PSJD Public Interest News Digest – January 26, 2018
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! Read on for two weeks worth of news, as I missed delivering the digest last week due to an illness. The most consequential story this week is out of Canada, where the Canadian Intern Association questioned the legality of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s internship program. Additional highlights include class action status for the ACLU’s indigent defense funding lawsuit in Idaho and a new report from Brookings with even more dire predictions about potential student loan default rates.
Until next week,
Sam
Disaster Legal Aid
Student Loans
- The Brookings Institute, using newly-available data, issued a report predicting that in the near future the default rate on student loans may rise more sharply than previously anticipated, predicting “nearly 40 percent may default on their student loans by 2023.“
- Washington State’s Attorney General reintroduced a bill establishing a “student loan advocate” to “field complaints from loan borrowers, help them understand their loans and compile data on loans.“
- Prof. Jeffery Dorfman of the University of Georgia advocated in Forbes for Congress to adopt “automatic income-based payroll deduction programs for student loans” modeled on programs in Australia and Great Britain. The professor cites other experts to argue that this idea would “allow borrowers to cover basic living expenses first, remove an enormous amount of bureaucracy, and increase collections.”
Legal Technology
- The Legal Services Corporation held its “Innovations in Technology Conference” in New Orleans, LA. Interested readers can catch up on many of the conference presentations on the LSC’s Facebook feed.
- BYU Law’s legal design lab launched its first application: a tool designed to address Utah’s “debt collection epidemic.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- In Canada, the Canadian Intern Association warned the Canadian Civil Liberties Association that its summer internship program “likely” violates Ontario law.
- In Canada, the Supreme Court issued a decision expanding the scope of “public interest standing”–a development that may give advocacy groups increased access to administrative tribunals.
- In Ontario, Lakehead University’s student legal clinic expanded its services from the city of Thunder Bay into the surrounding district.
- In Ontario, the Law Society of Ontario’s board of directors voted unanimously to deepen its relationship with Legal Aid Ontario and to “champion the need for robust legal aid.“
- In Hawaii, the Legal Aid Society of Hawai’i will receive $300,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to assist victims of housing discrimination.
- In Virginia, the Virginia Law Foundation launched a free online portal for attorneys providing poverty law training and resources to help them prepare to assist in pro bono cases.
- In New York City, CityLimits.org wrote a lengthy profile of early reactions to Mayor DeBlasio’s Right to Counsel initiative in housing cases.
- In Delaware, the Combined Campaign for Justice and the Delaware Community Foundation created a new legal aid fellowship in honor of recently-retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Randy Holland. Holland Fellows will serve at one of Delaware’s three legal aid organizations for two years at a time.
- In St. Louis, Missouri, ArchCity Defenders announced a plan to expand its operations under a new Executive Director.
- In Kentucky, legal aid directors spoke out against the Governor of Kentucky’s proposal to eliminate all Access to Justice civil legal aid funding in the state’s 2018 budget.
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Idaho, a court granted an ACLU lawsuit concerning public defender funding class action status.
- In Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton recommended a public defender to fill a judicial opening in Minnesota’s 3rd Judicial District.
- In Yolo County, CA, a long-serving public defender announced his candidacy for District Attorney, “outlining a platform tackling overprosecution, racial inequity in the court’s and Yolo County’s high jury trial and incarceration rates.“
- In Wisconsin, private attorneys lobbied the state Supreme Court to increase the pay rate for indigent defense contract work; the current pay rate is the lowest in the country.
- In response to a report he commissioned from the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School, Manhattan’s District Attorney announced “he will no longer accept campaign contributions from lawyers with business before his office, including those representing people being investigated or prosecuted.“
- In Wyoming, the state’s top public defender warned the state legislature that if it does not fund additional staff, “her attorneys are going to have to start refusing cases.“
- In New Mexico, the Albuquerque Journal interviewed a legendary public defender to create a history of indigent defense in Lincoln County tying growing caseloads and lengthening pre-trial detention to the fact that “legislators over the years have criminalized more and more behavior and added increased penalties to some crimes.” Meanwhile, Lincoln county’s District Attorney claims “public defenders in the region…are fabricating the crisis to get more funding.“