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The history of legal aid in the USA differs greatly from that of the Nordic countries. The right to counsel in criminal matters is constitutionally recognised, thus requiring the state to provide funding for legal aid in virtually any criminal proceeding. No such rule applies, however, to civil legal services to the poor, which were established in 1974 through federal legislation to create a national Legal Services Corporation (LSC), and which continues to operate today, totally separate from all criminal legal aid. When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, his administration attempted to abolish the LSC, arguing that law students and legal clinics could pick up much of the burden of legal services to the poor in civil matters. His efforts provoked backlash from much of the legal community, including the American Bar Association and the growing clinical movement, which had become stronger, more independent, and more supported within law schools before and during the 1980s. This chapter addresses the ways in which the clinical community within US law schools successfully fought to avoid assuming a significant role in the provision of civil legal aid. It also compares resistance in the USA with European efforts to provide significant legal aid through clinics, using Poland’s robust clinical programmes, developed after the fall of the Soviet Union, as an example of such programmes.

Access to the law for marginalised, disadvantaged or, what may be termed as law-dissociated groups, and their capacity to mobilise the law, are central to research on legal aid. This issue will be discussed below in the context of the more general judicial development represented by the extensive juridification of society. In this context, I will concentrate on three social actors: the legislator, administration, and judiciary. Then the research group’s view on juridification will be concretised and the positive and negative conceptual content of juridification will be presented. Thereafter, Habermas’ concept of juridification and his legal policy proposals will be discussed in the light of Norwegian research on legal aid. The article ends with a conclusion in relation to mobilising the law.

The chapter gives an overarching analysis of the Nordic legal aid schemes, as described in this collection. The welfare state, and its development, serves as a common backdrop for the Nordic countries, and has influenced the legal aid schemes in all the countries. As the national reviews show, the schemes have adjusted to common challenges of cost and effectiveness, but failed to fully meet them. The development of the different national schemes has been divergent. Together with private legal expenses insurances, a third sector of legal aid initiatives has developed in light of the failings of the public schemes. The chapter argues that this can be seen as a flaw in the Nordic welfare state model. The experiences of the new legal aid organisations might provide basis for a reform of the public systems, ensuring access to the law for everyone.