Norman Metzger, Executive Director
Legal Services Organization of Indiana
Market Square Center, Suite 1640
151 North Delaware Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 42604

Re: LSC Review of the Indiana State Planning Report

Dear Mr. Metzger:

Thank you for the timely submission of the Indiana Legal Services State Plan Report for 1998 developed in response to LSC Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6. The staff of the Legal Services Corporation Office of Program Operations (OPO) has thoroughly reviewed and discussed your plan in substantial detail. Our review has determined that the Indiana State plan does not adequately address the requirements of Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6. We are asking you to go back to the drawing board to develop a more responsive plan. A rewrite of the Indiana Legal Services State Plan Report for 1998 must be submitted to LSC by March 1, 1999. Both other OPO staff members and I are available to provide you technical assistance, as necessary, during the redevelopment of the planning report.

In order to provide constructive assistance to your state's planning group during the redevelopment of the plan we provide the following comments on the Indiana State Planning Report.

1. The goals, purposes, values, and norms that underlie and support the Indiana plan are not stated and they can not be inferred from the contents of the plan. In a viable and defensible planning process, articulation of a common set of values and principles is key to ensuring consistency of vision and purpose. What are the Indiana programs trying to do through this plan? Develop the capacity to respond to the most compelling needs of client throughout the state? Maximize the opportunities for all clients in Indiana to receive timely, effective and appropriate services? Ensure that regardless of who a client is or where she lives, she has the same access to high quality services as does any other client in the state? Until the planners themselves are clear as to their overarching goals, a planning process is simply a paper exercise.
   
   
2. Planning is a process that must provide for a series of interacting functions that are aimed at logical goals. This plan gives little, if any, information concerning the process used by Indiana to develop its plan and its report. The plan is silent in terms of who served on the planning group, whether the planning group was representative of other stakeholders in the Indiana system of justice, and/or what mechanisms were used to develop the plan (community forums, social area surveys, client surveys, focus groups, planning group meetings, statistical review and analysis, etc.). Moreover, the seven required sections of the plan are not discussed in terms of their logical interaction with one another. For example, the technology section is silent as to how technology could be used to improve intake on a statewide level.
   
   
3. Effective planning must be broad-based and must involve all individuals, organizations and institutions within the state that have a stake in the design and operation of the state's system for ensuring equal justice. It appears-reading between the lines of the Indiana plan since concrete information is not provided-that very few persons were involved in the development of the plan and that very few (if any) internal or external stakeholders were consulted during the development of the plan. If this perception on our part is an erroneous one, the rewritten plan needs to provide specific information as to what internal and external stakeholders were involved (and to what degree) in the development of the planning report.
   
   
4. As you and other experienced legal services directors know, legal services programs do not operate in a vacuum. The efforts and activities of a state's legal service providers must be coordinated with each other, with other providers of services to low-income persons and with funders to insure that: (a) no group or subgroup of low-income clients are excluded from securing and enforcing their rights within the civil equal justice delivery system; and (b) that all low income persons within the state are able to enjoy meaningful and appropriate access to the civil justice system. The Indiana plan provides for very little coordination among and between the LSC-funded programs and/or any other stakeholders such as the private bar, funders, other service providers, and clients. The plan is silent in terms of how the LSC-funded programs within Indiana will collaborate to ensure that all clients eligible for services have equal and meaningful access to the justice system. The special legal needs of and access barriers that face different client groups are not addressed in the plan.
   
   
5. As I indicated to Colleen Cotter in my July 9, 1998 letter responding to the first draft of the Indiana plan, a good plan must provide for coordination of activities and services in the present while ensuring consideration of the needs of the future. Given this universally accepted definition of good planning, the Indiana plan has deficiencies in all seven sections. A good illustration of what we perceive to be the plan's weaknesses is contained in the section of the plan devoted to "Intake and the Provision of Advice and Brief Service." The plan describes the present situation as one in which Aeach program has a separate intake and advice and brief service system . . .three of the four programs have telephone intake systems ... the programs are exploring the possibility of regional intake." Apart from the vague statement concerning the programs' exploration of regional intake, the plan provides for no additional coordination of intake activities in the present and puts forth a weak argument as to why the present system may be best.
   
   The plan then sets out three goals to Astrengthen and expand services to eligible clients." The first two goals speak only to strengthening program intake, as it currently exists in each program, by expanding the use of pro bono attorneys and volunteers in the intake systems and coordinating the intake conducted by each program with the intake "used for the statewide pro bono system." The third goal discusses the development of "integrated or centralized intake systems for special populations that might benefit from them, such as the elderly." The only "major step" given for this third goal is to "pursue funding opportunities for specialized hotlines or centralized intake systems." Although these goals certainly are defensible, albeit limited, none includes completion dates, assignment or assumption of responsibility, or ways in which success can be measured. Moreover none involve inter-program coordination in the present or project credible future changes to strengthen intake statewide.
   
   
6. Much of the language contained in the plan is soft. For example on pages 6 and 7, the authors discuss the programs' intent to pursue unidentified planning activities as some unidentified point in the future. Page 7 includes a list of organizations that may be invited to send representatives to this yet-unformed planning committee. The revised state plan will be strengthened if the authors identify the types of planning activities that will be pursued, give a timetable for their initiation and completion, and develop a concrete list, to the maximum extent possible recognizing that these things change over time, as to who will serve on the planning committee.
   
   
7. Goals tend to be silent both in terms of their measurability and in terms of who is responsible for ensuring their completion. A good example of this problem is found in Section III- "Increased Access to Self-help and Prevention Information." Goal #1 in this section is to "increase the number of pamphlets produced each year on substantive legal issues." This goal is silent in terms of how many pamphlets are currently produced, how many additional pamphlets will be produced, whether any work has been done to assess whether there is a need for additional pamphlets and in what substantive areas, how the four programs in Indiana will coordinate their efforts to avoid duplication of community legal education materials, and who will be responsible for insuring that this goal is met. Similar weaknesses pervade other sections of the report. For example, a technology goal is to "develop a state-wide web-site to provide legal information, documents, and an arena for client and pro bono interaction with all programs in the state." While a laudable goal, no one is assigned any responsibility for any of the numerous tasks that would need to be performed to accomplish this goal. And as to "major steps and a timetable necessary to achieve this goal," the report merely states: "Finish development of a web-site for all four programsÿ"
   
   
8. As I indicated in my July letter to Ms. Cotter, in order to engage in effective planning all legal services providers within a state must be willing to look beyond single issues or a single program to examine the big picture in terms of client needs and organizational capacities in order to develop the best possible methods and mechanisms to address the present and future needs of clients within the state. This plan does not give the reader any concrete information as to what the four LSC-funded legal services providers believe to be the major issues confronting clients and the client communities served by the four programs, how the programs can work collaboratively to respond to these issues, and what the legal services programs within Indiana envision for their collective future and for the future of the Indiana delivery system.
   
   
9. Section VII of the plan-"Configuration of a Comprehensive, Integrated Statewide Delivery System"-does not address how Indiana will create a comprehensive and integrated delivery system for effective client representation in all appropriate forums and in all geographical portions of the state. Instead, this section of the plan appears to imply that the LSC-funded programs in Indiana believe that the establishment of a comprehensive and integrated delivery system is simply program merger under another name. This section of the planning report is devoted to a rather unpersuasive argument that it would not be advantageous for the four LSC-funded legal services programs in the state to merge. For example, the plan argues that the costs associated with program consolidation which are identified as "problems related to organizational staff and board culture, local funding losses and local bar relationships" outweigh any benefits. However, the plan provides no information as to projected funding losses, what types of deterioration would occur in local bar relationships, and how and why program merger or consolidation would adversely affect the programs' cultures.
   
   The overall weakness of this section of the report-as well as the contents of the entire report-leaves readers with the idea that up to this point the four legal services have not been able to work together to develop a planing report that would in time lead to the development of a comprehensive and integrated delivery system. The next logical question and one which must be addressed in the rewritten planning report is whether in the future the four LSC-funded Indiana programs can work together to create an integrated and coordinated legal services delivery system absent program merger/reconfiguration.

Overall, we found this plan to be non-responsive to the issues identified in LSC program Letters 98-1 and 98-6 and in need of major work. Please submit your revised plan by March 1, 1999. We at the Corporation offer our assistance to your planning group and others associated with the Indiana civil equal justice community as you work to develop a collaborative, inclusive and values-driven plan and planning process that strengthens services to clients throughout the state.