This week: changes to Ohio’s patchwork indigent defense system?; a medical-legal partnership in the City of Fountains (and now you know Kansas City’s nickname – you’re welcome); praise from law firm associates on the value of law school clinical and externships programs, according to new NALP report; legal services funding bills making headway in Texas legislature; “future of legal education” conference gives props to proposal that would teach law students to teach pro-se litigants; $200K in HHS domestic violence victim assistance grant leads to legal services partnership in Michigan; is Birmingham, Alabama’s money better spent on public defenders or appointed counsel?; Colorado Legal Services takes a $170K hit after federal budget compromise; make that figure $300K in Virginia; are law school clinics vehicles for advancing liberal causes?; law school scholarship opportunities for would-be Garden State prosecutors; Quinnipiac (we love that name!) law students run/walk to benefit injured U.S. servicemembers – kudos!; a libertarian proposal to create an indigent defense voucher system; tumult among the leadership of the Peach State’s indigent defense program.

• 4.21.11 – could Ohio see a change in its indigent defense system, with the state easing some of the funding and administrative burdens resting on county shoulders?  An article from the Elyria, Ohio-based Chronicle-Telegram (a/k/a the New York Times of Northern Ohio) sheds light on how a state legislative proposal could impact Lorain County’s appointed-counsel system (and, we would presume, other counties’ systems as well): “County officials have been reviewing whether creating a public defender’s office would save the county money over the approximately $1.8 million spent annually to pay court-appointed attorneys. Under the current system, the state reimburses the county around 30 percent of its annual expenditures for court-appointed lawyers. [County Commissioner Lori] Kokoski said under the proposal being reviewed in Columbus the reimbursement number would jump to 50 percent next year and climb by 10 percent each year until the state was fully funding a county public defender’s office.  She also said that the Office of the Ohio Public Defender would take over operating the county’s public defender’s office — if one exists — under the proposed change to state law.”  

• 4.20.11 – as we’ve noted before on the Blog, an exciting new Medical Legal Partnership has sprung up in Kansas City between Legal Aid of Western Missouri and Saint Luke’s hospital.  Health Leaders Media has a nice write-up: “Legal Aid began its first medical-legal partnership in Kansas City in 2007, but the Saint Luke’s partnership is the first to use legal staff working full-time at a medical site. Amber Cutler, an attorney with Legal Aid, said that has been critical to the success of the four-month-old project.   ‘On site is best, not only because we are more accessible to the patients, but because we are more visible,’ Cutler says…’It’s a critical component.’ … The Saint Luke’s medical-legal partnership is based on the I-HELP model. 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.”  BONUS EASTER SEASON TRIVIA: St. Luke, known primarily as a Gospel writer, was very likely trained as a physician.

• 4.19.11 – law firm associates think law school clinics and externships were just gangbusters in preparing them for the practice of law.  As we noted on the blog earlier this week, a new NALP report indicates that present-day associates benefitted from participating in clinics and externships during their student days.  The report compares the various experiential opportunities to determine their effects on lawyer preparedness.  While only 30 percent of the associates reported participating in at least one legal clinic, almost two in three of these folks (63%) found the experience “very useful,” the highest value on a scale of 1-to-4.   Similarly, 36% of the associates said they took part in an externship or field placement, and 60% of them rated the experience “very useful.”  Pro bono programs and legal skills classes earned lower ratings from associates.  Here’s a link to the report, the 2010 Survey of Law School Experiential Learning Opportunities and Benefits.  And here’s some National Law Journal coverage of the report.

• 4.18.11 – the Texas Lawyer runs a detailed piece on two companion bills winding through the Texas legislature that would generate funding for legal services:  “Senate Bill 726 and House Bill 2174 would create new court costs and document filing fees to help fund indigent civil legal aid, indigent criminal defense and the implementation of electronic filing in all state courts.”  We checked up on the bills on 4/21 via the Texas legislature’s website.  They’re both reported has having passed in committee votes.  Faithful PSLawNet Blog readers will have seen coverage of these bills in past News Bulletins.  One of the most interesting dimensions is the bipartisan support to improve funding for the beleaguered legal services community.  Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht has been a champion for increased funding, and he’s a solid conservative.  Also, Rep. Will Hartnett, the sponsor of HB 2174, is a Republican who noted in the Texas Lawyer piece that legal services is not typically a Republican cause.

• 4.18.11 – at the intersection of technology, legal aid, and legal education sits a project proposal to have law students create self-help software for people who have legal problems but may not be able to afford an attorney.  The proposal, “Apps for Justice: Learning Law by Creating Software,” won accolades at the “Future Ed” conference, a recent gathering of stakeholders in the legal education world that explored ways to improve the way tomorrow’s lawyers are trained.  The National Law Journal covered both the conference and the “Apps for Justice” proposal, which is designed to help law students learn legal principles and processes as they create self-help software for pro se clients.  The “Apps for Justice” project proposal contemplates a grant from the Legal Services Corporation to fund pilots at 5 law schools.  (Here is a press release about Apps for Justice being honored at Future Ed.)

• 4.18.11 – A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant will help domestic violence victims with civil legal needs.  The Times Herald of Port Huron, Michigan reports: “Lakeshore Legal Aid and Safe Horizons, both based in Port Huron, are working together on an Access to Justice project, paid for with a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Safe Horizons was awarded the grant last fall to develop a program to help survivors overcome obstacles that often prevent them from getting help with civil matters. The effort includes hiring an advocate to help with navigating the legal system; hiring an advocate to help survivors access child care while dealing with court matters; hiring someone to train area lawyers willing to take on pro-bono cases; and contracting with Lakeshore Legal Aid to take on complex cases.”

• 4.18.11 -a question of how to allocate indigent defense resources in Alabama.  From the Birmingham News:  “Birmingham municipal judges paid private lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars [$300K in 2009-10] to represent poor defendants, while the nonprofit agency that serves as the city’s longtime public defender claimed it could handle the full caseload and went unpaid for months.”  The presiding judge at Birmingham Municipal Court has defended the increased payments to appointed counsel, even as the court has had to dip in to general funds because the dedicated fund for indigent defense services was depleted.

• 4.18.11 – the federal budget compromise earlier this month means depleted funding for LSC grantee Colorado Legal Services, to the tune of $170,000.  From Law Week Colorado: Colorado Legal Services will lose $170,000 over the next seven months as a result of the congressional budget compromise, the Colorado Bar Association said today…. ‘This loss will have a serious impact on the program’s ability to meet the most essential legal needs of low-income, elderly, and disabled Coloradans,’ the bar association said in a statement.  Law Week publishes the full Colorado Bar Association statement here.

• 4.17.11 – the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on how LSC budget cuts will affect grantee programs in Old Dominion:  Virginia’s legal aid chapters, which provide free legal representation to Virginia’s poor and working poor, were told this week by their federal funding source that they must immediately implement a 4 percent cut….The 4 percent cut [which LSC will have to absorb] will be passed along to the corporation’s 136 grantees, which resulted in a nearly $300,000 loss for Virginia.

• 4.17.11 – the right-of-center Washington Times runs a review about a book criticizing legal education in the U.S. as being, well, elite and leftist.  According to the review of Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and Overlawyered America, law school clinics in particular are vehicles to make social change: “The advent of law school ‘clinics’ brought both foundation funding and pedagogical cover for ‘social justice’ projects. In reality, the professed goals of training lawyers and serving indigent clients often were eclipsed by the quest for ‘test cases’ and ‘social change.’ Poor people, it turned out, wanted legal services (divorce, traffic violations, misdemeanor defense) that had “little to do with changing society.” The clinics preferred to turn away such matters in favor of ‘high profile cases,’ so that the lawyers could ‘save thousands instead of a few.’ And in numerous cases, the ‘public interest’ remedies pursued by law clinics brought results harmful to the communities they professed to serve.”  Yikes!  While the PSLawNet Blog supports changes in the legal education model that would lead to skill-based training, we’re not sure that’s a fair characterization of clinical education writ broadly.  Political ideology aside, we think most clinics handle everyday cases involving evictions, public benefits terminations, domestic violence prevention, and other matters that directly impact clients’ health and economic security. 

• 4.17.11 – the New Jersey Star-Ledger reports on three law school scholarship opportunities for Garden State residents who are aspiring prosecutors.  The scholarships are sponsored by the state’s County Prosecutors Association, and the application deadline is June 23, 2011.  Click through to the article for more detail, but here are some basics:
• To be eligible for the Oscar W. Rittenhouse Memorial Scholarship, an applicant must be accepted for admission to a law school and must have an interest in becoming a prosecutor.
• The Harris Y. Cotton Memorial Scholarship is also for applicants accepted for admission to law school who want to be prosecutors with an emphasis on domestic violence or hate crime prosecutions.
• Applicants for the Andrew K. Ruotolo Jr. Memorial Scholarship must be accepted to law school or graduate school and exhibit an interest, and commitment to, enhancing the rights and well-being of children through child advocacy programs.

• 4.17.11 – Running for our men and women in uniform.  As we noted in the PSLawNet Blog earlier this week, four student groups at Quinnipiac’s law school sponsored a 5K run/walk to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, which builds awareness and raises funds for severely injured servicemembers.  (Here’s the original story from the Quad News.)

• 4.15.11 – an indigent defense voucher system?  A blog post on the Right on Crime website looks at a conservative solution to the indigent defense resources crisis as articulated in a paper published last year by the Cato Institute.  From the blog post: “Late last year, The Cato Institute published an intriguing paper on indigent defense reform. It is an attempt to apply limited government principles to an exceptionally difficult criminal justice problem….  [T]he Cato paper suggests replacing the inefficient indigent defense system with a voucher system. Indigent defendants can be provided with vouchers — and perhaps a list of options – and they can select whomever they prefer. It is a market-based solution that emphasizes personal liberty and minimizes the role of government.”

• 4.15.11 – according to the Daily Journal, there are big changes affecting the embattled Georgia Public Defender Standards Council (which is the statewide indigent defense service): “…Georgia lawmakers voted to replace the [Council’s] current 15-member board with nine new appointees tapped by the governor, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. The measure, which must be signed by Gov. Nathan Deal, also gives the [Council’s] director more power over whom the system hires.”  The Council has been in the legislative doghouse for some time, particularly among conservative lawmakers.  As noted by the Daily Journal one departing board member complained that “the measure only marginalizes the council, turning it into a mere advisory board while putting more power in the hands of the director, ex-prosecutor Travis Sakrison, who is the third leader of the group in the past six months.”  Indeed, he referred to the move as a “pig in a poke,” which we suspect constitutes fightin’ words in the Peach State.