Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, or "TRLA," as it is known in some circles, is a non-profit corporation that provides free civil and criminal legal services to indigent residents of Southwest Texas. It is the principal provider of a broad range of civil legal services in 68 Texas counties , and its Public Defender Division staff serves persons accused of crimes in 8 counties . Program headquarters are in Weslaco, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, with branch offices located in Austin, San Antonio, Victoria, Beeville, Sinton, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Harlingen, Edinburg, Laredo, Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Alpine, and El Paso. TRLA also serves migrant and seasonal farm workers throughout the state of Texas and in six southern states served by the Southern Migrant Legal Services office in Nashville: Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.

TRLA is funded in principal part by the federal Legal Services Corporation and the Texas Access to Justice Foundation. TRLA also receives smaller grants from a variety of federal, state and local agencies, including the United States Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Internal Revenue Service. Other funding comes from individual donations and grants from various foundations and corporations. In addition, it receives funding from the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense and eight counties to provide public defender services in criminal cases through offices in Del Rio, Raymondville and Beeville.

TRLA is the third largest federally-funded legal services provider in the nation, and the combined funding allows TRLA’s 135 attorneys to serve approximately 25,000 clients each year. However, over 2.6 million residents of Southwest Texas are considered eligible for TRLA services, a ratio of almost 21,000 potential clients per lawyer.

Obviously, TRLA must of necessity restrict its services to those clients who confront the most egregious legal problems.

TRLA clients share two very important characteristics: they are overwhelmingly Latino, and they are oppressively poor. Southwest Texas consistently has three of the five poorest counties in the nation, and the unemployment rate in many border counties rarely dips into single digits. The employment available is mostly low-wage and often sporadic, driving tens of thousands into the migrant labor stream each harvest season. Over 80% of TRLA’s clients are of Mexican descent. Upwards of one-half of the clients speak Spanish as their primary language, as do the vast majority of TRLA staff. Of course, the proximity to Mexico creates its own unique challenges for program attorneys and staff, and economic and political developments in Mexico have a profound impact on conditions in South Texas.

Migrant and seasonal farm workers, domestic violence victims, victims of elder abuse, the homeless, and displaced workers are among the many clients served each year by TRLA staff. Cases range from routine family law counseling to complex litigation in state and federal courts, from the local Justice of the Peace to the United States Supreme Court. There are three dozen different practice areas in which TRLA attorneys specialize, including community economic development, federal taxation, colonias and real estate, civil rights, environmental justice, low-wage workers, displaced workers, workers compensation, public benefits, disaster assistance, federally subsidized housing, mortgage foreclosure, bankruptcy, wills and estates, torts and general civil litigation, border issues, immigration, human trafficking, international child abduction, elder law, children’s rights, and foster youth.

TRLA provides services in civil and criminal litigation, operates hot-lines and other phone-based services, engages in community legal education, and supports other area service providers. TRLA collaborates with a number of nonprofit organizations throughout the state including domestic violence shelters, community development corporations, and housing and revitalization organizations to name a few. TRLA also provides staff and volunteer private attorneys to assist nonprofit organizations with legal issues through one of its projects, Texas C-BAR.

An experienced and talented staff allow TRLA to provide very high quality legal services to these clients. TRLA recruits bilingual attorneys from law schools throughout the country, and in spite of very low wages, attracts many lawyers who would be welcome in the most prestigious law firms in the country. The firm’s litigation record is exceptional. TRLA is nationally recognized for its services to migrant farm workers, and its attorneys and support staff have achieved an enviable record of success in federal courts throughout the state.

Texas RioGrande Legal Aid is recognized by the US Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization, and contributions are tax deductible to the donor. Donations can be sent to: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, 300 South Texas Blvd., Weslaco, Texas 78596. For more information on how you can support TRLA, please click here or contact our Development Director, Lisa Thompson at 512-374-2792.

Applicants for service, or those wishing to refer cases or clients to TRLA, should call our Telephone Access to Justice toll-free hotline at: 1-888-988-9996

The original TRLA program - known then as "Texas Rural Legal Aid" - was created in 1970 by the Texas Trial Lawyers Association with federal funding for nine deep South Texas counties. The "founding father" was James DeAnda of Corpus Christi, who later became the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. TRLA joined several programs previously established in mostly urban areas, including Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Laredo and El Paso. All of these programs were subsequently funded through a new federal agency, the Legal Services Corporation, when it was established in 1974, and over the next few years TRLA, Coastal Bend Legal Services and Legal Aid of Central Texas expanded into adjoining rural counties. TRLA became the provider for migrant legal services on a state-wide basis in 1977, and opened a Panhandle office in Hereford the following year. Bexar County Legal Aid, the El Paso Legal Aid Society and the Laredo Legal Aid Society remained as single-county urban legal services programs. By 1980, every county in Texas had some level of "access" to civil legal services, and the vast majority of the funding came through the Legal Services Corporation. The federal funding almost reached an early goal established by LSC: to have sufficient funding to provide one lawyer for every 5,000 eligible clients in the country.

Then with the advent of the Reagan administration in 1980 came a period of existential uncertainty. The administration first attempted to eliminate federal funding altogether, but Congress insisted that the program be continued. The administration next tried to destroy the program from within by appointing a board and hiring staff who were hostile to the purposes for which the program was created. Federal funding was cut by one-third during this period, and programs, particularly TRLA, were subjected to intense scrutiny to find pretexts for defunding the program. Those pretexts were never found.

Some modest increases in funding occurred during the Clinton administration, but LSC never recovered to the levels of funding that existed in 1980. There was another effort to eliminate the program by the Congress under the leadership of House Speaker Newt Gingrich after 1994, resulting in a compromise in 1996 that imposed a plethora of new restrictions on LSC grantees (on attorneys fees, class actions, representation of prisoners, lobbying, redistricting, etc.) and reduced funding again by one-third.

However, state funding in Texas began to come on line, the first being monies from Interest-On-Lawyers-Trust-Accounts (aka "IOLTA"), a program implemented by the Texas Supreme Court in 1984. The Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation was established to administer the IOLTA funds, and later became the funding conduit for all state funding, including a court filing-fee add-on in 1997, a dues increase for Texas lawyers in 2003, and a general revenue appropriation in 2009. Unfortunately, the state funding still carries some of the most onerous restrictions in the nation, limiting the ability of legal services lawyers to provide the full measure of effective, efficient representation to its poor clients.

At the direction of the Legal Services Corporation in 2002, four legal aid programs previously serving the Austin area (Legal Aid of Central Texas), San Antonio (Bexar County Legal Aid Society), the Corpus Christi, Laredo & Victoria areas (Coastal Bend Legal Services) and El Paso (El Paso Legal Aid Society) merged with the original Texas Rural Legal Aid program to create a new agency that doubled the size of its clientele. To reflect the merger, the organization’s name was changed to “Texas RioGrande Legal Aid” in 2004. In the year of the merger, TRLA provided civil legal services to more than 25,000 low-income clients, with services ranging from brief advice and counseling to extensive litigation in state and federal courts.

In 2010, TRLA's staff included approximately 135 lawyers and 65 paralegals and social workers located in 15 offices throughout the state. Program headquarters are in Weslaco, in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, with branch offices located in Austin, San Antonio, Victoria, Beeville, Sinton, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Harlingen, Edinburg, Laredo, Eagle Pass, Del Rio, Alpine, and El Paso. TRLA also houses its Southern Migrant Legal Services Project out of an office in Nashville, Tennessee; it serves migrant farm workers in Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.

The organization has organized its services around a broad variety of practice areas (39 in all) that address the equally broad range of problems confronting the low-income community, such as:

• economic self-sufficiency
• domestic violence
• fair housing
• children’s rights
• elder law
• disability rights
• public benefits
• consumer protection
• environmental justice
• displaced workers
• homelessness

Annualized funding for the free services provided by TRLA staff comes primarily from the Legal Services Corporation and the Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation. Specialized grants are received from various federal agencies and private foundations, as well as individual donations. Texas RioGrande Legal Aid is recognized by the US Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt organization, and contributions are tax deductible to the donor. Donations can be sent to: Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, 300 South Texas Blvd., Weslaco, Texas 78596. For more information on how you can support TRLA, please click here or contact our Development Director Lisa Thompson at 512-374-2792.

Applicants for service, or those wishing to refer cases or clients to TRLA, should call our Telephone Access to Justice toll-free hotline at: 1-888-988-9996