This week, there are multiple stories highlighting reaction to a potential $70 million cut in LSC funding, which we covered in a blog post earlier this week.  Here’s what’s in the Bulletin:

• A loss of local funding here and a loss of local funding there could add up to a big subtraction for the Louisiana-based Capital Area Legal Services Corporation;
• Putting current threats to legal services funding in context: it’s bad, but it’s not new;
• KC gets in the Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) game;
• Legal Aid of East Tennessee labors against a spike in instances, and severity, of domestic violence;
• Pine Tree Legal Assistance makes the legal forest easier to navigate for veterans and their families;
• Show me a solution to the Missouri indigent defense crisis!  Or at least show me cautious optimism!;
• The American Bar Association won’t stand for LSC funding cuts;
• And neither will the Colorado Bar Association;
• A little bit of funding for a Tennessee MLP;
• Law & Order: Los Angeles, guest-starring volunteer prosecutors;
• Kudos for a foreclosure-right-to-counsel initiative in New York State;
• Profiling an incoming Skadden Fellow who will tackle juvenile justice issues in Detroit.

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• 2.24.11 – Louisiana’s Tri-Parish Times reports that “[l]ow-income individuals and families that have depended upon or might need legal assistance when dealing with civil matters in Louisiana could be left without representation as parishes cut back on their budgets in 2011.  Capital Area Legal Services Corp., which has been funded by contributions from 12 parishes, including Terrebonne and Lafourche, is faced with a loss of financial support that could range from $24,530 to $47,330 this year. In turn, the legal aid agency could soon be faced with cutting some of its services.”  CALSC is an LSC grantee, so while these parish funding cuts may not seem like very large amounts of money, every little bit will count as the federally funded programs stare down potential LSC budget cuts from Congress.  (More on LSC funding below…)

• 2.23.11 – in the Nonprofit Quarterly, Massachusetts Legal Assistance Corporation executive director Lonnie Powers authors a piece that looks at current threats to civil legal services funding in the context of the longer-term funding vicissitudes that the provider community has experienced.  Powers, who writes in his individual capacity and not on behalf of MLAC, notes that funding threats are traditionally either ideologically driven – in part by those who believe “…that low-income people do not deserve access to attorneys or in any event they do not deserve the same access as wealthy people” – or driven by the prevailing economic winds.  As to the latter, Powers highlights the dilemma that while “legal aid funding is tied to the economy [particularly regarding IOLTA funds] and therefore cycles with the economic health of the states and the nation, the demand for services is countercyclical.”  So, precisely at a time when providers are struggling to avoid layoffs and program constrictions, the numbers of eligible clients are swelling.  Powers also notes how severe an impact a current proposed LSC budget cut could have: “[T]he $70 million reduction in LSC funding voted by the House would, according to LSC, conservatively result in: a layoff of at least 370 staff attorneys in local programs, [and] closure of may rural offices…”

• 2.23.11 – a press release announces a new medical-legal partnership among Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City and Legal Aid of Western Missouri.  “Saint Luke’s Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) is modeled after similar programs that have succeeded in improving the health of indigent patients around the country since 1993. The partnerships integrate lawyers as a vital component of the health care team, to help patients deal with legal problems that directly or indirectly harm their health. The concept has earned the backing of groups such as the American Hospital Association, American Bar Association, American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics.”  The partnership “is based on a model known as I-HELP. I stands for income and insurance issues; H is for housing issues; E is for ensuring patient safety in domestic situations; L is for legal status; and P is for power of attorney and guardianship.”  As the PSLawNet Blog has noted before, there’s a lot of momentum these days in support of medical-legal partnerships.  There’s yet another story about MLP funding below…

• 2.23.11 – the work of Legal Aid of East Tennessee figures prominently in this Knoxville Metro Pulse story about a spike in local domestic violence.  Knoxville Police Department figures show that, between 2002 and 2009, reports of domestic violence grew by about 30%.  Along with more people reaching the breaking point, the violence is becoming more severe, says Dave Yoder, executive director of Legal Aid of East Tennessee, which closed 751 domestic violence cases from its Knoxville office last year. ‘Where we used to see more pushing and shoving and slapping, now we’re seeing more internal injuries,’ he says.”

• 2.22.11 – from Maine’s Portland Press Herald: “A website designed to be the nation’s leading resource for the legal needs and rights of military families,Statesidelegal.org, is up and running thanks to the work of Maine’s largest legal aid provider.  Portland-based Pine Tree Legal Assistance was the lead agency in the creation of the site … [which] serves as an online hub for legal information — including videos, self-help tools and other resources — specifically for military personnel, veterans and their families.”

• 2.22.11 – last week’s Public Interest Law News Bulletin contained a whole bunch of coverage of the indigent defense funding crisis in Missouri.  This week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board sounded a cautiously optimistic note about reform inching forward.  The editorial does a nice job summarizing the series of events that led to the current crisis, and notes that, in advance of an expected Missouri Supreme Court decision concerning a public defender’s refusal to accept new cases last summer, a retired state court judge has just issued a report shedding some light on where there are flaws in the state’s current protocol to handle swollen caseloads.  The piece closes with a statement supportive of the Show-me State defenders: “[T]he only reason the system might be inching toward reform is because public defenders put their professional responsibilities first — by saying “no” to an overload of new cases.”

• 2.22.11 – the ABA Journal on the ABA’s reaction to the House’s passage of a spending bill last weekend that would cut the Legal Services Corporation budget by $70 million: “ABA President Stephen N. Zack released a statement on Sunday opposing the budget reduction. “The promise of American justice and fairness cannot be an empty one,” Zack said. “But that’s what will happen if funding for legal help to poor and working class families is slashed as proposed. These cuts would hurt people in every region, from Kansas to Kentucky, Texas to Virginia, Ohio to Florida.  Earlier this month, the policymaking ABA House of Delegates voted to oppose any funding cuts to the LSC.”

• 2.21.11 – also stemming from the proposed LSC cuts, the Colorado Bar Association comes to the aid of LSC-funded Colorado Legal Services.  Colorado Law Week features a statement from the bar association, noting in part that “[t]he $70 million cut, which will have to be absorbed entirely in the next eight months, will have a devastating impact on all of LSC’s grantees, including Colorado Legal Services, our statewide legal aid program. More importantly, it would have a devastating impact on the low-income Coloradans who are served by Colorado Legal Services—LSC anticipates it will have to reduce its grants to 136 local legal aid nonprofit programs, including Colorado Legal Services, by an average of 18 percent.”

• 2.21.11 – and while we’re focusing on LSC grantee organizations, here’s a small but welcome bit of (good) funding news for the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands.  From the WREG TV station website: “Some families of low-income children who are sick, or fighting court battles for their children’s health, just got a little relief with a grant made to the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee.  The Baptist Healing Trust awarded $40,200 in grant money to continue its support of a partnership between Legal Aid and the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.”  As we’ve noted before, there’s a lot of momentum these days in support of medical-legal partnerships.

• 2.20.11 – volunteer lawyers prosecuting cases in LA.  From the Los Angeles Daily News: Faced with drastic budget cuts that have forced the early retirement of dozens of prosecutors, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office has turned to training law school graduates or entry-level attorneys who volunteer to try criminal cases for free…. The volunteers, all of whom have passed the bar, go through a month of training and then prosecute cases for five months. They have helped fill in a gap left by the loss of about 70 prosecutors who took early retirement packages after an 18 percent cut to the office’s budget in 2009 as the city struggled to make ends meet.”

• 2.20.11 – the Journal News’s editorial board (of New York’s Lower Hudson Valley) looks favorably upon state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s effort to level the legal playing field for those facing home foreclosures: “In his annual State of the Judiciary address last week, Lippman outlined a plan to make New York the first state in the nation to ensure that all homeowners facing foreclosure are represented by a lawyer — a leveling of the playing field long overdue. Any homeowner in foreclosure who doesn’t have counsel would be furnished one by Legal Aid or a similar group, which would be expected to staff foreclosure offices in courthouses  …  The assistance cannot come soon enough.  In 2010 alone, New York courts held more than 100,000 settlement conferences in foreclosure cases. In almost two-thirds of the cases…the homeowners appeared without a lawyer.”

• 2.19.11 – the Detroit Free Press published a swell profile of incoming Skadden Fellow Aisa Villarosa, who’s now a 3L at Wayne State and will be remaining in Motown to work on juvenile justice issues.  See our blog coverage of the Free Press piece and a note about the broadening of law-school pool from which Skadden draws its fellows.