This week: attorney licensing fee increases to bolster Minnesota public defense and civil legal services programs; New York’s pilot program to provide counsel to homeowners facing foreclosure; jail time for a former Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services employee who embezzled $188K; a North Carolina law professor minces no words in criticizing those on Capitol Hill who would do away with LSC; the funding woes plaguing the Massachusetts legal services community; in Texas, legislative proposals to channel funding to legal services; more Minnesota – this explains why funds are needed to prop up legal services providers; a couple of law student group fundraisers, including the “Spartan War Helmet” mustache(?); the Pro Bono Institute puts the lie to the notion that pro bono contributions could make up for a poorly funded legal services infrastructure; the Nat’l. Law Journal looks at law school employment bridge programs for recent grads; and, “Law Schools Revamp Their Curricula to Teach Practical Skills.”

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• 3.3.11 – the Minnesota Lawyer reports that the North Star State’s high court has extended two fees on attorney licensing renewals in order to bolster funding for both indigent defense and civil legal services.  “The Minnesota Supreme Court has extended a $75 increase to the lawyer registration fee to help fund the state’s public defense system and made a $25 increase for legal services permanent.  The increases were sought by the Minnesota Board of Public Defense and the Legal Services Advisory Committee.”  (See below for coverage of the Minnesota legal services community’s funding troubles.)

• 3.2.11 – the New York Law Journal covers the launch of pilot program that will provide representation to homeowners who are facing foreclosure proceedings.  The program is launching in Orange and Queens Counties, where the need is high.  “Both counties have been hardpressed by the surge in foreclosures. Filings in Orange County have grown more than five times since 2005, while they have more than doubled in Queens.”  For more coverage, Lo-Hud.com (referring to the Lower Hudson Valley) also featured a story about this new initiative.  “In the next few weeks, Legal Services of the Hudson Valley and the Legal Aid Society in New York City will assign lawyers to foreclosure cases in Orange County and in Queens, respectively. Queens was chosen because it has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the state, and Orange County was selected as a typical New York suburb.”

• 3.2.11 – we don’t know whether to characterize this as bad or good news. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Cheri A. Logue faces 22 months in prison for embezzling around $188,000 from the Southwestern Pennsylvania Legal Services Corp., under a sentence handed down Monday [in federal court] … Logue…took the money by way of 467 transactions over seven years – writing checks, making withdrawals from accounts, steering agency funds to cover her bills, and wrongly using the company credit card.”  Logue said that a gambling addiction fueled her behavior.

• 2.28.11 – Professor Gene Nichol, of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity, minces no words in criticizing North Carolina congresspersons who voted to eliminate federal funding for the Legal Services Corporation.  Writing an op-ed in the News Observer, Nichol notes that “Every Republican member of the North Carolina delegation, except Virginia Foxx, voted to end legal services. For Howard Coble, Renee Ellmers, Walter Jones, Patrick McHenry and Sue Myrick, no aid to the one-third of North Carolina families qualifying for legal services was more than enough … Let me try to put those votes into perspective … Poor and near poor Americans are effectively priced out of the civil justice system. As studies have demonstrated for decades, in North Carolina and nationally, we leave millions unrepresented on some of the most crushing issues of life – domestic violence, child custody, housing, employment, education, health care, sustenance, vital benefits and the like.”  Nichol highlights the fact that, in comparison with the legal systems of other developed democracies, the U.S. has measured poorly in providing meaningful access to justice for all its citizens, in spite of the many platitudes suggesting that America’s civil justice system is exemplary.

• 2.28.11 – Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Massachusetts’ board president, Gayle Flanders Weiss, highlights the “devastating” funding shortfalls confronting LACCM and other providers in the Bay State.  Writing in the Worcester Business Journal, Weiss notes that, “[LACCM] has suffered  crushing funding cuts, losing more than 30 percent of its revenue over the last two years. LACCM’s clients — laid-off workers denied unemployment benefits, lead-poisoned children in need of decent housing, victims of domestic violence — all rely upon LACCM to help them with their most basic needs, and all stand to lose when LACCM is unable to provide services because of its funding cutbacks.”  The piece closes with a call to tell state legislators to adequately fund the Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation (MLAC), a statewide agency which administers and distributes funding to legal services providers.

• 2.28.11 – the Houston Business Journal brings some news about state legislative proposals to prop up flagging legal services funding in Texas: “The Texas Legislature will consider bills soon that would help fund civil representation for poor Texans through fees. Preliminary state budget estimates reflect a reduction of 51 percent in funds for such legal aid, a decline of more than $23 million … Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, filed Senate Bill 726, the Judicial Access and Improvement Fund legislation, on Feb. 15. The bill relates to the establishment of a judicial access and improvement account to provide funding for basic civil legal services, indigent defense and judicial technical support through certain county service fees and court costs imposed to fund the account.  On Feb. 16, Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, filed House Bill 1392, which would impose a fee on the transfer of property following a foreclosure sale to fund civil legal services for indigents.  A proposal to mandate funds generated by consumer protection suits will also be proposed, according to statements made by the Texas Access to Justice Commission and the Texas Access to Justice Foundation.”

• 2.28.11 – MinnPost.com takes an in-depth look at the funding woes confronting the Minnesota legal services community.  The reporting is good; the news is bad.  IOLTA revenues plummeted by 85% between 2007 and 2010.  Even worse, the fund will exhaust its reserves in the next year.  Stakeholders in the legal services community are scrambling to prop up other existing funding mechanisms or to find new ones.  But it doesn’t look like providers will see an appropriations increase from the state government, and other solutions are limited at best.

• 2.28.11 – the Yale Daily News reports on fundraising efforts to support public interest funding.  The Public Interest Auction is at the core of the fundraising initiative: “Around 250 members of the Law School community attended the auction, which raised nearly $44,000 for the Law School’s public interest fellowships for recent graduates and graduating third year students.”  And although less lucrative than the auction, the mustache competition – a fundraising event which the PSLawNet Blog finds troubling and noble at the same time – brought in some welcome revenue: “Though it was not part of the auction, the Mustaches for Public Interest Competition garnered $750. Male and female law students raised money based on the impressiveness of mustaches they grew over the past few weeks.”  (The mustache competition winner was something known as the “Spartan War Helmet.”  Good stuff!)

• 2.28.11 – in the National Law Journal, Pro Bono Institute president Esther Lardent argues that cutting LSC funding would be unwise – not only because it would lead to constrictions among LSC grantees at a time of increased client need, but also because it will lead to diminished pro bono work.  “The reality is that effective pro bono service by attorneys in private practice is possible only if these attorneys can rely upon the expertise and consistent community presence of LSC programs. Pro bono is not a panacea. All too often, pro bono is not available or appropriate for a wide range of matters. Conflicts of interest, for example, have severely limited volunteer service in foreclosure matters and are often endemic in smaller cities and rural areas. And pro bono resources are difficult to secure in emergency matters. Without a strong core of full-time advocates, pro bono simply does not work … Our legal pro bono efforts are the envy of the rest of the world. Congress needs to understand that cutting funding for legal services will stop the flow of valuable and free private assistance. This proposed funding cut not only threatens the very core of access to justice; it is economically unwise.”

• 2.28.11 – A National Law Journal article explores the phenomenon of law school employment bridge programs which have sprung up in the recession’s wake as a way to help unemployed grads build skills and get jobs.  The piece looks at SMU Law’s “Test Drive” program, “in which “the school pays employers $3,500 to take in recent graduates for one or two months. Advocates said the program is an innovative way to help graduates get a foot in the employment door amid an exceptionally tight job market. Skeptics dismissed it as an attempt to game the U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings by inflating job-placement data.”  Also covered are Duke’s “Bridge to Practice” program, which pays a stipend to the graduates as opposed to forwarding funds to employers, and the University of Miami’s “Legal Corps” program, which differs from SMU’s and Duke’s in that it sends graduates into public interest placements only.

• 2.27.11 – the Chronicle of Higher Education, in a (password-protected) piece entitled “Law Schools Revamp Their Curricula to Teach Practical Skills,” notes a small movement toward integrating more experiential learning opportunities into legal education: “Nationwide, law schools are integrating more clinical experiences and practical-skills training into their curricula in response to complaints that their graduates lack real-world experience. But few have gone as far as Washington and Lee, which has jettisoned the entire third year and rebuilt it from scratch … The change reflects a practice-based trend that has assumed greater urgency with the escalating costs of legal education and diminished job prospects for graduates.  The changes are also in response to criticisms from a number of national foundations and associations regarding the strictly theoretical approach many law schools have long taken to preparing students for legal careers.”  Highlighting curriculum changes at Washington & Lee, as well as Cal Western, Harvard, Stanford and Touro – the degree of change varies widely from school to school – the piece also reviews the chorus of calls for change, coming from the Carnegie Foundation, the ABA, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), and many legal employers.