Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! It’s been an eventful week. Many folks have worked to make sense of the many changes wrought last week in Congress’ omnibus bill. A judge in Georgia explained how important law schools are to the access-to-justice ecosystem while mourning the loss of Savannah Law School. And, of course, a tidbit I’ve created a special highlight for immediately below.

Until next week,
Sam

Highlight: Character & Fitness

• The Practice published a conversation exploring potential reforms to the way our profession attempts to ensure ethical conduct through its character & fitness requirements. As with intimated changes to federal hiring & firing (see below), these kinds of ideas would have a profound effect on who attempts to become a lawyer and how attorneys’ work is reviewed. Here’s a representative snippet:
  

  “The more I study this, the more the whole process feels arbitrary, often because the people who make the decisions at the bar associations are people who don’t have experience with the criminal justice system. They don’t understand things like reentry, rehabilitation, and all of the collateral consequences of coming out of prison. And they don’t understand addiction issues either.
  …
  [I]f the goal of character and fitness is to weed out lawyers without integrity, it is not working…[A]s a profession, I think that we should spend a lot less time worrying about character and fitness at entry and more time and more resources monitoring the conduct and behavior of practicing lawyers. I realize that it’s much easier to just keep people out at the front end and not have to deal with issues once somebody becomes a lawyer, but that system is not working.”

Federal Hiring

• The Hill published an opinion piece that picks up where this year’s State of the Union Address left off, arguing “Civil servants can undermine the president too easily.” I’ll be watching the development of arguments like this one, because if these voices are successful they may transform the way professional development happens in federal government.
• On a possibly related note, “[t]op law schools in the nation’s capital say they are seeking an uptick in students’ interest in careers outside of government and public interest.”
• The Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a regulation that would allow the IRS to hire outside specialists under certain circumstances, with a specific prohibition against doing so in situations involving summoned information or testimony under oath.

Student Loans

• Financial Regulation News discussed the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Technical Corrections Act, signed into law as part of last week’s omnibus spending bill. The bill aims to ensure that borrowers who should have been enrolled in the PSLF program but were not will be able to receive benefits. The New York Times provided additional background on the change.
• In Massachusetts, state officials spoke out against the Trump administration’s recent declaration that states cannot regulate student loan services. (Chronicled in a recent edition of the digest.)
• A group of Harvard Law students and alumni published an open letter to Havard Law’s Dean proposing five changes to the school’s Low Income Protection Plan “in order to ’empower HLS graduates of all backgrounds to pursue the careers of their choosing.'”

Immigration

• In New Jersey, Governor Murphy’s proposed budget includes a $2.1 million appropriation for immigrants facing deportation.
• In Iowa, “Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque is expanding its immigration legal services as the need for those resources continues to increase.”
• In Ohio, the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation argued that “Ohio’s philanthropic community must fully commit to investing in language, legal and health-care services to launch our newest Ohioans to success…Fewer than 35 attorneys statewide are available to assist Ohio’s immigrants regardless of their legal status or ability to pay.”

Legal Technology

• In Canada, the Law News Times reported that the Federal Privacy Commissioner “is working on developing new guidance on how companies should ask Canadians for meaningful consent [to collect, use, and disclose their personal information].”
• In Montreal, QC, Pro Bono Quebec launched the new version of its boussolejuridique.ca platform: http://boussolejuridique.ca/
• The Atlantic proposed questions for Congress to ask Mark Zuckerberg, solicited from a variety of scholars–including law professors. (Editor’s note: In addition to its effect on modern politics, Facebook’s technology platform provides the foundation for certain legal services tools, making issues surrounding privacy and Facebook relevant to our legal technology discussion. See, e.g. DoNotPay.)

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, CBC reported that “a growing number of Canadians are representing themselves in court.”
• In a statement, the ABA President commended Congress for increasing appropriations for the LSC by $25 million, while noting that more funding is still needed.
• In Indiana, Indiana Legal Services also welcomed the news of the expanded LSC budget.
• Nonprofit Quarterly analyzed the ways in which the recent two-year budget agreement, which provided an “unexpected funding boost” for nonprofits, will affect the operations of civil society organizations.
• In Kentucky, the state senate voted to eliminate funding for civil legal aid. Negotiations are ongoing. If senators are successful, Kentucky will become the third state without civil legal aid funding (alongside Delaware and Idaho).

Access to Justice – Criminal

• The 6th Circuit issued its en banc opinion in Turner v. U.S., finding no 6th amendment right to counsel prior to criminal indictment. The Volokh Conspiracy analyzed the ruling.
• In Savannah, GA, the Chief Judge for Chatham County State Court mourned the loss of Savannah Law School:
  

  “Over the last seven years, students have given 1000s of hours of unpaid labor to our courts, the Public Defenders office, the District Attorneys’ Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Federal Courthouse and in other practices across the low country. If you calculated those hours in terms of salaries (conservatively for a $12 per hour wage), it is safe to say the Law School as provided more than $1,000,000 worth of labor to the local community.”

• In Philadelphia, PA, the Chief Public Defender “is accusing the city’s court system of systematically depriving thousands of people of their due process rights by locking them up for probation violations without proper hearings.”
• In Galveston, TX, a lawyer brought suit against a local judge alleging the judge improperly removed him from cases because “he sought to provide a vigorous legal and factual defense for his clients.” As the New York Times puts it, the case aims to call attention to “[a] potential problem: Indigent defense lawyers often get their assignments from judges in whose courtroom they appear. This discourages a robust defense, experts say, and leads to an emphasis on resolving cases quickly.”
• In El Paso County, TX, the Texas Indigent Defense Commission released a report commending county officials for their successful efforts to address a series of problems discovered by the commission’s 2014 audit.
• In Michigan, the Marquette County Board of Commissioners unanimously opposed Governor Snyder’s proposed adjustments to Michigan’s indigent defense budget for fiscal year 2019, “stating it would unfairly shift financial burdens from the state onto counties.”

Music Bonus!

Janelle Monae, “Django Jane” [clean]