By: Steve Grumm

Happy Independence Day Weekend, Dear Readers!  Here in the nation’s capital, we will celebrate modern democracy with barbeques, fireworks, debt ceiling debate madness, Colbert Super PAC, and humidity.  Yay!  Kidding aside, we wish you a happy and safe weekend.  Now, returning to our democratic system of government, let’s catch up on news related to the pursuit of equal justice for all.    

This week: a libertarian look at public defender caseloads; the Public Defender Corps is up and runnin’; DOJ still working through the Bush-era “politics in hiring” scandal; IOLTA funds disbursed in the Hawkeye State; in CA, child care funding for welfare-to-work families reinstated after cuts; have more law grads been going into public interest work in the past 20 years?; tough times for the Cleveland Legal Aid Society and other Ohio organizations which rely on IOLTA funding. 

• July, 2011 – a piece in this month’s edition of Reason, a libertarian journal, highlights the case overload pressing down upon many public defenders, forcing them to triage cases and work out quick pleas rather than being able to delve into factual investigations that may help their clients.  The piece also notes that appointed counsel are often under-compensated for their work.

• 6.29.11 – the Public Defender Corps, a program co-managed by Equal Justice Works and the Southern Public Defender Training Center, is up and running.  The Rochester City Paper (in the lovely Finger Lakes region of New York) reports on two incoming fellows: “Two young attorneys will serve three-year fellowships in the Monroe County Public Defender’s Office: part of a new national program focused on training newer attorneys in public interest law.  Katherine Higgins, a Cornell Law School graduate, and Felipe Alexandre, a graduate of the Indiana University School of Law, will start in the defender’s office in August ”  There are presently 18 Public Defender Corps fellows working in 12 defenders’ offices, according to the article.  Equal Justice Works’s website has more info on the Public Defender Corps.

• 6.28.11 – No liberals need apply!  The legal battle over alleged political vetting of job candidates in the Bush Administration DOJ continues.  According to the Blog of the Legal Times: “The Justice Department is urging a federal judge in Washington to reject a suit that alleges department officials in 2006 used job candidates’ political and ideological affiliation to decide whether to grant interviews to applicants. The claims from three plaintiffs, each a former applicant for the Justice Department’s highly competitive Honors Program, stem from an internal DOJ report published in 2008 that found members of a screening committee improperly examined political and ideological affiliation in rejecting candidates.”

• 6.28.11 – the Hawkeye State’s high court is spreading the cash around in the legal services community. Eastern Iowa News Now reports: “Non-profit programs providing legal aid to low-income Iowans with civil legal problems got a boost today with the Iowa Supreme Court’s announcement of more than $321,000 in grants for those organizations. The court has awarded grants to 15 organizations statewide, including Cedar Rapids-based Kids First Law Center” as well as Iowa Legal Aid and the Iowa State Bar Association Public Service Project.”  The grants come from IOLTA fund proceeds.

• 6.27.11 – chalk up a win for a sextet of public interest organizations which sued the (sometimes-great) State of California in an effort to preserve child care services for wage-earners who have made the welfare-to-work move.  The Lake County News has the scoop: “The state of California agreed that the CalWORKS Stage 3 program will continue to offer child care services for parents who have successfully transitioned off welfare but whose wages are still too low to cover child care.  The settlement affects the families of more than 56,000 California children who had been told they would lose their child care last October, as Lake County News has reported.  The suit was brought by the Public Interest Law Project, the Child Care Law Center, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, Public Counsel Law Center and Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “

• 6.27.11 – “Public Interest Law Becoming a Hot Ticket,” according to a headlining piece in the National Law Journal.  Present employment market woes notwithstanding, the article looks at a 20-year shift on law school campuses that has led to more robust public interest career advising programs, LRAPs, and clinical programs, as well as the advent of postgraduate fellowship funders like Equal Justice Works and the Skadden Foundation.  The result, according to the piece, is more prestige attached to public interest career paths, and an increase in the number of grads who pursue those paths.  The article leans heavily on NALP data showing an uptick in the percentage of law grads taking public interest jobs – citing a growth from 2.1% in 1990 to 6.7% in 2010 (although some of that growth is attributable to a data classification change on NALP’s end, and some of the most recent data likely reflect the increase in law school graduate bridge programs which place graduates in public interest positions.)

• 6.27.11 – A Crain’s Cleveland Business article (it’s password-protected, so you’ll just have to trust me on this one) looks at the nosedive that Ohio IOLTA funding has taken – a 72% drop since 2007 – and its impact on legal services providers, particularly the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland:  “IOLTA revenue for the Legal Aid Society…had fallen by last year to $928,000 from $3.38 million in 2007.”   This has impacted staffing; the Legal Aid Society froze salaries in early 2010 and hasn’t hired an attorney in the past couple of years.  And this, in turn, impacts the growing numbers of would-be clients who must be turned away for lack of resources to help them.