LFOA is a not for profit legal organization that provides free legal advice and services to underserved communities primarily located in the San Francisco Bay Area. For over twenty years we have helped low income individuals, small businesses and community service oriented nonprofits to attain self-sufficiency, form and expand, manage nonprofit tax filing requirements and resolve outstanding tax liability.
By the turn of the last century, broad segments of the legal community had begun to understand that the ever-widening gulf between the legal profession and underrepresented communities threatened to undermine fundamental American democratic principles. To many observers, access to legal services in low wealth communities and communities of color had reached crisis level lows that was likely to deteriorate unless deliberate efforts were undertaken to reverse course. This critical access gap was not newly-identified in 1999. However, the data before us laid bare the need to effectively counter this trend and the public perception that large segments of the nation were not treated equally under the law. Against this backdrop, the President of the United States utilized the power of his office to catalyze an urgent response from all sectors of the legal profession. Ultimately led by the Department of Justice, this broad-scaled effort culminated in a collaborative process and report that detailed the vast challenges to access and set forth a roadmap for addressing these challenges and commitments from representatives of every sector of the legal profession to work toward eliminating this problem.
Decades later, it remains clear that this important work is unfinished. Poor and insufficient access to legal services in historically underserved communities continues to hamper full participation in American society by impeding our nation’s guarantee of fair treatment for all under the law. For this reason, Lawyers For One America continues to provide access to free legal services to communities and individuals historically excluded from such assistance.