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Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) was incorporated as a non-profit corporation in 1956 as The Legal Aid Society for the City and County of St. Louis. About twenty years prior to that incorporation, the City of St. Louis and The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis established a volunteer legal aid bureau. In 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) Act which provided funding for local legal services organizations. In 1974, the Legal Services Corporation was created to take over the function of providing funding to local legal services programs.
Funding was received from the Legal Services Corporation in the mid-seventies to expand our service area to include five additional counties in the St. Louis metropolitan area, and in 1977 our name was changed to Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. In 1993, we merged with the Legal Services of Northeast Missouri program in Hannibal, Missouri. This merger expanded our service area to another fourteen counties. LSEM has maintained a branch office in Hannibal since the time of the merger.
In 2001, LSEM opened an outreach office in Union, Missouri, in order to reach more clients in the counties of Franklin, Warren and Washington.
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