In developing and transitional countries around the world legal services organizations (LSOs) are working with poor people to enable them to gain greater power over their own lives. As lawyers for the poor, LSOs promote safety, security and access to justice and help poor people solve problems and overcome administrative barriers. While LSOs' work is about justice and making the rule of law a reality for the disadvantaged, it equally is about poverty alleviation and poor people's empowerment. LSO help improve the material circumstances of the poor and empower them to improve their circumstances and participation in public life. | 
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| The day-to-day work of LSOs often deals with very fundamental issues such as: - Accessing clean water, electricity, health care, education and other basic services
- Keeping people from being unjustly evicted from their homes or farms
- Protecting workers from discrimination
- Enabling pensioners to collect benefits, and
- Protecting women from domestic violence by getting court orders.
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LSOs provide critical support for lasting change by helping poor groups, communities and organizations to beat back administrative barriers, advocate for representation in local government decision-making and for public transparency: - Helping poor people's organizations and groups to devise practical solutions for problems as they arise
- Providing poor constituencies with education on their legal rights and procedures to exert their rights
- Recommending and advocating law reforms to improve the equity of rights and to improve services available to poor people
- Helping poor constituences to work in alliances and networks to exert influence on government and hold government accountable.
From the perspective of supporting community driven development, civic engagement and accountability in governance, and poverty reduction, strengthening LSOs' capacities to represent, advocate and problem-solve for poor communities, groups and organizations, is key. In many cases, this requires a shift in the attention of LSOs from advising and representing individuals to working chiefly on behalf of groups. LSOs can train and deploy paralegals as community advocates, and complement them with skilled legal representation in impact litigation and in law and systemic reforms. Supporting legal services for low-income groups is a crucial aspect of any strategy for comprehensive legal and judicial reform, on the one hand, and of empowerment and service delivery to poor communities, on the other. In the context of legal and judicial reform, it strengthens the demand side of reform and also allows governments to get a better sense of the legal issues arising from the needs of the poor. In the context of community empowerment and service delivery, it equips poor constituencies to advocate and problem solve more effectively, including for improved basic services, and brings talent to their aid, to propose legislative and regulatory reforms that reflect their interests. In fact, these community-empowering aspects of LSO operations constitute concrete forms of community-driven development, and can offer powerful benefits to the great number of sectors whose projects and programs typically do not include legal services-natural resources management, reproductive health, and rural development, to name a few. LSOs can improve project performance in those sectors by educating affected communities or groups about their rights under the projects and related laws and helping them to successfully assert those rights. This in effect provides mechanisms for those affected populations to monitor the work of field-level government personnel, inform higher level officials (as well as development agencies) of the performance of those personnel, and thereby increase project transparency and accountability. Greater poverty alleviating impact, in terms of both material benefits for and empowerment of the poor, can flow from this improved project performance. Delivery of legal services for the poor can be structured in various ways: dedicated community-based organizations providing legal services can be complemented with pro bono publico representation from for-profit law firms. Community-based organizations can benefit from technical support from specialized "back-stopping" organizations in specialized fields of public interest law (e.g., migrant labor, social safety nets), to which cases can be referred, and which can be called in to assist the local LSOs on particular topics. In this sense, legal services for the poor work most robustly and effectively when implemented through a network of community based organizations, specialized referral organizations, and complemented with pro bono publico services. In terms of priority for assistance, in general, the community-based services are the key to effective delivery. Development of community advocates, complemented with legal representation and advocacy, to deliver legal education, group representation, impact and law reform work are the key elements that need attention. Development of these capacities can be carried out through internships with legal services organizations that are recognized as leading in the field of impact and group work; study tours that are both instructive and provide a basis for international networking; leadership training and training in resource mobilization. Such capacity building can be supported through a blend of donor assistance (especially relevant to regional and international LSO network development) and Bank lending support. A workshop of expert-practitioners, held in April, 2003, which brought together representatives of 8 LSOs from 5 continents, and examined the role of legal services organizations in reducing poverty and promoting empowerment. The workshop considered the different models for providing legal services to the poor, methods to maximize impact and effectiveness of LSOs, the sustainability of such organizations, and the relationship between LSOs, civil society, and government. B-Span, the World Bank's webcasting station, has produced a video coverage of 2003 workshop of Legal Services for the Poor. To see it, click on the link below: For more information see also: |
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