March 8, 1999

Mr. Melville D. Miller, President
Legal Services of New Jersey
100 Metroplex Drive at Plainfield Avenue
Suite 402, Box 1357
Edison, New Jersey 08818-1357

Re: LSC Review of the New Jersey State Planning Report

Dear Mr. Miller:

          Thank you for the timely submission of the New Jersey 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. We are impressed with the many steps you have taken and will continue to take under this plan to develop and maintain an integrated and comprehensive delivery system that is designed to meet the present as well as the future needs of low-income persons within your state. The New Jersey plan is one of the most well developed plans that we have seen to date. We have suggested to other state planners who have questions about LSC's planning expectations that they review the New Jersey State Plan Report.

          We would like to share some of our observations with you as you move forward with your planning process.

1. General Comments

          In order to place our comments within a context, it is important to understand what we look for when we review a plan. First, a good plan provides for the statewide coordination of activities and services in the present while ensuring consideration of the needs of the future. In a valid plan, the efforts and activities of a state's legal services providers are 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. A good plan describes how this coordination of activities is taking place today and what changes the state delivery system will make in order to meet future needs.

          This plan clearly addresses how the New Jersey legal services programs work together in a coordinated and integrated manner today and will do so in the future to develop optimal methods to deliver services to clients and a better product for clients. Moreover, this plan provides sufficient information as to how the legal needs of special populations of clients including clients who may not currently be adequately served by legal services providers and disenfranchised or unpopular client groups will be addressed

          Second, a viable plan presents the common goals, purposes, values, principles and norms that underlie and support it in order to ensure consistency of vision and purpose. It spells out as early on as possible what the planners are attempting to achieve through their plan. The New Jersey plan clearly sets out guiding values and/or goals including: (1) a belief in the need for legal services programs to function as a "concerted, coherent, closely coordinated legal assistance delivery system"; (2) the need to develop additional resources to expand the provision of legal services; (3) the need to incorporate the views of clients and key partners in making major decisions about how to design and implement a system of high quality comprehensive legal services; and (4) the need to target legal services resources to achieve the greatest measure of equal justice for clients and economically disadvantaged people. Perhaps more importantly, we believe that the "guiding values" articulated in this plan can be realized through this plan.

          Third, a defensible plan is one that has been discussed with and/or reviewed by 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. We understand that numerous stakeholders were given the opportunity to comment upon this initial draft of the plan and that the planners will involve other internal and external stakeholders in the planning process as you move forward to refine and implement the plan.

          Fourth, a good plan presents its goals both in terms of their measurability and in terms of who is responsible for ensuring their completion. Responsibility is either assumed or assigned. Perhaps more importantly, responsibility is shared between and among everyone who is covered by and included in the plan. In this plan, it is clear that Legal Services of New Jersey (LSNJ) will assume primary responsibility for implementing many sections of this plan. In some ways, this plan reads like a work plan for LSNJ. However, unlike the situations that exist in other states, we are persuaded that given the mission, role, influence and authority of, and the financial resources garnered and controlled by LSNJ, LSNJ is indeed the appropriate entity to assume primary responsibility for integrating the work of the fourteen LSC-funded providers within the state. The plan demonstrates that LSNJ is committed to implementing and evaluating this plan.

          Fifth, in order for a plan to be considered effective, the plan must demonstrate that all of the legal services providers were 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. A good plan for the statewide coordination of legal services presents concrete information as to what the legal services providers believe to be the major issues confronting clients and the client communities served by the programs, indicates how the programs can work collaboratively to respond to these issues, and spells out what the legal services programs envision for their collective future and for the future of their delivery system.

          This plan clearly demonstrates that the planners are seriously committed to developing the best possible methods and mechanisms to address the present and future needs of clients within the state. Plans for significant systemic changes are clearly placed on the table.

          Sixth, a defensible plan will fully respond to all of the issues identified in LSC Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6. This plan fully responds to LSC concerns.

2.  A Delivery Network that Maximizes Client Access, Efficient  Delivery, and High Quality Legal Assistance

          This plan describes the state's efforts to develop coordinated, non-duplicative and effective legal services delivery systems of which the development of an integrated and coordinated statewide intake process is an essential component. Client access issues are a very high priority to the planners as indicated by the "intake standards" with which all legal services providers in New Jersey must comport. These standards include multiple points of entry into the intake system, a policy that intake will be conducted over the telephone if that is the client's choice, a policy that clients will only have to appear once in an office to be seen by a casehandler, mandatory participation in the statewide hotline/referral system, standards governing the hours in which intake will be conducted and policies governing how clients will be referred to other offices. The plan also sets out comprehensive standards that articulate uniform referral and conflict policies, governs how cases will be handled, indicates how programs will respond to and serve clients with special needs, and establishes outcome standards for client services.

3. Coordinated Efforts and a Capacity to Utilize New and                Emerging Technology to Assure Compatibility, Promote Efficiency, Improve Quality and Expand Services to Clients

          Within the last several years, LSNJ has developed and implemented a massive and impressive initiative to install and upgrade computer technology throughout the state. All legal services workers have Pentium computers on their desks, all have Internet and e-mail access, all have unlimited access to computerized legal research, and all have access to a statewide electronic law library. Computers are used for both casework and for administrative tasks. LSNJ also maintains a website to deliver information out to programs and their clients. Additionally, LSNJ has created a technology reserve for future statewide acquisitions and upgrades.

          The report lists five goals for 1999 to make better use of technology: conducting a statewide computer training phase, conducting site visits to assess the effectiveness of programs' use of technology, developing computerized intake questionnaires and case handling protocols, coordinating technological changes with the courts especially in the area of pro se and continuing to upgrade hardware and software using the technology reserve.

4. Coordinated Effort to Expand Client Access to the Courts, Enhance Self-Help Opportunities for Low-income Persons, and Provide Preventive Legal Education and Advice

          The report describes in detail New Jersey's commitment to client empowerment, client and community education and the expansion of pro se options. Goals for the next year include exploring and experimenting with other approaches to improving client access such as the use of video communication and computer terminals in homes or public places, more systematic experimentation with and evaluation of the usefulness of self-help clinics and materials, and developing a coordinated community legal education strategy throughout the state.

5. Coordination of Legal Work and a Capacity to Provide Training, Information and Expert Assistance Necessary for the Delivery of High Quality Assistance

          The report describes in detail LSNJ's work in this area. For example, LSNJ delivers high quality training in a wide range of substantive and procedural areas delivering 70 days of training in 1997. LSNJ also coordinates statewide taskforces, publishes community legal education materials, publishes a newsletter, develops self-help materials, maintains an electronic legal research library, handles cases itself, provides case support and co-counseling to program lawyers, coordinates the work of lawyers from different programs handling similar cases, and maintains a web site. Future plans include developing protocols to ensure consideration of and responsiveness to the needs of special client subpopulations, developing an integrated statewide public information/relations initiative, integrating statewide training activities with structured on-the-job follow-up, and developing a firm policy for sharing and loaning staff to other programs.

6. Coordination and Collaboration With and a High Degree of Involvement by the Private Bar

          LSNJ played a leadership role in the development of the decentralized pro bono activities that each of the fourteen legal services programs employ. In recent years, LSNJ has taken the lead in creating innovative corporate counsel pro bono programs and statewide specialty panels and in developing ways to strengthen the delivery of pro bono services throughout the state. The report identifies no weaknesses with the present system and develops no new strategies or goals for the coming year(s) other than to seek to improve the overall quality of pro bono services.

7. Diversified Funding and Coordination of Resource Development Efforts

          This report ranks resource development as a very high priority and New Jersey legal services providers have historically collaborated on very successful and impressive fundraising endeavors. LSNJ has played a leadership role nationally in the effort to expand legal services' funding base. Within the state, LSNJ's fundraising goal is "100% access to essential civil legal aid for indigents with significant legal problems." Currently, total funding for legal services in New Jersey is $29 million dollars annually and comes from a diversity of sources. The three primary sources are $10.5 million from the state, $9.8 million from IOLTA and $4.5 million from LSC. An additional $1.27 million comes from counties and other governmental units and nearly $1 million comes from private sources.

8. A Configuration That Maximizes the Effective and Economical Delivery of High Quality Legal Services Throughout the State

          The legal services system in New Jersey consists of 14 local programs that maintain full-time offices in 20 of the state's 21 counties and provide clients with a full range of services. Legal Services of New Jersey administers the quite substantial non-LSC resources financially supporting the legal services programs and provides additional support to the field programs in terms of training, litigation coordination, pro bono coordination, the establishment of accountability standards, resource development, technology support, support for service delivery innovations, policy advocacy, major case advocacy, and statewide leadership. LSNJ coordinates all of the state taskforces, holds regular meetings for project directors and others and routinely conducts program evaluations using the ABA standards.

          LSNJ feels very strongly that the state's successCin resource development as well as in other areasCin part has been because legal services programs in New Jersey have a physical presence in every county but one. The planners believe that reconfiguration should occur only if savings are achieved and/or services to clients are improved. After examining present systems and considering some program mergers, the planners determined that reconfiguration would have no benefits anywhere in the state noting that New Jersey has a unique combination of structure, oversight, evaluation, coordinated collaboration and program autonomy. The plan concludes that the present configuration is efficient and effective and meets the needs of clients.

          A thorough review of this plan leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that in many respects the legal services providers in this state function as part of a single statewide program. Accordingly, since the fourteen legal services providers tend to operate as if they are part of the same large organization, the need for program reconfiguration is hard to argue. However, in the coming months and years, we would encourage the state to give serious thought as to whether the services provided by the smallest programs within the state would be stronger and the effectiveness of the entire system strengthened if these programs were combined or merged with larger legal services programs. The merger of smaller programs into larger programs could be accomplished without physically removing offices from the counties in which they are located.

9. Conclusion