Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: Civil Legal Aid’s Strong Return on Investment
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Carl Rauscher
Director of Communications and Media Relations
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WASHINGTON, D.C.– Experts discuss the positive economic impact of civil legal aid on the latest episode of LSC's “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. Legal Services Corporation (LSC) President Ron Flagg hosts the discussion with guests Karen Dale, market president for AmeriHealth Caritas’ Medicaid managed care organization in Washington, D.C., and Holly Stevens, chief data officer at LSC.
In April, LSC published a research brief, “The Economic Case for Civil Legal Aid,” which shows the results of a systematic review of 56 economic impact studies conducted between 2003 and 2023. The independent evaluations examined 39 different states. Every study found a positive return on investment (ROI) for civil legal aid spending, with an average return of $7 for every $1 invested in these legal services.
“The studies included [various] case types from housing and domestic violence to public benefits and healthcare, and what we found was compelling,” says Stevens. “What really stood out to our team was how consistent the findings were—despite various methodologies, geographies, the case type compositions of the specific states legal aid organizations—the consistency in the findings was a strong signal that legal aid is a smart financial investment.”
Stevens explains that there are direct and indirect economic benefits. Direct benefits occur when legal aid helps a client recover wages, secure additional healthcare coverage or avoid the costs associated with being evicted. Indirect benefits come from legal aid’s ability to prevent “deeper crises” that would engage costly emergency services like shelters, medical care and law enforcement.
The ripple effects of legal aid also extend across generations. By helping working families stay housed and employed, legal aid enables more children to grow up in safe and stable families, making them more likely to stay in school, complete their education and pursue steady employment.
AmeriHealth Caritas is an insurer currently serving 13 states, as well as 120,000 D.C. residents. Dale says that in their approach to healthcare, AmeriHealth Caritas is interested in understanding the social factors and circumstances that affect the community’s wellbeing.
“We focus on data—we want to understand what is occurring in the health ecosystem,” Dale says. “When we look at costs, we say what is occurring that could be causing that? Not in a way to blame the person who might be incurring more costs, but to more deeply understand.”
Dale explains that they noticed high rates of emergency room visits for children who are diagnosed with asthma. Many of these children’s families were living below the poverty line. Often, she said, they were keeping up on their regular physicals and following their “asthma action plans” but were still frequently ending up in the ER. Amerihealth Caritas hypothesized that poor housing conditions like mold, mice and roaches were harming the children's health.
“Eventually where we landed was that if these families had the legal support to intervene with their landlords so that the health-harming housing conditions were addressed, it was highly likely that there would be savings,” says Dale.
Having learned about medical-legal partnerships, Amerihealth Caritas engaged the Children’s Law Center of D.C. to advocate for these families.
“We really wanted to address both the social return on investment and the healthcare financial return on investment,” says Dale. “And what we have found through this partnership is that both can be addressed, and Children's Law Center in our partnership has done an amazing job.”
The partnership started in 2019 and is still going—any family with an asthmatic child can be referred to Children’s Law Center. The program has had a significant and consistent ROI since the beginning, returning about $10,000 per positive intervention and outcome.
Stevens says that the positive economic impact is clear, especially where dollar values are easily attributed to things like recovered wages and prevented evictions, but the impact extends further than what can be measured.
“When a legal aid attorney helps someone stay housed, it's not just about the cost avoidance, it's also the improved health of their family, better educational outcomes for kids, and the long-term community stability,” says Stevens. “Those are ‘blended returns,’ and they're part of the full impact that legal aid delivers, even if they don't show up in a spreadsheet, much to my dismay.”
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.