Dimensions: 1.00'' x 9.50'' x 6.50'' 264 pages AEI Press  (Washington) Publication Date: March 1990 Hardcover ISBN: 0844736899

Started as part of the war on poverty, the federal legal services program is now a sprawling federal program employing nearly 3,00 full-time lawyers and 6,200 others who serve 1.4 million clients a year.

This volume begins with "An Agenda for Reform" by Douglas J. Besharov, which documents the program's declining productivity and apparent unresponsiveness to the legal needs of poor people--especially single mothers and their children. It continues with a roundup of opinion by a group of experts and it concludes with prepared statements, background, and bibliography.

According to Alan W. Houseman, director of the Center for Law and Social Policyu, and one of the contributors to this volume: "It may now be possible to engage again in a thoughtful, nonideological examination of how legal services programs can improve their effectiveness, productivity, and accountability to clients. While some may disagree with Besharov's agenda for reform, it makes a significant contribution to such an inquiry and poes a useful and necessary challenge to legal services and the bar."

Douglas J. Besharov is the Joseph J. and Violet Jacobs Scholar at AEI.