          I have seen another experience, somebody applying
to be a naturalized citizen, frustrated because no one can
respond and clear up problems that we should, in the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, address without
difficulty.  We need to make the law simpler so that people
can grapple with the problems themselves without feeling
frustrated, upset and as if it was not worth it.
          As suggested in the ABA's final report on the
implications of the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study, we must
move away from the "courthouse" model of the practice of
law, which assumes an adversarial situation, calls for legal
representation at every stage in the process, and
anticipates a remedy that is exclusively legal.  We, as
lawyers, must act more as problem-solvers and facilitators.
          Have you ever had to go to an accountant or to a
doctor, fearing that what you were going to hear is that you
were going to have to go through an extensive audit or have
major surgery, and then have a wonderful, clear-thinking,
articulate professional say, "Sit down, let's talk about
this; this is the way I think we can work it out without
much difficulty"?  And you go home feeling so vastly
relieved.
          We, as lawyers, have an obligation to do
everything we can, in terms of giving people access to
justice, to solve their problems in the same dignified,
respectful, effective manner.  We must seek solutions to
problems, not just resolution of legal issues.  As lawyers,
we must work proactively to solve problems before litigation
is necessary or unavoidable.  Law schools and the organized
bar must train and encourage lawyers to see beyond the
immediate lawsuit and practice holistic and preventative
law.
          We must have the courage to stop short of
litigation and use a more low-key method to resolve
disputes, particularly in the context of ongoing
relationships.  As critical counselors, we have a critical
role to play in advising clients to mediate outside of court
rather than rushing into high-profile litigation.  We must
remember that litigation is the means to an end, and not an
end unto itself.  Prevailing in legal arguments and
obtaining judgments are sufficient only in very limited
circumstances.  We must always keep our eyes on the ball of
solving the problem that created the legal claim in the
first place.
          And the example I always use -- I used to watch
the prosecutors get somebody convicted.  They would be put
on probation.  The probation officers had caseloads that
were so huge the person would not get the treatment that was
necessary to interrupt the cycle of crime and violence that
was causing the situation in the first place.  The
prosecutors thought they had won a victory, but they did not
look at the ultimate problem.
          Or, in another case, a public defender would be
cheerful because he had gotten his client off on a motion
to dismiss, while at the same time recognizing that his
client was in the grip of a terrible crack addiction, which
was a worse prison than he was ever, ever threatened with
if he had been convicted.  As lawyers, we have got to look
to the problems.  We have got to realize what litigation can
do, and that it is not the ultimate end.
          One of the most extraordinary ladies I ever met
was a lady by the name of Kate Townsend.  She was a lawyer
early on in Florida.  And she represented Zelma Cayson in
a case against Marjorie Rollins.  That was one of the first
cases defining the right of privacy.  Miss Kate, as she was
called, I had the chance to meet her many, many years
later, and I told her how impressed I was with what she had
done on privacy issues in that case.  And she turned to me
and she looked at me and she said, "That's the dumbest thing
I ever did."  I put that woman through such misery and all
that litigation and all the parts that attended to it.  I
would never do that again.
          We have got to understand, by the passage of
years, what we do as lawyers and how we affect our clients.
          Prevailing in legal arguments and obtaining
judgments only solves the problem in very limited
circumstances.
          We must find new ways to work with community
institutions, allowing neighbors to join together and
neighborhoods to unite.  I had the pleasure last week of
meeting with the members of the National Service Legal
Corps, a project of the Corporation for National Service. 
Teams of lawyers, social workers and community educators
work in eight legal offices across the Nation to develop
community-building strategies.  They told me about wonderful
community education projects to prevent hopelessness, job
development strategies to help at-risk youth and counseling
and education programs to assist the victims of domestic
violence.  Problem-solving and community-building, not
litigation, were their primary vehicles for assistance.
          The President's executive order on civil justice
reform emphasizes the importance of alternative dispute
resolution and settlement of claims as early as possible in
the litigation, and even in advance of litigation and
administrative adjudication.  The Justice Department is now
in the process of training all its litigators in dispute
resolution techniques, and encourages resolution of
problems, not just the winning of the litigation.
          An increasing number of Americans are representing
themselves, either by choice or by economic necessity.  We
must recognize this reality and facilitate
self-representation.  You in Maryland have made many strides
in this area with your Pro Se Litigant Form Pleadings in
family law and the Women's Law Center Pro Se hot-line to
assist persons in using these forms.  This is a remarkable
step forward in making our courts more user-friendly.
          I would like to join with all lawyers in Maryland
and across this land in seeing what we can do in a
concentrated effort to simplify the language of the law, and
put it in terms that all Americans can understand.  We
still, despite all the jokes about legalese, continue to
talk in arcane and ancient terms.  When, if we looked at the
law as the servant of the people and spoke in terms that all
people could understand, we could make the law so much more
accessible to many.
          I have been very interested in your family law
assisted pro se clinic which, I understand, is a joint
venture of your judiciary and the law schools of the
University of Maryland and the University of Baltimore. 
Students, under the supervision of law faculty, help people
represent themselves in divorce cases.  This is an exciting
example of how different segments of the legal profession
can collaborate to address previously unmet legal needs,
providing public service, and invaluable educational
experience for students.  You have made a remarkable
difference in the lives of the thousands of pro se litigants
assisted since 1995, when the program first started.
          Another area I think is so important is the
expanded use of nonlawyers to provide additional
problem-solving resources for Americans.  Once again, you
have been a pioneer in this area with your legislation in
1990, allowing trained and supervised lay advocates to
represent tenants in landlord-tenant court.  The Tenant
Advocacy Project of the Public Justice Center provides
trained volunteer advocates and supervising attorneys who
counsel and represent tenants facing eviction.
          The University of Maryland School of Law has a
very innovative clinical program, one aspect of which will
train law students to work productively with nonlawyers. 
In conjunction with a Park Heights community group in
Baltimore, the Law School plans to open a law office that
will experiment with various components of an innovative
system to deliver legal services to low- and moderate-income
persons.
          These will include computer technology,
paralegals, self-help education programs to assist persons
representing themselves, and alternative dispute resolution. 
The substantive law specialties of the law office will be
consumer law, domestic law, and community development law,
focused on routine business transactions.  These law
specialties correspond to three of the four highest areas
of unmet legal needs in Maryland.
          The foundation for the paralegal component is
already being laid.  Eight high school students are being
trained in basic paralegal skills needed to identify
absentee owners of vacant houses, which are the drug centers
in Baltimore, and to file actions in which the Park Heights
community group will ask the court to take title to vacant
houses and give them to a receiver.  The receiver, in turn,
will contract with a developer to develop the houses for
low-income homeowners.  This is community-building at its
very, very best.
          Let me say that what I have just described are
what I consider to be the hallmarks of the very best in
legal education.  First, the guiding principle is to develop
clinical programs based on unmet legal needs in the
community.
          Second, the clinical program is viewed as a
laboratory for developing new ways to deliver legal services
to the public.  It is part of the law school's contribution
to improving the legal profession as a whole.
          And, third, clinical experience and public service
are seen as essential to the law student's education.  As
a result, the law school as a whole supports the clinical
program.
          The entire Nation admires what you have done in
Maryland to show what law schools can really be about, so
too, in preparing our lawyers for the future and addressing
the unmet legal needs of Americans.
          As we speak of public service, I would like to
make one comment.  In these past months, public service has
been backed, upon occasion.  And people have come to me and
said, at the Department of Justice, Why, why, why do we do
this when we could be making more money outside and we would
not be faced with shutdowns and we would not be told that
we were not serving the people?
          My response is there is nothing more rewarding
than public service and trying to help others.  And public
service is most important when political debate is shrill,
when the very institutions that we prize are being
criticized, and that now, public service is more important
than ever.
          I would encourage all lawyers who are graduating
from law school today or think that this is the time for
public service -- it is one of the most rewarding things
that any lawyer can do.  We have so much to do as we prepare
for the 21st century, in order to ensure access to justice
for all Americans.  The obligation rests squarely on the
shoulders of all of us.
          We must look to the future and join together with
all parts of the community in order to accomplish this task. 
Large law firms and small, private attorneys and government
lawyers, neighborhood groups and downtown businesses,
everyone has a stake in this.
          But one of the special focuses in this effort is
to focus on the group of Americans who probably have least
access to justice, and that is our children.  Our children,
who, for too long, in too many instances, have been the
forgotten and neglected people in this Nation.  Our
children, who, in too many instances, their voices are never
heard.  Or, if it is heard, it is heard in a way that cannot
let the pain be known.  If it is heard, it is heard in a way
that deals with it in summary fashion rather than solving
the problem of our children.
          And all of us, in whatever role we undertake to
provide access, must remember that we have a special
obligation to the future of this Nation, in terms of letting
our children be heard and, most of all, solving the problems
our children face in a system that gives them few
opportunities, in some instances, to grow in a strong and
positive way.
          I am very proud of the legal profession.  I love
the law, and I love lawyers.  I do not like greedy and
indifferent lawyers.  We need more lawyers who will follow
your example, lawyers who are willing to contribute their
time and talents to the public good, lawyers like your own
Congressman Ben Cardin, who has done so much to support
Legal Services, to develop State-supported programs to
address the unmet legal needs of Maryland's citizens and to
fund law school clinic programs to train and encourage
students to do public service.
          To the Congressman, to all of you who care so much
about others and want to put the law to work to truly solve
the problems that people face in this country and to help
them grow in a strong and positive way, I salute you and
thank you from the bottom of my heart.
          (Standing ovation.)
          (Whereupon, at 4:50 p.m., the remarks concluded.)