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The History of the Right to Counsel movement

We conducted a study of Housing Court, called Five Minute Justice, in 1986, which revealed that the average case involving an unrepresented tenant was dealt with in about five minutes. We followed up that report with a class action lawsuit  (Donaldson vs. the State of New York) to try and win the right to counsel for poor people in Housing Court – a lawsuit we lost on technical grounds. A study done in conjunction with the suit in 1993, The Donaldson Report (pdf), confirmed the tremendous imbalance – 88% of tenants in Housing Court could not afford attorneys while 97% of landlords were represented by counsel. The study also showed that 66% of tenants were eligible for free legal assistance but most were unable to get it because of lack of funding for legal providers.

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