North Carolina Statewide Legal Needs Assessment 2003
North Carolina Legal Services Planning Council - 030129
Abstract Number: 030129
July 2003
The North Carolina Legal Services Planning Council conducted North Carolina's first comprehensive statewide legal needs assessment study to determine the level of legal need of North Carolina's low-income population. This study was a joint effort by LSC funded and non-LSC unded legal services providers as well as the North Carolina Client Council. This study includes information gathered throughout 2002 from a variety of sources: statistical data, interviews with experts, surveys from 173 agencies that provide services to low-income persons throughout the state, surveys of low-income clients across the state, and reports from advocates with extensive training and experience in serving North Carolina's low-income client community. The study provides a description of poverty in North Carolina and identifies the legal needs of low-income persons statewide and concludes that the resources available to meet those needs are seriously limited. The Planning Council conducted this study to assist the legal services community in establishing service priorities, to develop and distribute adequate resources to meet identified needs, and to devise a strategy to maximize the North Carolina's legal services community's limited resources.
North Carolina's legal services community is currently exploring ways to address issues identified in the study such as increasing access to legal services, eliminating gaps in services, as well as identifying and enlisting new resources for financial support. Access sample surveys and the North Carolina Statewide Legal Needs Assessment report below as PDF documents.
Contact Information:
Celia Pistolis Assistant Director of Advocacy and Compliance Legal Aid of North Carolina Post Office Box 26087 Raleigh, NC 27611 Phone: (919) 856-2133 Fax: (919) 856-2120 Email
LSC:
America's Partner for Equal Justice 