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.
$142.5 million
Total legal aid funds distributed in 2022
102 statewide
Legal aid organizations supported
11 million
Low-income Californians eligible for legal aid
Five Years of Reform Highlights
With funds from Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts, donations, allocations from the Legislature, and other sources, the State Bar’s role supporting legal aid has grown tremendously over the last five years.
Impact of record-breaking $142.5 million in legal aid assistance
In 2022, the State Bar’s Legal Services Trust Fund Commission allocated a record-breaking amount of legal aid funding—more than $142.5 million to 102 legal aid organizations offering an array of services throughout the state. This funding level, more than double the amount from the year before, resulted from several significant allocations by the Legislature and Governor Newsom to combat homelessness, address consumer debt, and relieve other issues exacerbated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
California legal services organizations have had a profound impact on eviction prevention and housing preservation and stability during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Though local, state, and federal emergency law prohibited renters impacted by COVID-19 from being evicted under most circumstances, renters were still served eviction notices with orders to appear in court by property owners. Without representation in court from the State Bar’s legal aid partners, many renters might not have known that they still had to respond, to otherwise unlawful orders, to avoid eviction and possibly face homelessness.
Lorena Esparza worked with the New American Legal Clinic at San Joaquin College of Law to receive services for her special-needs child.
Leanna Woelfel’s son had eye cancer and received special assistance with the help of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego.
Homelessness funding hits all-time high, as does the need
The number of Californians experiencing homelessness in 2022 rose 15 percent over the previous two years, with nearly 115,500 people statewide listed as unsheltered. Housing and collateral matters, like income issues, continue to be the most prominent need supported by the legal aid providers the State Bar funds. In 2022, a record $35 million was earmarked to support legal aid providers working to reduce homelessness.
State Bar assists with mental health-focused CARE Courts
Governor Newsom’s Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Act, which passed in 2022, is designed to assist and serve the most highly impacted people struggling with severe mental health issues, who often experience homelessness or incarceration without treatment. The act enables creation through the civil courts of voluntary or court-ordered CARE plans that can include treatment, housing support, and other services for people with untreated schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. The State Bar's Legal Services Trust Fund Commission was tasked with helping to jump-start this new approach by awarding planning grants. In November the commission authorized grants to 15 providers and three support centers to help plan for their role in these new CARE Courts. The first cohort of CARE Courts is expected to launch October 1, 2023, in seven counties: Glenn, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco, San Diego, Stanislaus, and Tuolumne. Los Angeles County will start by December 1, 2023, and all other counties must start by December 1, 2024.