Promoting Access
What We Do
The State Bar’s mission of public protection includes increasing access to legal services. The agency works to maximize funding, inform policy with actionable data, and combat fraud targeting the most vulnerable in our state. As the state's largest single funder for legal aid, the State Bar distributes grants to organizations that provide free civil legal services to low-income Californians.
Total legal aid funds distributed in 2021
$60.3 million
Legal aid organizations supported
99 statewide
Low-income Californians eligible for legal aid
12.5 million
Rose Ann Berton shares how State Bar grantee Senior Advocacy Network helped her avoid an unfair eviction.
Stabilizing legal aid funding
A substantial portion of the State Bar’s legal aid funding comes from Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Accounts (IOLTA): interest from pooled attorney bank accounts that hold nominal or short-term client funds. These revenues are subject to interest rate fluctuations. The pandemic-induced drop in interest rates to near zero in early 2020 had its strongest impact on legal aid funding in 2021. During the pandemic’s first year in 2020, the Legal Services Trust Fund Commission worked to ensure that legal aid providers received what they had been allocated months earlier, drawing from reserves to stabilize funding—particularly important given the need for legal aid amid the other shocks of the pandemic. During 2021, the State Bar worked to convince banks to maintain interest rates they paid on IOLTA accounts, and many banks, including the State Bar’s 10 Leadership Banks held steady rather than dropping interest rates further. This effort cushioned what could have been a far worse drop in legal aid funding: The State Bar distributed an additional $17 million in legal aid funding in 2021 through the increased interest rates offered by Leadership Banks.
After a drop in legal aid funding in 2021, Governor Newsom and the Legislature took action to greatly expand funding, which will make 2022 a record year for legal aid grants.
Kyanti West shares how State Bar grantee Inner City Law Center helped him fight an unlawful eviction and loss of property.
Homelessness prevention grants quadruple
Other legal aid funding sources include the Equal Access Fund, which is comprised primarily of state General Fund money, and revenues from court filing fees. Recognizing the looming potential eviction crisis arising from the hardships of the pandemic, the Governor and Legislature made major multiyear commitments in 2020 and 2021 to expand legal aid funding to prevent homelessness. The State Bar distributed nearly $10 million in 2021 for homelessness prevention efforts and ramped up to distribute more than $35 million in 2022, which will make 2022 a record year for legal aid funding.
New grants help legal aid providers hire provisionally licensed lawyers
The new provisional licensure program launched in late 2020 and expanded in early 2021 (see the Admissions page of this report) inspired a new category of grants: for legal aid organizations to hire provisionally licensed lawyers. The grants were funded by legislation adding an optional $5 donation to California attorney licensing fees in 2021. In mid-2021, the State Bar selected the first 20 legal aid organizations to receive such grants. The grants enabled these organizations to augment staff who provide services addressing urgent civil legal issues facing low-income Californians, expanding their reach while offering meaningful public interest jobs to new provisionally licensed lawyers.
Increasing outreach to California’s Spanish speakers
The State Bar increased its outreach to Spanish speakers in 2021 by using paid social media placements and digital advertising to reach more than 2.8 million people. The State Bar has also expanded media outreach to Spanish-language broadcast and online news outlets throughout the state, all with the aim to help and inform the Spanish-speaking community about avoiding legal services fraud, accessing legal aid and lawyer referral services, and securing services related to the sunset of COVID-19 rental and mortgage assistance protections.
Progress on expanding legal services access to underserved Californians
The State Bar’s California Paraprofessional Program Working Group took critical steps in 2021 to increase affordable legal access for millions of Californians by finalizing and submitting for public comment a comprehensive proposal for a new type of licensed legal professional—a paraprofessional. These licensed and regulated legal services providers would handle routine legal duties in such areas as consumer debt, employment, and simple family law. After receiving hundreds of comments on the proposal, the working group is refining the plan to submit it to the Board of Trustees in 2022. Any such regulatory plan would also require approval by the California Supreme Court and the Legislature.
Also in 2021, a second working group—the Closing the Justice Gap Working Group—kicked off its effort to develop innovative legal service delivery models serving clients at all income levels through the collaboration of lawyers, law firms, technologists, entrepreneurs, and others. This effort explores whether California should create what is called a “regulatory sandbox”—a time-bound testing of innovations under a regulator's oversight. That group’s recommendations are expected to be presented in May 2023.