April 1, 1999

Paul E. Furrh, Jr.
Executive Director
East Texas Legal Services, Inc.
P.O. Box 631070
Nacogdoches, TX 75963-1070

Re: The 1998 Texas Plan: Planning for the Delivery of Civil Legal Services in Texas

Dear Paul:

           Thank you for the timely submission of the Texas state planning report, developed in response to LSC Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6. The staff of the Office of Program Performance has had an opportunity to review the report and would like to share the following observations with you.

           While the report shows strengths in some areas, such as resource development and the involvement of private attorneys, overall, the plan displays disappointingly little progress in addressing the questions raised in Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6 and in developing a comprehensive, integrated delivery system that meets the present and future needs of low-income persons within your state. Rather than setting forth specific initiatives to coordinate, strengthen and expand services to clients, the report describes a "plan" simply to continue meetings of an undesignated group of individuals at unspecified times to engage in unfocused discussions in the areas identified in Program Letter 98-1. We understand that there has been very little follow up since the report was submitted. For these reasons, and those that follow in this letter, we are asking you to develop a more responsive plan to be submitted to LSC by September 1, 1999. We are available to provide you assistance, as necessary.

           In order to place these 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 service 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 is excluded from securing and enforcing its 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 sets out how this coordination of activities is taking place today and what changes the state delivery system will make in order to improve the future coordination of activities to meet future needs.

           This plan never really addresses how the Texas legal services programs are going to work together in a coordinated and integrated manner today and in the future to develop better methods to deliver services to clients and a better product for clients. At best, this plan sets out some recommendations for activities to consider, but contains no real plans.

           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. Some examples of common values and/or goals might include developing the capacity to respond to the most compelling needs of client throughout the state, maximizing opportunities for all clients to receive timely, effective and appropriate services and ensuring that all potential clients have similar access to high quality services.

           The Texas plan does set out a vision of civil legal services delivery by adopting the objectives of a civil justice system as enunciated in a paper authored by the Project for the Future of Equal Justice. While this approach is consistent with good planning, this vision is mainly lost in the execution of the planning efforts. With few exceptions, the plan does very little to integrate the work performed for low-income clients in order to provide comprehensive services throughout the state. Plans in the subject matter areas are often times directionless and lacking any vision or goals, as will be explained below.

           Third, a good plan is one that has been discussed with and/or reviewed by 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. The Texas planning committee consisted of directors of LSC-funded programs, private bar leaders, clients, state funders, and a few other legal services providers. While the inclusiveness of this committee is to be commended, the plan's apparent delegation of all future planning activity to a committee of project directors is surprising. We expect the effort to strengthen and expand client services would continue to be of interest to other persons and organizations and that their involvement would elevate the likelihood of success.

           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. Here, no one is assigned any responsibility for doing anything.

           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. Accordingly, a good plan for the statewide coordination of legal services will present 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, indicate how the programs can work collaboratively to respond to these issues, and spell out what the legal services programs envision for their collective future and for the future of their delivery system.

           This plan seems to take the approach that without more money, little can be done to improve or expand services to clients. While resource development must certainly be a very high, if not the highest priority for Texas programs, it can not be the only priority. While Texas strives to build more resources, it must also strive to utilize its present resources as effectively as possible. This requires planning that looks more seriously at how a statewide community of legal service institutions, who share a collective mission, can develop a civil justice system where all low-income persons enjoy appropriate and meaningful access.

A.            Client Access

           The goal of this section of the planning report was confusing, which made the section difficult to understand. It is not clear whether the goal is to ensure that intake is conducted by "trained staff familiar with local responses to client problems" or whether the goal is to achieve the objectives of a civil legal services delivery system as stated in the Futures Project paper and incorporated by Texas planners. In future planning efforts the goal of work in this area needs to be made clear.

           The plan reports that current systems were developed with "client access" and "personal attention" being of paramount concern. However, no analysis is presented as to whether current systems are meeting these objectives. A better and more thoughtful analysis of programs ' current intake procedures would help planners give more definition to the identified activity of working "toward creating a system that is client friendly and provides meaningful services at the initial contact or point of entry so as to minimize or eliminate multiple referrals for a client."  If the planners presented a vision of what such a system in Texas would look like and then compared this vision to the current system, planners would be in a better position to consider and adopt concrete plans for achieving the vision. This might also assist planners in prioritizing what is essentially a laundry list of activities with no indication of which activities are the most important and which can realistically be accomplished within a specific time frame.

B.            Technology

           The section presents a good analysis of LSC programs' current technological capacities. We understand that some progress has been made on the effort to upgrade the technological capacities of LSC providers and that the LSC project directors have met on several occasions to develop grant applications around technology. This is a good and logical first step which we hope leads you to address the following items noted in your plan:

           In the coming months we expect planners to develop concrete plans to deal with the identified technology issues and move beyond the report's 1999 goal that "the Committee [will] continue to study the use of technology."

C.           Access to Courts, Self-help and Preventive Education

           This part of the plan is written as a series of recommendations. This begs the question of how will the recommendations be implemented and by whom. For example, who will create the statewide task force on community legal education? Such a task force is a sound idea but the proposed agenda for this task force seems way too ambitious. Further, will this task force take on another recommended task of developing a Clearinghouse for the creation and dissemination of community legal education materials?

           Second, planners identify the State Bar as a body that can play a major role in increasing legal services by working on self-help issues. This is another sound idea with no plan being presented for working with the State Bar.

           Third, planners recommend to continue to study increased access to the courts by special populations. It appears that a number of groups currently lack access to the courts in Texas. If this is true, what is the plan for seeing that they get access?

           Overall, this section is very weak. Overriding goals and objectives are not identified. Activities lack focus, with no priorities or plan for implementation.

D.            Coordination of Legal Work, Training, Information and Expert Legal Assistance

           The plan discusses the strengths of Texas ' training efforts and alludes to one shortcoming (that is, "the lack of resources to develop multiple training events"). Since the analysis of the current training and support system is not very thorough, it is difficult to evaluate whether the recommended goals are reasonable.

           For example, the report states that a variety of training opportunities are available to legal services providers, including those sponsored by Texas Lawyers Care. But there is no discussion of how well this training responds to training needs and whether it is accessible to program staff. Goal #2, "to provide regional in-state training," seems to imply that accessibility is an issue. However, no plan is presented to carry out the recommendation of holding regional training events.

           Also, the plan presents no analysis of the current task force system. Goal #3, "to expand the use of task forces," implies that the task force system may not address all relevant issues and/or that task force membership should be expanded. Assuming that planners have undertaken the relevant analysis to adopt this goal, they need to take the next step and develop an implementation plan.

           Likewise, while the ideas contained in this section "to maximize the use of technology in training," are promising, there are no plans to implement them. Texas planners may want to consult with Jim Morrisey of the Western New York Law Center in Buffalo for further information about using computer technology for training and informational purposes. Jim is recognized as a national leader on using technology to enhance the effectiveness of legal services. His Website, wnylc.com, is excellent.

E.            Private Attorney Involvement

           With the support of the Texas State Bar and the work of Texas Lawyers Care, Texas has relatively strong participation of private attorneys in the delivery of legal services to the poor. The plan appropriately strives for even higher participation, and identifies some ideas, but as with other sections of the plan, no concrete steps are identified. For example, the plan recognizes the need for better use of private attorneys with special skills and calls for using State Bar sections in this process. But, again, how this will be carried out is not stated. Who is going to approach the Bar sections? What is the plan for incorporating these private attorneys into the current system?

           The plan also implies, that there is an ongoing problem of the lack of pro bono attorneys in rural areas of the state. The Soros Foundation project on this issue sounds very exciting. But there is no discussion on whether the work of this project may be integrated into the on-going work of current legal services providers and stakeholders, including the State Bar.

           The only goal in this section for 1999 is an activity that is not even discussed in the analysis of the current situation: i.e. coordination of PAI efforts between LSC and TEAFJ grantees. What is the current state of coordination? Have weaknesses been identified? If so, what is being done to address the weaknesses?

F.            Resource Development

           The plan recognizes the good work which has already occurred in Texas on resource development, including the strong support from the State Bar, and acknowledges unmet funding needs. The plan implies that the Standing Committee, TEAJF, and SBOT will once again lead the legislative initiatives, which are described in the plan. Given this coalition's past success in obtaining state revenue, we have no doubt this effort will move forward and we are hopeful of its success. Perhaps these and other statewide efforts can also provide additional help to those areas of the state that are disproportionately under-funded because of limited local resources to draw from.

G.            System Configuration

           The plan shows that absolutely no serious work has occurred on this issue. The plan only repeats the "relevant considerations" listed in LSC's Program Letter for evaluating the current configuration. We expect state planners now to apply these considerations and assess whether the present and future needs of clients will best be served by the current configuration or whether changes are required to achieve an integrated system that reflects the goals and capacities presented in LSC's State Planning Considerations.

           Texas planners also examined these issues in the context of future planning efforts and the delivery of legal services. While we understand why the Committee may wish to discuss ethics as a separate topic, we hope that future planning will better incorporate the report's observations and recommendations about leadership and equal access since they are consistent with LSC's view of a comprehensive, integrated delivery system and the leadership efforts necessary to effect it. For example, we quite agree that key providers and state funders should "meet regularly on issues of legal services management and funding." Likewise, we agree that the Planning Committee should "assume a leadership role in developing a comprehensive plan for providing legal services to the poor in Texas over the next year. " Indeed, we thought that this was the Committee's purpose.

          To address the concerns outlined in this letter, we request that planning efforts continue and that a supplemental report be filed with LSC on or before September 1, 1999 more thoroughly responding to the issues identified in LSC Program Letters 98-1 and 98-6. As a part of this process, we suggest state planners discuss and reach at least preliminary agreement on what you are attempting to achieve through your plan so that you are all working towards a consistent vision and purpose. While the 1998 report referenced the goals and objectives of the Discussion Draft of the Project for the Future of Equal Justice, as well as LSC's Program Letters, the report as a whole does not evidence any translation of those goals or objectives into action. Hence, it appears that state planners have not yet fully determined what they intend to accomplish other than submission of a report to LSC. We hope you will determine that more is to be accomplished.

          We also suggest the planning document submitted on September 1, 1999, make very clear what will be done in terms of each of the seven issues outlined in 98-1 and 98-6, when it will be done, and who will be responsible for doing the work. The document should clearly indicate that responsibility will be shared between and among everyone who is covered by and included in the plan. This means that persons and organizations other than just the ten LSC-funded project directors should play active parts in the next steps of the planning process. If committees or study groups are going to be created, you should identify what committees will be set up, what their tasks or "charge" will be, who will serve on these committees (in specific terms), who will chair them, when they will complete their work, and the role they will play in advancing the values, goals, and norms guiding the planning process.