If you are a law student or practicing attorney considering a federal clerkship or working as a staff attorney in the federal appellate courts you should get to know OSCAR.  No not that adorable grouch from Sesame Street, but the federal Judiciary’s online system for clerkship application and review.

Who is using OSCAR?

OSCAR has recently celebrated its sixth birthday and in 2010 was used by 1,501 federal judges (= 2/3 of all federal judges) to handle their clerkship application process.  The system allows judges to post open positions and choose to accept applications online or paper applications.  By 2010, 82% of judges were accepting online applications.

In 2010, 50% of the applicants were 3Ls and 50% were law school alumni.  This was a slight deviation from 2009, when 52% of the 10,722 applicants were alumni.

Another change in 2010 was the system’s expansion to allow staff attorney office’s in the federal appellate courts to post open positions.

The staff attorney module was introduced last May, and 10 positions were posted between that month and the end of September. The positions posted by staff attorney offices accepting online applications attracted 2,598 applications.

What does the future hold for OSCAR?

The OSCAR Working Group has “endorsed a proposal to add a module for pro se, death penalty, and bankruptcy appellate panel law clerk hiring.”

Learn more about how to utilize OSCAR to apply for federal clerkships and appellate staff attorney positions.

The National Law Journal just ran a well reported but very sobering (at best) piece about the funding woes confronting civil legal services programs throughout the nation.  This passage aptly sums up the circumstances:

Law firms may be benefiting from the slow economic recovery, but legal aid groups face the most dire circumstances in decades. The problem is a perfect storm of IOLTA funding declines, cuts in state and local funding, uncertain federal support and a tight private fundraising environment. The situation is exacerbated by steep increases in demand for free legal services as millions of low-income Americans face long-term unemployment, foreclosure and other serious problems.

The article offers a detailed, data-driven review of the funding cuts plaguing the nation’s legal services programs, and is well worth reading.  Very troubling for us are the numbers concerning staff constrictions and layoffs: 

• Texas RioGrande Legal Aid “stopped filling open lawyer positions in 2010 to prepare for cuts and may close offices, institute layoffs and roll back its caseload in 2011…”
• The Legal Aid Society in NYC “eliminated 30 staff positions in its civil division” and “can help only one of every nine people who ask for assistance.”
• Legal Services of New Jersey, an umbrella for Garden State legal services programs, was forced to “eliminate about 200 of its 700 positions since 2007, and President Melville Miller Jr. anticipates cutting another 50 to 70 jobs in 2011 if more money can’t be found.”
• New Mexico Legal Aid’s “employees agreed to a six-day furlough in 2010 to save money, but it may need to close one office and lay off four or five workers in 2012.” 

This is in keeping with what we’ve heard from other legal services executive directors, who have been struggling to make budgetary ends meet without cutting staff.  This situation is distressing for at least two reasons.  First, we know that many law students and recent grads have invested time, effort, and money in preparation for serving clients on society’s margins.  And while so many would-be advocates around the country want nothing more than the opportunity to serve as legal services lawyers, the opportunities to do so are increasingly few and far between.  Second, and more importantly, fewer lawyers means fewer clients served.  As noted in the NLJ piece, demand for services from the swollen numbers of low-income clients has skyrocketed in the recession’s wake.  It’s alarming, and positively disheartening, that the legal services community has been so hobbled by funding cuts at a time when it is needed to protect and assert the rights of so many vulnerable people and families.

From an email circulated today: 

James J. Sandman, a former longtime Managing Partner at the law firm of Arnold & Porter LLP and the current General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer for the District of Columbia Public Schools, has been selected as the next President of the Legal Services Corporation, Board Chairman John G. Levi announced today.

Here’s the full announcement from the LSC website.  The PSLawNet Blog has had the good fortune to work with folks at Arnold & Porter, Mr. Sandman’s old firm, on a number of pro bono/public interest-related  projects.  From this, we know that Mr. Sandman’s reputation as an advocate for public interest law and for promoting access to justice could not be stronger.

And here’s a little more coverage from the Blog of the Legal Times.

Happy New Year!  The PSLawNet Jobs Report is back after the holidays and ready to share updates on new job opportunities and career advice.

Need a job or internship? During the  last week PSLawNet has posted:   29 new attorney positions,   20 new internships, and  9 new law related opportunities.  Additionally, there are currently 1,015 active opportunities in our job database.  To search the database visit PSLawNet. 

Featured New Positions:

The American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) is seeking an experienced professional for the role of Legal Advisor in ABA ROLI’s response to a USAID Request for Applications. The Legal Advisor will be responsible for advising Liberian justice sector institutions and officials, professional judicial and attorney associations, civil society partner organizations, legislators, government officials, and international domestic NGOs on the Liberian criminal justice system, pre-trail practices and procedures and Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure.  Deadline to Apply:  January 18, 2011.  Visit PSLawNet for full details.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (NIRP) is seeking summer interns for their Tacoma office.  The NIRP provides legal services to immigrant detainees at the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC), which holds up to 1500 detainees, 90% of whom are unrepresented.  Both the Tacoma office and the NWDC are a 35-minute commute from downtown Seattle.  Summer interns will directly represent detainees under the supervision of the attorneys in removal proceedings.   This includes appearing in immigration court hearings, preparing clients for court, preparing witnesses, drafting a number of legal briefs and making oral arguments in court.  In addition to their direct caseload, intern responsibilities include:  conducting “Know Your Rights” presentations at the NWDC to groups of detainees; conducting intakes with individual detainees; conducting workshops to assist detainees with applying for relief; identifying legal issues and potential forms of relief for detainees; drafting pro se briefs for detainees; and performing a variety of administrative tasks.  Deadline to Apply:  February 28, 2011.  Check PSLawNet for additional details and application instructions.

Featured Public Service Career Resource:

Looking for attorney positions with the federal government? As we shared last Friday in the Public Interest News Bulletin, a federal jobs expert shared some job-seeking wisdom in the Washington Post:

In each budget justification submitted to Congress, you get to see what an agency says it needs, as well any additional hiring requests to carry out its work … For the Justice Department to strengthen national security and counter the threat of terrorism the 2011 budget requests $300.6 million. The request includes 440 additional positions, including 126 agents and 15 attorneys. To enforce immigration laws the department is requesting an $11 million program increase, including 125 positions – 31 of them attorneys.  You can read an agency’s budget proposal on its Web site.

Learn more about getting a PSLawNet job seeker or employer account . . .

Some folks think it’s nearly impossible for a public defender to transition to prosecuting crimes, or vice versa.  For some attorneys, that may be the case, due to ideological or other motivations.  But many attorneys do bounce between public defense and prosecution jobs. 

Here, from the California-based Daily Triplicate (great newspaper name!) is the particularly compelling story of Jon Alexander, who’s being sworn in as Del Norte County’s top prosecutor today.  He just left his job as a public defender to become the boss on the other side of the courtroom.

Criticisms of Alexander for being a public defender pursuing a prosecutor’s position frustrated him, he said.

“It bothered me that certain people decried it,” said Alexander. “It was an honor to be a defense attorney and represent the county’s indigent.”

He referenced John Adams defending British soldiers and then going to war against them later because he believed in the right of being innocent until proven guilty.

“If you take that oath and adhere to it, then justice gets served no matter what side you’re on,” said Alexander.

It could be Alexander’s past personal experiences that allow him to move comfortably between the two positions.  He’s a recovering drug addict, and it was the intervention of a judge several years ago which allowed him to turn his life around.  Now, Alexander’s promising to be tough as nails on dealers, but says that users who wish to change their lives for the better will be given opportunities.  We suppose that Alexander knows exactly how much a person can make of an opportunity like that.