ABSTRACT
Public interest legal groups are defined as non-profit, tax-exempt organizations, which employ at least one attorney and devote at least 30 percent of their total program effort to legal representation of otherwise unrepresented issues or constituencies on important questions of public policy. Despite a hostile political climate and unusually adverse economic circumstances, public interest legal organizations as a whole kept apace. Growth in the field of public interest law over the past two and a half decades has been dramatic. A number of factors contributed to the growth in numbers and variety of public interest legal centers in the seventies. Many social movements seized on legal advocacy as a tool to assist citizens' groups and to further political causes. Public interest law centers remained concentrated in the Northeast: 62 percent of the groups in the 1983-1984 survey were headquartered there.
