By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers, and greetings from the nation’s capital, where the First Lady is out and about with the regular people and those wiseacre rascals at the Onion have drawn the attention of Johnny Law.

This week in the public interest world: a Rainbow State legal services program merges with Appleseed; Cleveland Legal Aid Society gets a $ boost to help with an office move; the importance of maintaining government legal services funding here in DC; MLAB hits the century mark, and there’s no shortage of work; news about the new USAJobs site; training bilingual law students in proper legal translating/interpretation (great idea!); checking in with the Legal Services Corp.’s prez; AtJ in the Cornhusker State; a long-cherished UAW legal services programs is going the way of many other union benefits. 

• 9.28.11 – from a press release published in the Hawaii Reporter, we learn that a legal services program is merging into the national Appleseed network: “The Board of Directors of Lawyers for Equal Justice (LEJ) is proud to announce that LEJ is joining with 16 other public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico affiliated with the Appleseed organization.  LEJ’s new name is the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.” 

• 9.28.11 – the Morning Journal reports on some good news for our friends at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.  Law firm largesse recently helped LAS relocate its Lorain County office.  Wickens, Herzer, Panza, Cook & Batista donated $40,000 to LAS to assist with the move and office operations.  (Name-partner Richard Panza is an LAS board member.)

• 9.27.11 – right here in the District, UDC Law Professor Matthew Fraidin makes the case for local government funding of legal services.  Writing in the Huffington Post, Fraidin highlights a recent death of a woman who had sought, pro se, a protection order against the alleged killer.  Fraidin uses this tragedy to illustrate the invaluable role that public interest lawyers play in guiding DV victims through a highly complex legal system.  (He notes the benefits of representation for alleged DV perpetrators, as well.)  As DC’s local elected officials are forming the budget, Fraidin argues, they must appreciate the value and importance of funding legal services.”

• 9.26.11 – the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau turns 100. Birthday present: tons and tons of clients. A Baltimore Sun article highlights the uptick in cases: Legal Aid, which employs about 150 lawyers around the state, has seen its annual caseload grow from less than 42,000 five years ago to nearly 70,000 in the fiscal year that ended in June.  The challenges faced by clients reflect the times. Unemployment insurance cases are up 150 percent in the last four years. Consumer collection cases — default on debt, Social Security attachments and the like — are up 30 percent.”

• 9.26.11 – the new (and promised-to-be-improved) USAJobs website is set to launch officially on 10/13.  From the Government Executive website, some important details about the transition: “Agencies will have to close all open job announcements before Oct. 6, when the system will be made unavailable to all applicants. The downtime will allow agencies to move data to the new platform built by OPM and create a level playing field for job seekers and human resources staff. According to agency officials, the system could be back up and running as early as Oct. 11.”

• 9.26.11 – here’s one from the “good ideas” department.  The Jacksonville Daily Record reports that a group of bilingual Florida Coastal Law students participated in the “Interpreting and Translating in a Legal Setting” training.  “Led by Elizabeth Cuevas, the Clinical Student Representative for the Florida Coastal Immigration Clinic, students learned the differences between interpreting and translating and their roles in helping clients through the clinical program and from possible outside agencies.” While working in legal services I relied on law students and support staff for interpreting and translation help with non-English-speaking clients.  It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a trained interpreter and an untrained one, and working with someone who’s trained makes a huge difference.  

• 9.25.11 – the Washington Post checks in with Legal Services Corporation president Jim Sandman, who has taken the helm in stormy seas.  LSC faces congressional funding cuts and continued scrutiny of its grantee monitoring procedures. Sandman offers four of his goals moving forward:

• “Create an independent body to make fiscal operations more efficient;
• Focus on getting services to hard-to-reach communities;
• Prove legal aid is different [than other federally funded programs that are threatened with funding cuts.  In particular: providing citizens with equal access to justice is in keeping with our Constitution’s fundamental tenets.]
• Seek alternative revenue sources.”

• 9.25.11 – AtJ news from the Cornhusker State.  The Grand Island Independent – hey, I spent a night there in a roadside motel while driving cross-country in my beloved 1991 Honda Civic – reports on a widening justice gap.  “More Nebraskans than ever have the need for free legal aid, but the available funds and number of attorneys willing to take on a pro-bono case are limited, said a group of Nebraska Bar Association executive committee members who were traveling the state last week talking about the cause…. State bar president-elect Warren Whitted noted that “of 25,000 qualifying applications [for legal services], about 10,000 were able to be served [because of resource shortages]. Most of those cases involved domestic matters, landlord/ tenant disputes, and social security questions.”

• 9.24.11 – did you know that, for decades, free legal services were available to some GM autoworkers via their union contract?  Neither did I.  Does it surprise you that this benefit is going away as the UAW continues a fundamental restructuring of its relationship with American automakers?  Me neither.  The Detroit Free-Press reports that via a tentative labor deal, in 2014 a UAW-created legal aid program will come to an end: “The program, which operates separately from the UAW, employs about 200 attorneys and covers legal services, such as adopting a child, probate proceedings and real estate disputes.”  Similar programs for Ford and Chrysler workers could suffer the same fate.