Photo by Kathy Anderson.

John C. Jopling, managing attorney of the Mississippi Center for Justice’s Gulf Coast office, and his staff attorneys have seen a staggering influx of moderate-income prospective clients in the wake of the spill. Spearheaded by Martha Bergmark, the center’s president and CEO, the Gulf Justice Consortium is a 16-lawyer, multistate collaboration among Gulf Coast legal aid organizations to assist oil claimants. “There is a microcosm along the coast of the worst possible experiences for folks well up the economic ladder—or who used to be, and may now be the new poor,” Bergmark says. “They are people who never expected to experience this kind of inability to deal with legal problems that are very serious.”