The Chief Judge’s 2023 Hearing on
Civil Legal Services in New York
Presented by: Kristin Brown, President and CEO
9/18/2023
Good afternoon. My name is Kristin Brown and I am President and CEO of Empire Justice Center. We are a statewide, not for profit law firm and advocacy organization with seven offices across the state: in Albany, Rochester, Yonkers, White Plains, Central Islip, and Hempstead.
Empire Justice focuses on areas of law where we can have the most impact, with the goal of addressing the root causes of injustice through our 360-degree approach to systems change. We center client experience to identify barriers and we break them down using targeted training, legal intervention, and policy advocacy. In this way, we practice, teach, and change the law to make it work for all New Yorkers.
Thank you, Chief Judge Wilson; Presiding Justices LaSalle, Renwick and Whalen; Justice Clark;, Chief Administrative Judge Zayas; and New York State Bar President Lewis. We are deeply grateful for the Office of Court Administration’s ongoing commitment to civil legal services. The Judiciary Civil Legal Services (JCLS) funding is a critical revenue source for Empire Justice Center and our peers and is a key element in our ability to help our clients access justice under the law. We are especially grateful for the recent commitment to cost of living adjustments for the JCLS funding which have assisted us in absorbing the increased cost of doing business. Each year, rent, health insurance, office supplies – the less interesting but integral elements of doing this work – consistently rise in cost and until 2022 our JCLS funding did not reflect this. Thank you.
Our JCLS funding is absolutely critical to our ability to hire attorneys to represent clients in the essentials of life in both individual and impact cases. As you heard from Ms. Tupper’s involvement in not one, but three separate cases, Empire Justice Center’s impact cases addressed the need for timely economic and medical resources that once available, served to dramatically change her life for the better. Ms. Tupper was just one of the over 365,000 New Yorkers who benefited from these cases.
When we are successful in impact cases, our experienced attorneys ensure that scores of New Yorkers are able to assert their civil rights, access government benefits and critical services that stabilize lives so people can focus on jobs, school, family; putting food on the table in a safe and stable home—the essential aspects of every day life. The ability to do this work is particularly important for marginalized communities, including Black and Brown New Yorkers, LGBTQ+ and low-income individuals and families, folks with disabilities, and so many others. Examples of current cases in our Civil Rights practice include a pandemic related action involving thousands of bus drivers and bus attendants who were denied unemployment insurance benefits and another case addressing lack of access to special education services for thousands of students with disabilities across the Rochester City School District.
Life-altering systems change cases like these require a high level of expertise and talent. Seasoned attorneys are needed to guide our junior attorneys in their professional development and supervise their work. Unfortunately, filling positions is becoming increasingly difficult. Our civil rights managing attorney position has remained vacant for the better part of a year, and we have vacant housing, immigration, language justice, and educational debt advocacy positions. At the same time, the need is so great, we could easily triple the work we are doing if we could fill the positions. Speaking with colleagues from across the state, I know the hiring challenges and the acute need for services are not unique to Empire Justice Center.
A key element of the challenge in filling these critical roles is that civil legal service attorneys’ salaries are so much lower than our peers in public interest law, including those working at public defenders’ offices, within county and state government, and certainly, within the private bar. And while we were supportive of the much-needed increase in assigned counsel rates last year, increasing the salary in other areas of public interest law widens the public interest salary gap, compounding the civil legal services community’s recruitment challenge.
Recognizing this, over the summer, the New York Legal Services Coalition, the membership association for civil legal services in New York state, conducted an informal survey of salary data from legal services providers. Preliminary findings indicate that civil legal service attorneys earn approximately 20-40% less than their counterparts working directly for the government. This is hard evidence demonstrating what we have known anecdotally for a long time. Starting attorney salaries in civil legal services are consistently the lowest paying public interest attorney jobs across the state. The widening salary gap is making it increasingly difficult to attract and retain legal talent. And of course unfilled positions result in clients not served – unlawful evictions executed, homes lost to foreclosure, lifesaving health coverage not received.
We all share the same goal of ensuring that justice is served for those who need it most. In order to achieve this goal, we have two requests.
First, we ask that you continue to make progress toward closing the justice gap by increasing the JCLS funding by a substantial amount so that we may meet the overwhelming need.
Second, we must come together to solve these salary and recruitment and retention challenge as well. To do this we ask that you develop a plan to engage in discussions with the Governor and Legislative leaders to work together on a multi-phase plan to achieve pay equity across government funded public interest legal systems.
We recognize that these are not small problems to be solved, but our community, working with our partners in government, solves intractable problems all the time. We know how to do this. Together, we can continue to close the justice gap, expanding services into critical areas of law, such as medical and consumer debt and public benefits, while also taking steps to ensure that our civil legal services providers are able to recruit attorneys with the skills and ability to meet these challenges with us.
Thank you so much for your attention today, for your past and future support for the work of Empire Justice Center and our colleagues in the Civil Legal Services community.
