New Haven Legal Assistance Association

New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc. (LAA) is a nonprofit organization incorporated with funding from the Ford Foundation on April 7, 1964 to "secure justice for and to protect the rights of those residents of New Haven County unable to engage legal counsel." LAA provides free legal services in the fields of child and family law, benefits, employment, health, elder, disabilities, consumer, housing, and civil rights to eligible individuals and families in the greater New Haven area. It maintains partnerships with Yale and Quinnipiac Law Schools.
History.
In 1964, the year of the LAA’s founding, the American Bar Foundation estimated that some 1,400,000 indigents were tried each year without lawyers in the United States. Seeking a remedy, the government and private charitable organizations began to finance “neighborhood law offices” to accommodate the vast number of individuals requiring legal assistance.
The LAA, financed by the Ford Foundation in 1964, was one of the first legal services programs to be established. On May 1, 1964, it opened its first office. At the ceremony, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg lauded the opening as “the start of a new process – a process which will expand the rule of law to all segments of the population.” In 1965, when the federal government began funding legal services through the Office of Economic Opportunity, LAA was used as a model for more than 300 programs that were opened around the country.
Throughout the 1960s, the LAA continued to expand in an effort to meet the overwhelming demand for its services. LAA added attorneys (reaching a high of 30 lawyers) and opened additional neighborhood offices (for a total of seven). However, in the early 1970s, large government funding cuts forced the LAA to reduce its staff and number of neighborhood offices. Cuts continued in the early 1980s under the Reagan administration.
The mission of New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc. is to provide high-quality legal services to individuals and groups unable to obtain legal services because of limited income, age, disability, discrimination and other barriers.
In 1983, the LAA moved into its current offices at Court and State Streets in New Haven.
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