In those situations the poor in Oklahoma have a place to turn -- their local Legal Aid office. There are 19 such offices scattered throughout Oklahoma so that Legal Aid's attorneys can serve eligible low-income families and the elderly in all 77 counties.

To qualify, a family must be within 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline. That's poor -- $25,813 a year for a family of four and $12,763 for a single person. Oklahoma has more than 600,000 residents who fall within those poverty guidelines and more than 24 percent of them are children.

Legal Aid's resources are stretched to the maximum. For every case they accept, they have to turn away a qualifying case due to a lack of resources, i.e. not enough staff attorneys. But, even at that, they've done a good job -- closing more than 19,000 cases affecting the lives of 19,151 children. And, the cost per case closed was a mere $386. Most Oklahoma law firms won't even open a case for that amount.

Think what they could do if they had more money! Hire more attorneys, for sure! Help more people, no doubt.

Recently, a group of Tulsa businesses and foundations joined us for lunch and raised more than $50,000 for Legal Aid's mission. We want to thank ONEOK, Williams, Bank of Oklahoma, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, Tulsa National Bank and the Mervin Bovaird Foundation for their generous responses. We also want to thank Pre-Paid LegalServices in Ada for leading the way in our corporate effort and the George Kaiser Family Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma Foundation for its dollar-for-dollar match on all new monies raised in the Tulsa area.

These businesses can be sure that Legal Aid will be an excellent steward of their gifts.

After years of drawing back due to lack of funding and the threat of extinction, Legal Aid is starting to expand. Our fundraising work along with the work of Bill Paul in 2003-05 and Judge Thomas Brett in 2006 is allowing Legal Aid to set its salaries so it can attract the best and the brightest from our law schools. It is allowing Legal Aid to open a part-time office in McAlester thanks to generous funding from the Puterbaugh Foundation.

It's allowed the Tulsa Legal Aid office to add another full-time attorney to work on legal issues of Tulsa's homeless population, thanks to the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation, and the Oklahoma City office to add a full-time attorney to help clients throughout the state who are living with HIV/AIDS and need legal help, thanks to the Inasmuch Foundation in Oklahoma City.

Providing access to our justice system is an issue that touches every Oklahoman. And, it's a good investment.

Legal Aid provides critical and cost-effective services that prevent problems in the future including: securing a protective order that can save women and children from severe physical and emotional harm; gaining access to needed health care at a critical time that often prevents more serious and expensive problems later on; helping an individual make the welfare-to-work transition that helps guarantee a sound economic future, and preventing an improper eviction or foreclosure through early legal intervention that can avoid the much more expensive societal costs of homelessness later.

Good things are happening on the justice front in Oklahoma.

Burns Hargis is serving with Mike Turpen as statewide co-chairs of Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma 2007 Campaign for Justice.