Evaluating the OEO Legal Services Program

During 1970 and 1971, the complex and politically sensitive OEO Legal Services Program received its first independent national evaluation. This paper describes how evaluators dealt with the policy issues arising during the evaluation. Their decisions involved the interaction of three factors: conceptual problems, access to data, and a sense of what would be relevant to public policy. They found only a small area of intersection between a large set of issues important to policy-makers and an equally large, but usually different, set of issues amenable to systematic research.One finding was that the program's use of full-time poverty lawyers is a less expensive way to provide poor clients with legal services than underwriting the fees of private lawyers would be. Another was that the Legal Services attorneys' strong emphasis on law reform apparently adds very little to the cost of providing more routine services.The writer was the government's technical representative on this contract, but the viewpoints expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Office of Economic Opportunity.