This week: Strong demand for legal services in South Carolina; $350K from DOJ to law school for veterans clinic; 3 deferred law firm associates wrap up their public interest placements; in “brave people taking tough jobs” news, Missouri to get a new public defender; what will a Republican House do to the federal workforce?; loan assistance for U. of Tennessee public interest grads; foreclosure clinics in Kentucky; loan assistance for South Dakota prosecutors and defenders; the Wyoming Access to Justice Commission launches a new legal services program; a new DOJ program brings together law schools, firms, and public interest offices to combat domestic violence.

• 11.3.10 – just FYI South Carolina’s Greenville News is a running a subscription-only article entitled “Legal Services Faces Big Demand in Tough Times.”  We seem to have let our Greenville News subscription lapse, but if you’ve got one…

• 11.2.10 – from a press release we learn that the “Veterans Legal Support Center & Clinic (VLSC) at The John Marshall Law School recently was awarded a $350,000 grant from the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Justice Programs.”  We covered the announcement more extensively in this Wednesday blog post.  It’s truly heartening to see so many law schools creating and expanding programs to serve veterans.  We’ve covered some past instances of law schools/students working with vets; see the last item in our 10/8/10 News Bulletin for stories about work at the University of San Francisco, Arizona State, and Detroit Mercy.  And for good measure here’s an interview we did with Michael Taub, a staff attorney who runs a successful veterans assistance program at Philadelphia’s Homeless Advocacy Project.  Michael, a friend and former officemate of the PSLawNet Blog, is an outstanding attorney but has so-so taste in music.

• 11.1.10 – three Simpson Thacher associates ventured into the public interest wilderness and only two came back.  In 2009, reports the ABA Journal, the firm launched the Simpson Thacher Public Interest Fellowship Program, giving three incoming first-years an opportunity to forego firm practice for a year and work, with  a $60,000 stipend, for a year in public interest.  They went to the San Francisco Public Defender’s office, NYU’s Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, and the Rainforest Foundation, respectively.  All three had terrific experiences, citing opportunities to litigate and supervise a project team among the benefits.  Indeed, the latter of the three opted to take a full-time job with an outfit promoting micro-finance in developing countries.  For its part, Simpson Thacher has been gracious, recognizing that it helped at least one new lawyer begin a full-time public interest career.  And the firm has eight fellows participating in the 2010 Fellowship Program.  We at the PSLawNet Blog have wondered how many deferred associates would elect to remain in public interest when the time came to return to the firm.  We know the number can only be a small fraction of those deferred associates who took public interest placements, but it’s a fascinating, abrupt turn in a career path, and a strange byproduct of a recession that has caused such upheaval in the legal industry.  More importantly, we’re glad to learn that the two associates returning to Simpson Thacher are doing so with newfound appreciation for public interest.  We hope they are tomorrow’s pro bono advocates and nonprofit board members (read: fundraisers).

• 11.1.10 – for the next month the offices of the Utah Attorney General and the Salt Lake County District Attorney will be locked in fierce, no-holds-barred competition…to see which office collects the most food donations for the Utah Food Bank.  This is the third year in which the offices have participated in the friendly contest, and it’s the rubber match as each office has won once.  This reminds us of one of our favorite such charity contests: a blood drive competition between prosecutors and public defenders in Jacksonville, FL after which the loser must kiss a pig.  (For more on this see item 9 in our 2/26/10 News Bulletin.)

• 11.1.10 – according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Missouri Public Defender Commission has chosen the defender office’s current deputy to take over as director when the current director retires at the end of February, 2011.  Missouri has been in the center of a contentious national debate about inadequacies in state government funding of indigent defense programs.  For past coverage see the first three items in our 8/13/10 News Bulletin and accompanying links.

• 11.1.10 – a piece on the Government Executive website looks at how the federal workforce may be affected by the Republican takeover in the House.  “With Republicans regaining control of the House, federal employees and government contractors are facing significant policy shifts on issues such as pay, hiring, and agency oversight and management.  House Republicans this fall pledged to reduce government size, streamline spending and freeze hiring for all nonsecurity-related federal positions. Party lawmakers have introduced legislation that would furlough all federal civilian workers for up to two weeks in 2011, make those with outstanding tax debts ineligible for continued government employment, and cap the federal workforce through attrition, or by allowing agencies to hire only one employee for every two employees who leave.”

• 11.1.10 – from the Memphis Business Journal we learn that public interest minded law students at the Univ. of Tennessee will benefit from Baker Donelson’s largesse.  “Memphis’ largest law firm has committed $208,000 to a new program aimed at helping legal graduates pursuing public service careers.  [Baker Donelson] contributed the money to the University of Tennessee College of Law.  UT will establish a loan repayment assistance program for students and alumni pursuing careers in public service areas, including positions with public defenders, district attorneys, legal aid organizations, government agencies or nonprofit organizations.  The Baker Donelson Loan Repayment Assistance Program will provide loan forgiveness each year for one or two UT law students or alumni who are about to be employed or are already employed in public interest law.”  It’s not clear to us whether the funds will be used to flat out forgive the loans of a lucky few (i.e. pay the loans off outright), or to defray their monthly repayment costs for a period of time.  The article refers to both “loan forgiveness” and a “loan repayment assistance program.”  The latter term is typically used when it’s monthly payment assistance.  The reporter might have been a bit loose with the language, though.  It would be nice for the benefiting attorneys if it’s outright forgiveness.  If it is repayment assistance, though, we wonder if this new program will be set up to dovetail with the College Cost Reduction & Access Act’s Income Based Repayment (IBR) program.  A handful of schools, recognizing how beneficial IBR (and the related Public Service Loan Forgiveness provision) could be for grads on public interest career tracks, has reworked LRAPs so that they function in tandem with IBR.

• 10.31.10 – the Louisville Courier-Journal covers free foreclosure clinics put on by the Louisville Legal Aid Society.  “Louisville’s Legal Aid Society has been offering the free clinics for more than three years. In the beginning, they were held once a week and attracted about four or five participants, said Stewart Pope, advocacy director for Legal Aid Society. Then the mortgage market ‘kind of went bust’ and attendance numbers increased exponentially, said Pope. Now, the Legal Aid Society offers two clinics a week at its downtown office, attracting anywhere from 15 to 20 homeowners.”

• 10.31.10 – from an AP blurb on South Dakota’s KCAU TV station website, it looks like John R. Justice Act federal loan repayment funds are available to state/local prosecutors and public defenders in the Mt. Rushmore State.  “A program to help repay school loans is available for public defenders and prosecutors in South Dakota who agree to continue in those positions for at least three years … Applications will be taken through Dec. 31. The state has $100,000 available.”  The JRJ Act was passed in 2008 but funds were only appropriated a few weeks ago, according to the Blog of the Legal Times.  Essentially, JRJ funds are distributed from Uncle Sam to state governments, which in turn administer an LRAP program to make the funds available to qualifying prosecutors/defenders.  We’re pretty sure there’s no guarantee that JRJ is anything more than a one-shot deal, so those who are eligible should find out what’s going on in their state, get to the trough and start drinking.  To learn more about the JRJ Act and its benefits, check out Equal Justice Works’ resource page.  On a more trivial note, “John R. Justice” was an actual prosecutor, proving that life imitates Dickens.

• 10.29.10 – the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports on progress toward establishing a state-funded legal services program in the Cowboy State.  “The Wyoming Access to Justice Commission announc[ed] the formation of the Wyoming Center for Legal Aid.  During the 2010 budget session, the Legislature passed the Indigent Civil Legal Services Act, No. 58, specifying that the Wyoming Supreme Court establish and oversee a program to provide legal services for Wyomingites who couldn’t afford it otherwise.  As part of the act, an additional $10 fee is added to each filing in civil and criminal court. That money is reserved for a separate indigent legal services fund, expected to net $1 million to $1.5 million annually.”  In terms of client income-eligibility, the Center for Legal Aid will represent clients with income up to 200% of poverty guidelines.  Legal Aid of Wyoming already serves Wyomingites with incomes up to 125% of the guidelines, but it is able to meet only a fraction of the demand for its services.  Here’s some context from a Casper Star-Tribune article last April.  It’s good to see progress on the state level to bolster legal services in Wyoming.  A couple of years ago LSC had yanked federal funding from a Wyoming program.  (It looks to us as though Legal Aid of Wyoming is now receiving LSC funds, but in any case action on the state level was necessary, and this is welcome news.)

• 10.28.10 – the National Law Journal reports on a new DOJ program which marries law firms up with law school clinics and public interest law offices to fight domestic violence.   “The idea behind the Access [to] Justice for Domestic Violence Victims program is for law firms to hire recent law school graduates who have participated in a domestic violence clinic, then subsidize their full-time work at a legal aid organization for a certain period of time…”  The program has been launched in two sites, Louisiana and Baltimore, with law clinics from Tulane and the University of Baltimore, respectively, participating.