History of Civil Legal Assistance Research Guide

The NEJL at Georgetown Law Library is a collection dedicated to documenting and preserving the legal profession’s history of providing counsel for those unable to afford it. It has the most comprehensive collection of manuscript materials documenting the history of the Office of Economic Opportunity's legal services program, which later became the Legal Services Corporation. The collections listed below are just a few of the many legal aid resources available within NEJL.

Established in 1990, the NEJL’s Oral History Project includes interviews with many leading figures in legal services history, such as defense team members of the landmark Gideon v. Wainwright case. Some recordings in this collection are video files, and others have written transcripts. For a complete listing of all oral histories, go to the Special Collections Portal. Materials are protected by copyright and permission to publish commercially must be obtained from Georgetown University Law Library. Please contact Special Collections for more information.

Originally housed at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law, the NACLE has since been moved to Georgetown University Law Library’s Special Collections. With material from 1969 to 2019, this collection “contains an extensive bibliography of articles and conference proceedings on clinical legal education, articles on the history of various clinics, and wonderful transcripts of oral histories by those involved in the development of clinical legal education" (Technola blog, November 20, 2008).

This collection contains interviews with key individuals in the legal services field conducted by Johnson, as research for his book, Justice And Reform: The Formative Years of the American Legal Services Program, first published in 1974 by the Russell Sage Foundation. Justice and Reform is the only comprehensive survey of the history of the Legal Services Program (LSP) within the Office Of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The program was created as part of President Johnson's War On Poverty and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Johnson played a major role in Legal Services' formative years, first as Deputy Director and then as Program Director.

Henry Freedman, among other legal service accomplishments, directed the National Center for Law and Economic Justice in New York City for over four decades. This collection consists of Legal Services Corporation (LSC) materials covering such matters as litigation with LSC as defendant, back-up centers, and legislation. Other materials relate to Action for Legal Rights and other legal organizations such as NLADA and Poverty Lawyers for Effective Advocacy. The NEJL also holds an oral history interview with Henry Freedman.

A pioneer in clinical legal education, John Saegar Bradway founded the Duke Legal Aid clinic in 1931 and served as its director until 1959. Bradway devoted much of his career to legal aid. He served as secretary of the National Association of Legal Aid Organizations (NALAO) from 1922 to 1940, and as president 1940 to 1942. He also chaired the legal aid committees of the Pennsylvania and North Carolina Bar Associations, and the Legal Aid Clinics Committee of the Association of American Law Schools. This collection includes records relating to his legal aid work from 1914-1985.

With material from 1900-1918, this collection, and series 2 specifically, consist of material relating to the Legal Aid Society as it functioned during the final decade of von Briesen’s presidency. Von Briesen was interested in all aspects of the Legal Aid Society, the welfare of its directors and attorneys in its branch offices, as well as the people it served throughout New York City and beyond. Collection is open for research use.

The records of the CRLA contain administrative files, litigation files, and special program and subject files, dating from the founding of the organization in 1966 through circa 2000. Materials in the collection document CRLA’s ongoing work to provide legal aid to farmworkers and the rural poor in California. These materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in original format, and must be reformatted to a digital-use copy.

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105), also known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. The Bureau was responsible for the supervision and management of all matters relating to the refugees and freedmen and lands abandoned or seized during the Civil War. Records are available digitally through the National Archives’ online catalog.

This collection contains Board of Directors records, financial records, correspondence, and other records related to the Legal Aid society, as well as annual reports of and correspondence with legal aid organizations from elsewhere in the country, primarily between the years 1916-1976. Collection is open for research.

Contains records on the President’s Task Force on the War Against Poverty (1964) as well as records from the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Private Sector Division, the Office of Operations, and more, primarily between 1960-1990. Some records are available digitally through the National Archives’ online catalog.