The District has some of the highest rates of economic and racial inequality in the country. Black residents experience poverty at four times the rate of white residents, and unemployment at nearly seven times the rate of white residents. That inequality extends to the courtroom. In the high-volume courts in the District, upwards of 80% of litigants lack legal representation, including 88% of tenants in the Landlord and Tenant Branch and 88% of petitioners in the Domestic Violence Division
Legal Aid helps close the access to justice gap by assisting District residents in a wide range of civil legal matters related to housing, domestic violence, family law, access to public benefits, immigration, criminal records, debt collection, and more. Most of their clients are Black and brown, with a large percentage living in Wards 7 and 8, where racial and economic inequality is most pronounced. Legal Aid helps some 3,000 clients annually, providing full representation in about one-third of those cases, while working to reform the systems that cause so many of our neighbors to end up in court in the first place. Still, because of a lack of resources, Legal Aid must make difficult decisions every day about who they can help and who they cannot.
That's why we, as a firm, are coming together to support DC Legal Aid and the Making Justice Real Campaign. This year:
- Every $428 we raise staffs a Legal Aid attorney for a day
- Every $2,140 we raise staffs a Legal Aid attorney for a week
Please help us meet our team goal for this year's Making Justice Real Campaign. We can make sure that our neighbors in DC get the legal help they need, when they need it.