Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

This week, the 2013-14 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award winners have been guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring the grand prize winner and Emory University School of Law student Martin Bunt, a veterans’ rights advocate who co-founded the student-run Volunteer Clinic for Veterans.

Read Martin’s take on why veterans’ service organizations need to unite and work together below!

I recently went to a briefing in Atlanta on state and federal funding available for veterans and the organizations that benefit them with Sion New, the next student director of the Emory Law Volunteer Clinic for Veterans. Also present at the briefing were churches, summer camps, medical organizations, mental health organizations, veteran job training organization, veteran general support organizations, the American Red Cross.

This was not the first time I had attended a get-together of this type. To see the amount of organizations serving veterans is truly heartening. There are so many people who wish to serve veterans. However, what others and I realized at the meeting is that the amount of organizations serving veterans creates both an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity is the ability of organizations serving veterans to partner with each other to provide “whole package” services to veterans in need. The problem is how do organizations become aware of all the other organizations in their area that they should partner with to serve veterans?

Organizations that serve veterans and other organizations need to solve this problem. We cannot fully accomplish our goal of helping those we serve without working together.

Each service an organization provides is a piece of a puzzle. For example, the VCV provides legal services in the areas of discharge upgrades and VA benefits. But we only provide legal services.

The following hypothetical explains how this could fail to fully help a veteran who comes to us:

A veteran named Brad, for example purposes only, comes to our Clinic for help appealing a denied VA rating for PTSD. Brad believes that his PTSD is connected to his two tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. Since Brad was discharged he got married and has two kids. After service Brad realized that his temper flared easily and he often woke with nightmares of a battle where he lost three of his friends to mortar and RPG fire. Brad works at a job that underutilizes the skills he learned as a soldier and therefore he does not enjoy going to work. His temper and lack of sleep recently caused him to lose his job and has severely strained his marriage. From interviews with Brad, it is clear that he has struggled as a veteran to find a purpose and the structured lifestyle that the military gave him.

The VCV can advocate on Brad’s behalf and win a PTSD rating for him from the VA. But monthly disability checks will not help Brad get his life where he truly wants it. He needs a purpose, he needs counseling, and he needs help with his family. Just from the community of organizations I met this past week in Atlanta, Brad can get all the help he needs.

Purpose

A new organization in Atlanta, the Phoenix Patriot Foundation, individually tailors programs that get veterans involved in serving their community and learning new skills to provide these services. Brad will discover a niche in helping his community with a skill he already possesses or will learn. This service will in turn lead him down a path to a job that he truly enjoys.

Counseling

Multiple organizations present at the briefing provided individual PTSD counseling. These private organizations are effective and needed supplements to the VA’s efforts to provide PTSD counseling to veterans. Brad would receive individual counseling and mentoring on different methods to manage his tempers and sleep better at night.

Family

Camp Twin Lakes is a Georgia based organization that has a Wounded Warrior program that offers weekend getaways for veterans and their families at Camp Twin Lakes different camps around Georgia. During these getaways veterans and their families not only get a wonderful vacation but attend marriage and family counseling.

After Brad receives all of the services offered by these organizations he would truly be a different man: He would be receiving the VA benefits he has earned; he would have a new purpose by utilizing his skill sets to serve his local community and in turn discovering a new, more suitable career; He would learn to control his temper and sleep better at night; His marriage would be on a much better footing. Brad would find all the pieces to the puzzle of life falling into place.

This example demonstrates why service organizations must work together in a community to aid those they serve. I believe a great solution to service organizations discovering each other is to create a central website that lists all service organizations by targeted population and services offered. This does not yet exist in Atlanta, but I believe it will happen soon. Leaders of all service organizations have a duty to work together to help those that we serve receive the “whole package,” we are failing them if we do not.

Every year, we honor law student pro bono with the PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award. Any 2L or 3L who attends a PSJD subscriber school and has significant pro bono contributions to underserved populations, the public interest community and legal education is eligible for nomination.

Every day this week, the 2013-14 PSJD Pro Bono Publico Award winner and honorable mentions will be guest blogging about law student pro bono and their public interest commitments. Today, we’re featuring Merit Distinction honoree and University of California, Berkeley School of Law student  Ioana Tchoukleva, a prisoners’ rights advocate and creator of the student-run Post-Conviction Advocacy Project (PCAP). 

Read Ioana’s take on non-linear public interest career paths and how she balances her domestic and international legal work:

First year of law school, you are told that your 1L summer job matters — it will put you on the path to your dream job and somehow magically prepare you for the rest of law school. The following year, you are told that your 2L summer job basically determines where you will work after graduation, so you better choose carefully! In fact, throughout law school you feel a latent anxiety that underlies every move you make. For many, at the core of that anxiety lies a fear of not doing the right thing, of being behind in one way or another, of missing out on opportunities. This feeling of “not being good enough” runs deep and affects students in a variety of ways that reverberate way beyond law school.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brazilian Alliance – a non-profit organization providing legal, educational, and advocacy services to Portuguese-speaking communities in the San Francisco Bay Area – seeks legal interns for the Spring, Summer, and/or Fall. 

Brazilian Alliance wants to give their interns significant work responsibility. Interns will interview and perform legal tasks under attorney supervision, and draft written work products.

Brazilian Alliance’s mission is to provide Social Services to the Brazilians and Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) communities living in the Bay Area by building alliances with local, state, federal, and international community organizations.

To learn more, visit PSLawNet!

Prairie State Legal Services, Inc., a 65-lawyer legal services organization, serving 36 counties in northern and central ILLINOIS outside of Cook County,

is seeking applicants for a STAFF ATTORNEY position in our community legal services office located in BLOOMINGTON.  The successful applicant will participate in a full range of legal activities, including the preparation and
Prairie State Legal Services offers free legal services for low income persons and those over 60 who have serious civil legal problems and need legal help to solve them.conduct of administrative hearings and trials of cases for elderly and low-income persons.

Learn more at PSLawNet!

Neighborhood Legal Services Program (NLSP), a private, non-profit law firm that provides vigorous and high quality civil legal services to low-income residents of the District of Columbia, seeks a Staff Attorney to provide civil legal services to clients in its community-based law office.

NLSP has a long tradition of fighting for justice for the poor, combining direct representation to protect essential rights and opportunities for low-income individuals and families with efforts to achieve broad-based change. The successful applicant will be passionate about achieving justice and overcoming barriers facing low-income people, a creative and zealous lawyer and a team-player, committed to achieving lasting results for clients and low-income communities.

The Staff Attorney will be located in NLSP’s Far Northeast neighborhood office. The Staff Attorney will report to the Managing Attorney of NLSP’s Far Northeast and Southeast offices.

Interested? Learn how to apply at PSLawNet!

Founded in 1956, Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) provides high quality civil legal assistance to the poor, elderly, and people with disabilities in 23 northern California counties.  The Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act project addresses the enormous imbalance of representation in judicial evictions by providing representation to tenant litigants. LSNC will operate one of seven pilot projects funded through the Act.  Attorneys working with the Sacramento project will provide direct representation to defendants  in eviction proceedings in Sacramento County courts.

Under supervision of the Supervising Attorney, will participate in all aspects of litigation including, but not limited to: client interviews, factual investigation, legal research, discovery, preparation of legal documents, negotiations, trials, and appellate work in both State and Federal Courts; provide legal advice to individual clients, and general legal information to eligible community groups as well as to the public in general.

Interested? Find out how to apply at PSLawNet!

by Kristen Pavón

Yesterday, Gov. Rick Scott vetoed just over $142 million in line-items before signing Florida’s $70 billion budget. The budget makes deep cuts to higher education, Medicaid, other health care services, and legal services.

As a Floridian, I know how painful these cuts are and how much worse things will get in Florida as a result.

One veto in particular seems especially egregious — a $1.5 million veto for the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence. . . made during Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

The Legislature allotted the funds to the organization in order to support 30 rape crisis centers as they face impending reductions in collections, which currently is the bulk of their budgets.

The cut to the Florida Council was just one of the many health projects that Scott used his line-item veto power to eliminate from this year’s $70 billion budget. . . .

Scott has said publicly that he stands by his vetoes because he believes the programs he eliminated “weren’t a good use of taxpayers’ money and did not serve a statewide need.” He has also said he “gave each project equal and fair consideration.” (Read more here.)

Gov. Rick Scott’s veto also hit Florida’s already distressed legal services community hard.

A day after the governor vetoed $142 million from the budget, officials at an organization that provides legal help for low income Floridians said Scott’s decision will mean a 25 percent reduction in the number of attorneys available for legal assistance in the coming year. A year later, the number of available attorneys will drop even further. . . .

. . . [a] spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott, said there was not a clear justification for the size of the appropriation or the need for recurring funds. The spokeswoman, Jackie Schutz, also said the program has other funding sources on which it can rely during tough budget times.

“While the governor believes in the right for everyone to have representation, he doesn’t necessarily believe in funding programs with recurring funds in these economic times,” Schutz said. . . .

Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich, who also announced this week she is running for governor, said the veto was short-sighted and comes at a time when lower income Floridians are disproportionately feeling the brunt of economic woes – foreclosures, evictions, denial of government benefits. The cutting of legal aid at a time of rising need is especially painful.

“We pride ourselves in this country on people having access to the courts,” Rich said Wednesday. “This decision flies in the face of that commitment.”

Read the rest here.

I think I’ll turn to a classic saying to end this post, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

I’ll leave you with that. Thoughts?

The California Rural Legal Assistance, Salinas Basic office is seeking applicants to fill a Directing Attorney slot. This full-time position is available immediately and applicants will be considered until the slot is filled.

Reporting to the Executive Director and the Deputy Director, the CRLA Directing Attorney is responsible for the overall provision of legal services to the low income client community in the service area and the day to day operations of the local field office.  This includes supervising, training and motivating local office staff to provide the highest quality legal services in accordance with CRLA program guidelines, the ABA Standards for Providers of Civil Legal Services and the Code of Professional Responsibility. Spanish fluency is preferred.

California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA) is a statewide rural legal services organization with 16 field office located as far north as Marysville and as far south as El Centro. Its Central Office is located in San Francisco.

To learn how to apply, see the listing at PSLawNet!

The Homeless Persons Representation Project (HPRP) is seeking to hire a full-time law clerk for the summer to assist its public benefits and education attorney.

HPRP’s mission is to end homelessness in Maryland by providing free legal services, including advice, counsel, education, representation and advocacy, for low and no-income persons who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

HPRP is a non-profit organization that provides free legal services and advocacy to maximize our clients’ ability to gain and maintain stable income, healthcare, housing, education and employment. HPRP primarily works with clients located in Baltimore City when providing direct services. The direct representation provided by HPRP informs the organization’s policy work which deals with complex legal and systemic issues facing people struggling with homelessness in Baltimore City and around Maryland. Therefore, HPRP provides both direct legal representation and corresponding client and community education in order to foster and promote the public interest.

Learn more about this position and apply at PSLawNet!

The Legal Aid Society’s Parole Revocation Defense Unit has an opening for one or more Staff Attorneys. The position is based in our Manhattan location, with significant amounts of time spent at the Rikers Island Judicial Center. The PRDU Staff Attorney’s have significant client contact and represent clients at parole revocation hearings held at the Rikers Island Judicial Center, federal detention facilities, and hospital prison wards throughout New York City. The PRDU staff attorneys also appear on behalf of clients at related habeas corpus proceedings, administrative appeals, and other post-conviction proceedings. The practice is fast-paced and litigation intensive.

Key responsibilities include: handling all case appearances, motion practice, negotiations and hearings in parole cases; directing investigations; locating and interviewing witnesses; and identifying cases that are suitable for alternatives-to-incarceration intervention by the Unit’s social workers.

To apply, see the listing at PSLawNet!