Poor people who have legal problems – like a fraudulent mortgage lender or an ex who won’t pay child support – will be turned away in greater numbers from free legal clinics in Illinois, according to officials, because these offices have been forced to trim services and lay off lawyers.

Because of cuts in federal funding, the Alton-based Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation will lay off 17 of its 104 employees, most of them lawyers and paralegals, Executive Director Joseph Bartylak said Monday.

The Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago will trim 12 lawyer and paralegal jobs from its payroll through attrition, said Executive Director Sheldon Roodman.

The two groups are among three that deliver most of the free legal assistance to Illinois’ poor in civil cases. They, as well as Rockford-based Prairie State Legal Services, will lose $920,000 in yearly funding starting next year as the result of a drop in the number of Illinois residents counted as poor in the 2000 Census.

The threshold for the designation is $22,000 a year for a family of four.

Land of Lincoln will lose about $525,000 annually as a result of the federal cuts, Bartylak said. The group maintains eight offices through southern Illinois and had a $5 million budget before the reduction.

The Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago will lose about $350,000 while operating from an $11 million annual budget, Roodman said.

The cuts mean Land of Lincoln’s East St. Louis office won’t be able to replace the two lawyers who recently resigned, said Lois Wood, who runs the program. That likely will mean 400 to 500 families during the next year will be turned away from the city’s only free legal group, she said.

Already, the office is stretched thin. Earlier this year, the East St. Louis office had to stop taking foreclosure cases in which clients were threatened with losing their homes by companies accused of predatory lending, she said.

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Prairie State Legal Services

Prairie State Legal Services offers help for low-income people and those over 60 who need help with civil legal problems.

Prairie State has ten offices serving 36 counties in Illinois. It charges no fees except court filing costs.

About 41 percent of the organization’s $6.1 million budget in 2002 came from Legal Services Corp. Its next biggest contributors were local United Way organizations and the Lawyers Trust Fund.

The Rockford office serves Boone, Carroll, Jo Daviess, Ogle, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties. The Rockford office handled 2,476 cases in 2001. This year, it handled 1,249 cases between Jan. 1 and June 30.

The organization marked its 25^th Anniversary October 1.

Source: Prairie State Legal Services; Website: www.pslegal.org

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Fund cutbacks shrink legal help for poor Three Illinois assistance groups will lose $920,000 a year in federal aid.

The Associated Press

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Prairie State Legal Services

Source: Prairie State Legal Services; Website: www.pslegal.org

Fund cutbacks shrink legal help for poor
Three Illinois assistance groups will lose $920,000 a year in federal aid.