Category: Access to Justice

Opioids are a class of drugs used to reduce pain, ranging from prescription opioids such as oxycodone and morphine, to illegal opioids such as heroin. In the 1990s, healthcare providers began prescribing opioid pain relievers at increased rates, leading to the widespread misuse of prescription and non-prescription opioids. This resulted in a spike in addiction, amounting to 350,000 deaths between 1999 and 2016 from an overdose involving opioids. In 2017, the Health and Human Services (HHS) Acting Secretary declared a public health emergency to address this epidemic. Because of the alarming number of overdoses, efforts to mitigate the epidemic tend

Yesterday, 251 Chief Legal Officers and General Counsel from across the country joined a letter in support of an increase in funding for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the largest funder of civil legal aid programs in the U.S. The letter was part of a nationwide campaign to secure LSC funding for FY2019. A similar letter was submitted last week by more than 180 managing partners from law firms across the nation. In each of the past two years, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued proposed spending bills that sought to defund LSC. Last year’s proposal resulted in a similarly robust response from the legal community.