It seeks to ensure equal access to justice under the law for all Americans by providing funding for civil legal aid to those who otherwise would be unable to afford it.

[5] The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, a key part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society vision, established the OEO.

Building on the work of a 1964 essay, "The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective" by Edgar Cahn and Jean Camper Cahn, in 1965 OEO budgeted $1 million per year[5] to create and fund 269 local legal services programs around the country,[6] such as California Rural Legal Assistance,[6] which made a name for themselves suing local officials and sometimes stirring up resentment against their federal funding.

[6] In 1971 a bipartisan congressional group, including Senators Ted Kennedy, William A. Steiger, and Walter Mondale, proposed a national, independent Legal Services Corporation;[8] at the same time, administration officials such as Attorney General John N. Mitchell and chief domestic advisor John Ehrlichman were proposing their own somewhat similar solution.

[8] The idea behind the LSC was to create a new corporate entity that would be funded by Congress but run independently, with eleven board members to be appointed by the president, subject to Senate confirmation.

Debate existed from the start among the board members as to whether LSC's role should be the same as the OEO's of using lawsuits and other means to attack broad underlying difficulties of the poor or whether the focus should be more narrowly defined to addressing small, specific situations.

[5][6] The LSC Act said that the organization was to pursue "equal access to justice," but Cramton wrote that while the law was intended to proscribe the blatantly-political objects of the 1960s OEO's work, it was worded ambiguously.

[5] In December 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Hillary Rodham to the board of directors of the LSC,[11] for a term to expire in July 1980.

[5] During Rodham's Senate confirmation hearings, she subscribed to the philosophy that LSC should seek to reform laws and regulations that it viewed as "unresponsive to the needs of the poor.

[20] Indeed, Time magazine would state, "Of all the social programs growing out of the Great Society, there is none that Ronald Reagan dislikes more than the Legal Services Corporation.

[20] Supporters of LSC rallied to defend it; American Bar Association president W. Reece Smith, Jr. led 200 lawyers to Washington to press its case.

[28] The U.S. House Judiciary Committee blocked Reagan's zero-funding action in May 1981,[29] but did cut financing to $260 million for both of the next two years as well as place additional restrictions on LSC lawyers.

[29] By the following month, the now Republican-controlled U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee had cut proposed financing to $100 million,[30] as part of what The New York Times deemed an "increasingly bitter ideological struggle".

[30] Moreover, Reagan administration officials accused LSC of having "concealed and understated" its lobbying activity and support for politically motivated legislation.

[31] In return the LSC began to set up "mirror corporations" to circumvent congressional restrictions and reuse funds for political advocacy.

[20] Zumbrun's nomination was sufficiently controversial that in January 1982, the Reagan administration dropped it, and instead made a recess appointment of William J. Olson to be chair.

[32] In February 1982, the Carter-appointed members of the previously existing board filed suit to against the recess appointments, claiming they were unlawful and that they should be enjoined from holding meetings.

[33] Rodham hired fellow Rose Law Firm associate Vince Foster to represent her in the case[33] and to seek a restraining order against Reagan.

[35] This board then closed its last meeting in a public debacle,[37] with Olson lambasting LSC as full of "abuses and rampant illegality" and a "waste of the taxpayers' money through the funding of the left,"[37] while being harangued by a hostile audience.

[36] Overt White House hostility towards LSC ended with the George H. W. Bush administration, with calls for level funding rather than decreases.

[18] Under board chair George Wittgraff, LSC began to ease relations with private lawyers and with state grantees.

[45] On December 16, 2014, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act for FY 2015 that includes $375 million for LSC.

External stakeholders, including members of the legal and business communities, state attorneys general, and law school deans across the country sent letters to the House and Senate appropriations committees advocating for robust funding for LSC.

[52] Due to the up-and-down nature of LSC's political history, there are many restrictions on lobbying, advocacy, and general impact work which apply to LSC-funded organizations.

Alabama Alaska American Samoa Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Micronesia Minnesota Mississippi

Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming