Unlike the criminal context, where everyone is entitled to an attorney even if they can’t afford one, there is no such guarantee on the civil side. And so civil legal aid is kind of the only option for people with civil legal needs to get legal help if they can’t afford to hire their own attorney. One of the Justice For All Commission’s goals is to increase funding for civil legal aid, you know, the more funding these programs have, the more people they can help, the more needs they can meet.

So to be able to say that, you know, for every dollar you give a civil legal aid program, we deliver $6.69 in immediate and long term consequential financial benefits, really puts that in a framework that a lot more people understand and appreciate. And so, it’s not just this mother and her three children who get to retain housing because, you know, that’s a priceless benefit. You can’t really put a price tag on that, except that you can put a price tag on what that saves in other areas in terms of money saved in sheltering that family and access to emergency public benefits.