Low pay, high debt chases attorneys out of legal aid work

A report commissioned by Legal Aid Association of California found low pay and high law school debt are making it difficult legan nonprofits to recruit and retain attorneys.

“Justice At Risk: More Support Needed for Legal Aid Attorneys in California” is a comprehensive look at who legal aid attorneys are, why they leave the field and what might be needed to help them stay. It is an update to a 2010 report that highlighted many of these same issues.

“The story feels the same, and it’s not great news,” the association’s executive director, Salena G. Copeland, said when reached Thursday during a break from a panel on legal aid funding at the State Bar offices in San Francisco.

But a new factor has emerged: the good economy, she said. The data for the first report was gathered in 2008 and 2009. “We were at the beginning of the economic downturn,” she said. “A lot of folks stayed in jobs they were thinking about leaving because of the job security. Now that we’ve recovered from the economic downturn, government positions are paying so much more and legal aid just cannot keep up with that.”

Few lawyers are leaving legal aid for the private sector, Copeland said. Instead, public sector attorneys, such as public defenders, have been leaving for private sector jobs and are often being replaced by legal aid lawyers.

The reasons are often financial. The median starting salary for a legal aid attorney is $57,000, compared to a minimum starting salary of $67,224 for a deputy state attorney general in California, according to the report. Even traditionally low-paid specialties like dependency counsel or working in superior court self-help centers tend to pay thousands of dollars more than legal aid jobs.

Looking specifically at the 2017 to 2018 time period, the report found the median length of employment for legal aid attorneys who left their jobs was two years. Lack of career advancement options and high workloads were key factors.

Who legal aid attorneys are is also changing. Between the 2010 and 2020 reports, the proportion of female attorneys grew from 67% to 72%. There has also been a loss of experience as the percentage of legal aid attorneys who are baby boomers or “generation X” has plummeted; 60% of legal aid attorneys are now millennials.

Both reports were conducted by Carmody and Associates, an Arizona company that has done reports on legal aid and pro bono services for clients around the nation. The latest one was funded by contributions from dozens of legal aid groups around the state, many of which also provided data that appears in the report. “It’s reassuring in a dark way, in that we are not alone,” said Patience Milrod, executive director of Central California Legal Services in Fresno.

Milrod said it has always been difficult to get attorneys to come to the Central Valley. But she noted “obscene” levels of debt — about $400,000 in a case she knows of — have made things worse. The report found higher levels of debt correlated with attorneys leaving legal aid jobs or reporting they were considering doing so.

The attorneys who can afford to work for little money sometimes come from relatively privileged backgrounds or have spouses with better paying jobs, the report found. While such attorneys can do good work, Milrod said, they don’t typically have the language skills that are in high demand in her agency. Many of her clients are from the Mexican state of Oaxaca and often don’t even speak Spanish, only Mixtec.

Meanwhile, the cost of living has become a growing problem, especially in large urban centers. The report found just 39% of legal aid organizations in California offer an annual cost of living adjustment.

“I used to get over 100 applicants for an open staff attorney position,” said Bill D. Hirsh, executive director of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel in San Francisco. “Currently, I get less than five.”

The report had nine recommendations, beginning with the most obvious: “Pay higher salaries.” This was followed by providing more help with student loans, creating more opportunities for career advancement and bringing in a workforce that is more racially and economically diverse.

“I think the report does crystallize the issues all legal aid organizations are facing,” Hirsh said. “All of us are struggling.”

Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, a longtime advocate of increased legal aid funding, said the findings were “not surprising.”

“Unfortunately, last year my efforts to give qualifying Californians a tax credit equal to the interest they paid on a student loan failed in the Assembly,” Wieckowski said in an email. “But I will continue to support efforts to strengthen the legal aid community and reform our broken student loan system.”