With the death of Alan Houseman, the legal aid world has lost one of its longest serving and most influential leaders. Almost from the beginning as a member of the second class of Reggies in 1968, Alan assumed a leadership role at the national level. By the 1970s he was active in defending the OEO Legal Services Program from attempts to close it entirely or to restrict its lawyers from undertaking appellate litigation or legislative advocacy. In 1973-74, Alan staffed “Action for Legal Rights” a lobbying organization supporting creation of an independent Legal Services Corporation. Alan’s strategic acumen and advocacy was instrumental in obtaining congressional approval and eventually President Nixon’s signature on the LSC act shortly before Nixon's resignation.
During the decades that followed, Alan advised and represented many legal aid programs and support centers facing attacks. He was a thought leader, writing more than 25 policy and research articles and many shorter pieces. He served as General Counsel to the Coalition on Legal Services, the Project Advisory, and NLADA. In 2006, Alan was a key member of an advisory committee LSC appointed to help guide its effort to devise and promulgate “performance criteria” for legal services lawyers. Simultaneously, he was involved in the ABA’s project to update its Standards for Legal Aid Providers.
For many years, Alan has also been a historian of and for legal aid. Among other things, he conducted, organized, and preserved oral history interviews of men and women who played important roles in the legal aid field, including pioneers like the Cahns and Gary Bellow, along with legal aid lawyers, LSC presidents, and the like.
In recent years, Alan devoted much of his time and energy to the National Equal Justice Library where he has served as its coordinator, working out of NLADA’s offices. In that capacity he continued conducting oral history interviews which are stored at the Georgetown Law Library, answering inquiries from legal aid organizations, holding events honoring their history and development, organizing and preserving histories—published or unpublished—about individual societies, community and state legal aid groups. Under his guidance, and because of his many skills, the National Equal Justice Library has survived and prospered.
A few years ago, Alan was honored in a ceremony at an NLADA Annual Conference for his many contributions over the years to the legal aid movement and the cause of equal justice for the poor. Those contributions continued up to the moment of his passing. We can only hope there will be someone -- or many someones -- to pick up the baton.
- Justice Earl Johnson, Jr.
NLADA Mutual Insurance Co., RRG
