The Legal Services Corp. is expected to announce Microsoft’s gift and introduce the new initiative at an event Tuesday at the White House, which will be livestreamed starting at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. The LSC will also announce the creation of a Leaders Council to raise awareness of the need for increased funding for civil legal services for the poor. The new group includes high-profile nonlawyers, including University of Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh and Viacom vice-chairman Shari Redstone, as well as prominent lawyers such as Eric Holder of Covington & Burling and Craig Martin of Jenner & Block.

Tuesday’s event is LSC’s fifth White House summit to publicize the crisis in civil legal aid funding. Currently, legal aid groups are forced to turn away more than half the people that ask for help nationwide. The federally funded LSC is the single largest source of money for legal aid providers across the country, but Congress hasn’t sufficiently funded it to keep up with inflation. The $385 million allocated by Congress for this fiscal year is less than half of what the group received in the 1970s, when adjusted for inflation.

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