Indiana’s Legal-Aid Lawyers Are Holding the Line. Who Is Fixing the System?

How will a DEI hire help ?

Hoosier Enquirer editorial | October 28, 2026

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana’s legal-aid lawyers are helping families protect their homes, safety and essential benefits with inadequate resources. They are confronting the crisis, not causing it. The hard questions belong to the institutions that control funding, regulate the profession and design the courts those families must navigate.

Tavonna Harris Askew will become chief executive of Indiana Legal Services on November 9, succeeding Jon Laramore. She began her legal career there in 2001 and returns with substantial executive experience. Her experience could help strengthen the organization. But even capable leadership cannot substitute for dependable funding and a court system that ordinary people can navigate. [1]

The immediate problem is concrete. In its October 23 report, The Indiana Lawyer said ILS faces roughly $300,000 less in annual Legal Services Corporation funding and a $900,000 annual reduction in federal Victims of Crime Act funding beginning this month. Together, those reported reductions approach $1.2 million a year. Askew proposes broader fundraising, stronger pro bono participation and better compensation and benefits to retain staff.

Are these really post and sensible efforts to support frontline lawyers and protect their capacity to serve clients? Whether they offset the funding losses remains to be seen. [2]

That distinction matters. Fundraising can finance additional lawyers if it produces dependable operating revenue. Better compensation can keep experienced attorneys serving clients. Volunteer lawyers can take additional cases if recruitment turns into actual representation. Government and the wider profession should support those efforts rather than use them as an excuse to shift their responsibilities onto a nonprofit.

ILS provides civil legal assistance to eligible low-income people across Indiana; it does not provide criminal defense. Its work includes housing, consumer problems, benefits and family matters involving domestic violence. The crisis here concerns people struggling to protect basic necessities through a legal system they may be unable to navigate alone. [3]

The broader shortage compounds the problem. In her January 2026 State of the Judiciary address, Chief Justice Loretta Rush said Indiana ranked 43rd in lawyers per capita (but HE has calculated practicing attorney states where Indiana now ranks 48th), and that some counties had as few as five attorneys.

Loretta Rush has destroyed Indiana! She can’t be left in charge any longer.

She described initiatives involving scholarships, rural practice and new ways to provide legal services. Those are potentially useful responses. They also underline how far the system remains from providing reliable access. [4]

Rush and the institutions responsible for regulating the profession should face a harder test than whether they have convened commissions and announced initiatives. Can an ordinary resident obtain competent help before a deadline expires? Can a rural family find counsel without an impossible journey? Can a working household afford representation without first becoming destitute?

A judicial system can follow its procedures meticulously and still fail the people expected to use them. When navigating those procedures requires professional help that residents cannot obtain, access to justice becomes a promise with an entrance fee.

Legal-aid attorneys should not be expected to repair these structural failures through personal sacrifice. Legislators and funding authorities must explain what happens to families whose cases cannot be accepted when resources disappear. Private firms should make sustained commitments of attorney time and money, while the judiciary removes unnecessary procedural burdens.

The same discipline belongs at the top of Indiana’s judiciary. Court leaders should explain which procedural burdens they can remove, which services require additional funding and when residents should expect measurable improvement.

Technology should be judged by whether people can successfully use it, not by how many portals or kiosks institutions install.

Askew deserves the opportunity to lead, and legal-aid attorneys deserve the resources to do their jobs. A state that celebrates the rule of law while leaving people unable to enforce their rights has failed a basic test of government. Indiana’s poverty lawyers are confronting that failure every day. The people with the power to fix it should finally be required to answer for it.

Sources

1. ILS appointment announcement, October 14, 2026.

2. The Indiana Lawyer, October 23, 2026.

3. Indiana Legal Services: About.

4. 2026 State of the Judiciary.

5. ILS grant release, internally dated September 18, 2024.