UAW Legal Services gives eligible members access to justice that all need
In recent years, much has been written to show that too many middle class Americans don’t have real access to the U.S. civil justice system. While legal aid offices and attorney pro bono services exist to help low-income Americans who earn below 125% of the federal poverty level – and these services are woefully underfunded and inadequate – wealthier individuals and corporations have the highest access to lawyers and courts.
According to the 2016 Center for American Progress paper Making Justice Equal, “In more than three-fourths of all civil trial cases in the United States, at least one litigant does not have a lawyer. Without access to legal advice, many are unaware of their legal rights and potential claims.”
While researchers find it hard to pinpoint the number of those left on the outside looking into the American legal justice system, Making Justice Equal notes that past studies “suggest that about 80 percent of the civil legal needs of those living in poverty go unmet as well as 40 to 60 percent of the needs of middle-income Americans.”
It’s not for nothing that a frustrated President Jimmy Carter told a Los Angeles County Bar Association gathering in 1978, “Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people.”
1978 also happens to be the year that the UAW Legal Services Plan was born through UAW and Big Three collective bargaining negotiations, bringing the benefit of quality legal services to thousands of active and retired UAW-GM, UAW-Ford, and UAW-Chrysler workers, and others.
While that original UAW Legal Services Plan stopped taking new cases after December 31, 2013, subsequent 2015 collective bargaining negotiations resulted in a new legal services plan that began taking legal requests for service on January 25, 2017. Today, the new plan has handled well over 100,000 service requests for eligible active and retired UAW members and surviving spouses.
To access your legal services benefit, call toll-free (800) 482-7700 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (ET).