A corporate-backed program will soon hire three full-time lawyers to assist major legal aid providers in Connecticut.
Lawyercorps, founded by United Technologies Corp. and General Electric, is taking applications starting this month. The group will place an attorney at Connecticut Legal Services, Greater Hartford Legal Aid, and New Haven Legal Assistance Association, adding capacity to assist an additional several hundred clients each year.
Those groups, which receive funding from the state and other sources to provide legal services to those with low or no income, handled 11,600 cases last year, Lawyercorps said.
But that only represents about 20 percent of the need that exists for legal services, the group said.
“The increasing need for free legal services in civil matters far outstrips available funding streams and attorney resources,” Superior Court Judge William Bright said in a statement.
The three fellowships are funded by UTC, GE, and a grant from the American Bar Association Access to Justice Commission Project. Other donors include Xerox Foundation, the Barnes Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers, UIL Holdings Corp., The Kilman Advisory Group, Empire Search Partners, Sheffield Haworth, Kelly Managed Legal Services, the South Asian Bar Association of Connecticut, Ricoh USA, and IBM
Charlie Gill, senior vice president and general counsel at UTC said Lawyercorps will need more support.
“Our focus is to enlist new funding partners to invest in justice, because we all benefit when the court system works and when our fellow residents in the communities where we live and work can thrive simply by having basic human needs met,” Gill said.
The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving is administering the donated funds.
