Reflecting on Philadelphia's Access to Justice Journey
By: Josh Snyder
As we prepare to celebrate the nation’s Semiquincentennial, and having turned 50 myself a few weeks ago – I was born precisely two months before the Bicentennial – my thoughts keep returning to our City and its history, especially in and around 1976.
Focusing on the work of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation and its partners, it is clear that nonprofit civil legal aid in Philadelphia has transformed between 1976 and 2026, evolving from a fledgling but formidable War on Poverty initiative into a sophisticated access-to-justice system.
As background, during the New Deal era and the postwar period, legal aid remained largely charity-funded and limited in scope, serving only a small fraction of those who needed help. In the 1960s, the War on Poverty brought federal funding to legal aid at a scale never seen before. Community Legal Services (CLS), founded in 1966, emerged as a major provider focused on poverty law for Philadelphia residents and became a national model for anti-poverty lawyering. Along with CLS, by 1976, a number of other organizations were active in Philadelphia, such as American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, Juvenile Law Center, and the Education Law Center.
During the Reagan administration, the era that I associate most closely with my childhood, federal funding of legal aid receded. Despite financial pressure, legal aid organizations rose to meet new challenges. As one important example, the AIDS Law Project was founded in 1988 to provide free legal assistance to people living with HIV and those affected by the epidemic.
The 1990s and beyond have brought further diversification. The Homeless Advocacy Project, founded in 1990, remains dedicated to providing direct civil legal services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Health Law Project (1994) provides free legal services and advocacy to protect and advance the health rights of low-income and underserved Pennsylvanians eligible for publicly-funded health care. Growth continued in subsequent decades, with new organizations, such as the Pennsylvania Innocence Project (2009), committed to exonerating innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted, emerging on the legal aid landscape.
The foreclosure crisis surrounding the 2008 financial crash spurred further action and innovation. Philadelphia legal aid organizations became central actors in mortgage foreclosure defense and anti-predatory-lending litigation. The city’s nationally recognized foreclosure diversion initiatives relied heavily on nonprofit attorneys to negotiate loan modifications and keep residents in their homes.
Looking back to 1976, in 2026, Philadelphia’s nonprofit civil legal aid community has grown and matured into a network that advises and represents tens of thousands of Philadelphians annually. What has been accomplished in Philadelphia across fifty years, (and my lifetime!), is indeed added cause for celebration during this milestone year. Over the next five decades, surely more will be accomplished – and, in an ideal world, these organizations would find themselves out of business.
