This week’s Bulletin, cats and kittens, is shorter than normal.  But it’s packed with legal services funding news, including: how LSC $ cuts will affect New York programs; Equal Justice Works’s CEO David Stern talks public interest careers; a look at the fiscal challenges confronting Western Massachusetts Legal Services; coverage of the FY2011 federal budget agreement which pared down LSC funding by about 4%; a law school/legal services partnership provides pro bono services to those who serve in uniform; Wisconsin may cut all state funding for civil legal services. 

• 4.14.11 – a New York Law Journal piece looks at the impact the Legal Services Corporation funding cuts will have on Empire State legal services providers.  (Note: the LSC funding cuts are covered in item 4 below.)  From the NYLJ: “Even though a $15.8 million funding cut for the Legal Services Corp. included in a federal budget agreement is smaller than legal aid advocates had feared, the reduced funds will be acutely felt by New York groups already struggling with state funding cuts…. New York City-based Legal Services NYC will suffer the biggest cut in LSC funding, losing $701,411. That will probably mean having to let go of six or seven lawyers or paralegals, according to Raun J. Rasmussen, the chief of litigation and advocacy for the 220-lawyer group.”  The piece goes on to detail how cuts will affect other LSC grantees in New York.

• 4.12.11 – our friend David Stern of Equal Justice Works is profiled in the Washingtonian’s “Capitol Comment” blog.  David explains how his career path took him to Equal Justice Works’s helm, and offers a criticism of legal education’s emphasis on cold, analytical thinking: “Unfortunately, yes, law school strips [the desire to practice in public interest] away in many respects. It tries to teach lawyers to think in sterile, analytical ways without a lot of heart. There’s also a lot of competition in law schools for those coveted six-figure-salary jobs, and so people are malleable, they’re generally young, and all of these activities—the sterile thinking, the going after the coveted job, the very large educational debt—often strips away those public-service aspirations. Our job is to keep those embers burning.”  Bonus trivia: quite aside from being one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for the value of public interest work, David’s a pretty solid softball player.  Good glove, surprising power, and he can pitch.

• 4.12.11 – the Business Journal of Western Massachusetts looks at the fiscal challenges confronting Western Massachusetts Legal Services – “its current budget of $2.5 million is roughly half of what it was just a few years ago” – and the organization’s recent fundraising efforts.

• 4.12.11 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports on the federal budget compromise’s impact on Legal Services Corporation funding (which we also blogged about earlier this week).  From the BLT: “The bipartisan deal on the federal budget includes a $15.8 million midyear cut for the Legal Services Corp., according to new details released on Tuesday. The cut is smaller than the $70 million that House Republicans proposed to take in February from the Legal Services Corp., which is the nation’s largest funding source for civil legal aid to the poor. Still, program officials had hoped to avoid any cut because demand for legal aid has increased during the economic downturn. Legal Services Corp. received $420 million from Congress last year, so the cut represents a 3.8% reduction in its full-year budget. But because the federal government’s fiscal year began Oct. 1, officials will need to find the money with more than half the year already passed.”  Also, here’s LSC’s press release about the funding cut.

• 4.11.11 – the Jacksonville Daily Record looks at a terrific pro bono project that serves Army reservists with legal needs.  In particular, volunteer law students and attorney help reservists, who can be called up to active duty on very short notice, with “the creation of advance directive documents: Durable Power of Attorney, Health Care Surrogate Designation, Designation of Preneed Guardian, a Living Will and a Simple Will.”  The model for this program, set up by Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Florida Coastal School of Law, is simple and easily replicable.  The “legal teams” consisted of a volunteer attorney and a law student, and they worked off of laptops that had the necessary form templates loaded on to them.

• 4.11.11 – a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog notes that Wisconsin legal services providers face sharp cuts in state funding: “Among the big losers in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget are groups who provide legal services to the indigent in civil cases — all $2.6 million that used to help finance such representation would be cut.”