The New York Legal Services Coalition

Pay Equity for Advocates Serving Historically Disadvantaged Communities

This testimony is respectfully submitted on behalf of the New York Legal Services Coalition (NYLSC). Our Coalition consists of almost 50 member organizations providing vital legal services in every Judicial District of the State of New York.

Low-income families who cannot afford to hire a lawyer rely on our agencies to provide effective and compassionate legal services when facing critical challenges such as domestic violence, loss of income, housing instability, child support/custody disputes, or lack of immigration status. Our clients are disproportionately BIPOC and have been systematically denied equal access to justice. In addition to their specific legal problems, our clients also face the additional challenge of navigating a legal system which disadvantages individuals who lack equal resources to hire legal counsel. At a structural level, the system will continue to perpetuate this inequity unless and until it is addressed.

Our organizations have struggled to keep pace with exponentially increasing client needs despite almost exclusively flat funding. To better understand the scope of the problem, our Coalition has conducted surveys of our members across the state for the past two years. Pay for attorneys in civil legal services is staggeringly lower than their government counterparts doing substantially similar work. Those inequities only grow throughout their careers and, after 21 years of civil legal services employment, experienced civil legal services attorneys are paid 62% less than their counterparts in the Attorney General’s office in some parts of the state. Pay inequities are not confined to attorney positions. For example, the Attorney General salary for the Legal Assistant 2 positions outside of NYC is 36% higher than our members with similar positions.

This extreme pay disparity impacts vital services for those who need them the most. Legal services organizations cannot compete in the present market for legal talent. The Coalition’s member organizations are experiencing alarmingly high attrition rates and difficulty hiring due to lack of adequate funding to compete with government-funded comparable legal positions. This directly undermines the shared goal of our organizations and New York State to close the justice gap. Often legal service attorney positions remain open for months with no qualified applicants willing to accept the salaries we are able to offer which are largely dictated by the budget constraints of our government contracts. As a result, organizations are not able to meet the needs of local litigants and community members are left to navigate the courts without the benefit of legal assistance.

To close the justice gap, we estimate it will cost an additional $170 million over the next 3 years, or $57 million per year.

Like most issues of structural inequity that may be observed in our system of government, this disparity is neither the result of an individual decision, nor can it be dismantled with a single-approach solution. Instead, those of us committed to equal justice must collectively address the issue in a way that does not further exacerbate the problem.

We look forward to engaging all three branches of the government in finding a solution. The Chief Judge’s leadership is greatly needed to engage the Governor and legislators in addressing pay equity at a systemic level. A commitment to equity requires increased resources to sustain and enhance legal services for communities who have been historically disadvantaged.

Respectfully Submitted,

New York Legal Services Coalition (NYLSC)

By:

Sal F. Curran, Esq., and Jessica A. Rose, Esq.

Co-Chairs of the Legislative Advocacy Steering Committee, NYLSC