Leveraging Federal Funding across Government to Expand Access to Justice: Updates from the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable

The White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR), staffed and directed by the Office for Access to Justice (ATJ), has been busy this year, driving forward the collaboration of 28 federal agencies towards advancing access to justice. LAIR is mandated to “improve coordination among Federal programs, so that programs are more efficient and produce better outcomes,” including expanded access to legal services. Part of that mission entails marshalling and expanding access to the resources across federal government that can fund legal help. In line with these goals, LAIR published a first-of-its-kind online resource to simplify the search for federal funding opportunities for providers of legal services (including those offering nonlawyer assistance) and presented an educational webinar offering training on how to access federal funding for legal aid.

In the past few months, LAIR has also launched three committees that will carry out LAIR’s work towards fulfilling its mission and hosted the first of three annual plenary convenings of member agency representatives.

Online Resource: Federal Funding Opportunities for Legal and Related Services

Many federal agencies offer funding that supports legal and related services, helping to address the critical needs for legal help in communities throughout the country while advancing federal objectives. Although agencies provide detailed grant information on their websites and Grants.gov, prospective applicants sometimes lack a bird’s-eye view of these opportunities, and it can be time consuming or difficult to search multiple sites. In April, ATJ launched a new LAIR resource, creating a hub for access to funding opportunities across federal agencies that can support legal assistance. This online tool aims to help prospective grant applicants access federal funding information easily. The site includes two sections:

• Informational Resources: a hub for learning that contains information regarding different types of federal funding, links to external resources and agency-specific pages that include guidance and forecasts for applicants.
• Grants: centralized information about grants related to legal services and nonlawyer assistance. Viewers can sort by agency or by issue area (e.g., housing/homelessness) to quickly locate individual entries, which offer brief descriptions and links to agency program pages and grant solicitations. Some listed opportunities may be open for applications, while others that are not open demonstrate the broad universe of funding sources that agencies have made available and can help applicants get ready for future similar opportunities.

This resource is an example of LAIR’s ongoing efforts to simplify people’s access to government funding opportunities. To that end, LAIR will work to improve and update the resource to enhance its utility and expand its reach.

For another related page, see ATJ’s Public Defense Resource Hub, which provides information on federal resources and materials that may support public defense.

Webinar: Federal Funding for Legal Aid

LAIR is also taking steps to engage with the community, to ensure broad access to its new federal funding online resource, and to assist the field in understanding how to apply for and obtain federal funding. In April, LAIR hosted a webinar, with 450 attendees, offering guidance to legal aid and community organizations navigating the federal funding landscape. The webinar included remarks from:

• ATJ Director Rachel Rossi;
• LAIR Executive Director Allie Yang-Green;
• Montana Legal Services Association Executive Director Alison Paul and
• Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Justice Lab Karen Lash.

The speakers offered detailed and insightful guidance regarding types of federal funding and tips for finding and leveraging grants. They also provided examples of the diverse funding streams that legal aid organizations can access to meet their communities’ needs and the innovative partnerships and pilots these funding programs often enable. More broadly, the speakers discussed the importance of civil legal aid programs in achieving various federal goals — including promoting housing stability, supporting Veterans and expanding access to healthcare — and, in turn, the crucial role of federal funding in enabling legal services providers to effectively address people’s legal needs.

A recording of the webinar is available here.

LAIR Committees

This year, LAIR also launched three committees to formalize the Roundtable’s structure and to advance its directives, each comprised of about a dozen member agency representatives. Through these committees, LAIR members are able to focus their collaboration on areas most relevant to their agency missions, and to consistently drive LAIR’s work long-term, beyond annual reporting alone. The committees are:

• Simplification, which focuses on making agency programs and services more accessible for the people they aim to support;
• Data and Research, which works to generate and utilize data related to the public’s interactions with federal agencies to resolve legal problems, emphasizing the importance of informed, evidence-based decision-making and
• Innovation, which aims to support agency innovations that expand access to justice, and which this year is examining the various ways agencies can utilize nonlawyers to further their missions and maximize resources.

Plenary Convening

On April 10, Deputy Counsel to the President Tyeesha Dixon and ATJ Director Rachel Rossi chaired LAIR’s first plenary convening of the year. More than 60 federal agency partners joined in person and virtually to discuss LAIR’s plans for 2024 and the activities of its three committees. Agency representatives also shared notable practices and offered updates on access to justice efforts from across the federal government.

During the convening, Director Rossi emphasized that “LAIR is working diligently to meet its mandate to expand access to justice across the federal government and is creating resources and tools that make it easier to access federal funding for legal aid and legal help.” In doing so, she added, “We are demonstrating the impact of collaboration across government in working to close the justice gap.” 

The momentum of LAIR’s work to expand access to justice across government only continues to grow. LAIR is demonstrating how collaboration can help to accelerate the process of simplifying government by sharing best practices and motivating change. LAIR’s recent efforts, focused on breaking down barriers to accessing federal resources, aims to ensure that no community is left behind in accessing available assistance. Through these efforts to expand access to federal funding, embed its structure, and modernize its tools, LAIR will continue to advance its mission to close the justice gap.

More About LAIR

LAIR is a collaboration of 28 federal agencies, co-chaired by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and White House Counsel Ed Siskel and staffed and directed by ATJ. LAIR is mandated to, among other things, “improve coordination among Federal programs, so that programs are more efficient and produce better outcomes by including, where appropriate, legal services among the range of supportive services provided; and increase the availability of meaningful access to justice for individuals and families, regardless of wealth or status.” LAIR is required to hold three meetings per year, convened by LAIR’s Executive Director, and to report annually to the President on its progress in fulfilling its mission.

LAIR issued its annual reports in 2021 on Access to Justice in the Age of COVID-19; in 2022 on Access to Justice through Simplification: A Roadmap for People-Centered Simplification of Federal Government Forms, Processes, and Language and in 2023 on Access to Justice in Federal Administrative Proceedings: Nonlawyer Assistance and Other Strategies.