Legal aid lawyers: Congress lifts bar on attorneys fee awards for federally funded Legal Services Corp. lawyers

It is easy for progressives to draw false conclusions from the superficial reports of the "mainstream media". One of those false conclusions is that "nothing has happened". Actually a lot has happened - if you count that the economy is now in a stall rather than collapse.

But there is much more. One small item is an important reversal of a Reagan-era assault on Legal Services: the bar on recovering attorneys fees when a federally funded legal services organizations wins a case asserting citizens's rights.

The Congress has passed and President Obama signed on December 16 a repeal of that punitive statutory bar. The measure also increased Legal Services' federal funds from $390 to $420 million. It is not the $750 million proposed by Senator Tom Harkin  [D. Iowa] - the pre-Reagan funding level - but it is a step forward.

Legal Services programs continue to suffer from the collapse in the markets which deprives them of interst on lawyers trust accounts.

Thanks to the Brennan Center at NYU for helping to lead the charge on this issue.