About

Vision
Civil legal aid is a basic human right, available and effective for all low-income people.

Mission
Equal civil justice for low-income people.

Who We Are
The Legal Foundation of Washington is a nonprofit organization created in 1984 at the direction of the Washington Supreme Court to distribute IOLTA funds to legal aid organizations across the state. LFW has more than 35 years of experience raising, managing, and distributing funds to achieve equal civil justice for low-income people.

We envision a society where poverty and race are not impediments, and seek to ensure access to civil legal aid for all people in Washington and to improve equity in the civil justice system. Our work contributes to breaking cycles of poverty and ensuring equal opportunity.

We serve tens of thousands of low-income people each year by investing in civil legal aid organizations across Washington. We bring expertise about our state civil legal aid system to ensure thoughtful grantmaking. We receive support from public and private partners who are committed to equal justice and system reform. We responsibly steward and strategically distribute these funds throughout the state.

Since 1984, LFW has distributed more than $200 million to Washington’s legal aid community.

Our Commitment to Anti-Racism
Black Lives Matter. LFW believes that creating equal justice requires undoing systemic racial oppression, and we strongly support the national movement to end violence against Black people and dismantle racist systems. As the Justices of the Washington State Supreme Court wrote, “the legal community must recognize that we all bear responsibility for this ongoing injustice, and that we are capable of taking steps to address it, if only we have the courage and the will.”

We are committed to becoming an anti-racist organization and strive to reflect racial justice and inclusion in all of our grantmaking because of the historical impact of racism and the disparate outcomes it creates for communities of color, particularly in the justice system. We also recognize that other forms of oppression – such as sexism, classism, and ableism – threaten our nation’s promise of justice for all, and we are committed to understanding and addressing how all oppression affects the ability of low-income Washingtonians to access justice.

LFW is a proud partner in the Alliance for Equal Justice, a network of Washington State organizations that collaborate to coordinate strategy and the delivery of civil legal aid to people and communities experiencing poverty and injustice. We are committed to dismantling the barriers that deny justice and perpetuate racial inequities.