BAR WANTS TO EXPAND LEGAL AID SERVICE

Legal services should be available for those who need them, not just those who can afford them.

That was the main message representatives of the Missouri Bar relayed to about 15 members of the media and judiciary Thursday at a luncheon at the local branch of the Missouri Department of Conservation at Cape Girardeau County Park.

"There is a real need to make legal services available for all," said Charles Weiss, president of the bar. "Some people don't have access to legal advice and legal services."

The Missouri Bar is a statewide organization that includes 23,000 of Missouri's practicing lawyers. Attorneys who practice in Missouri must belong to the bar.

Weiss said that the bar has been searching for ways to fund free legal services for Missourians.

"Not just for what we think of as poor people," he said. "But for middle-class people who can't afford the $100-an-hour legal fees that many lawyers charge."

Federal funding for legal aid has been reduced severely, he said, and has threatened to eliminate the programs entirely.

In 1996, the federal government gave $5 million to fund the programs but an estimated $14 million is needed for people to have minimal access to legal services.

The Commission on Legal Services was established earlier this year to look into the funding problem. The commission is composed of lawyers and lay people equally, Weiss said.

Currently, Legal Services Corp. cannot accept any fees, including contingency fees that would only be paid if a lawyer won a case. Small fees cannot be accepted by the legal aid lawyers even if clients want to give them.

The commission thinks these rules should be changed to help keep legal-service programs operating.

Another suggestion was the implementation of a low-cost, pre-paid legal plan in which qualifying participants could pay a yearly fee to have legal services at a greatly reduced rate.

"Their mission was to come up with ways to make lawyers affordable to lower- and middle-class people," Weiss said. "More people need the services and we could provide them if we had more federal money but we're not going to get it."

The commission focused primarily on the needs of those citizens currently being served by legal service providers in Missouri, the vast majority of whom earn less than $9,999 per year.

However, Weiss said, the commission also aspires to find a means of making legal services more accessible to low-middle income people, who comprise three-fifths of the population.

In addition to media representatives from Cape Girardeau, Jackson, and Perryville, the meeting was also attended by Missouri Supreme Court Justice Duane Benton, former Missouri Gov. Warren Hearnes who currently is executive director of Southeast Missouri Legal Services, Circuit Judge William Syler and Cape Girardeau County Circuit Clerk Charles Hutson.