By: Steve Grumm (with a big assist from Jamie Bence)

Happy Friday, dear readers, from an astonishingly not-humid Washington, DC!  We try to keep the mood light around here, but in all candor it’s disheartening to read, week after week, stories from all corners of the country documenting how diminished legal services funding is impacting programs and the clients they serve.  With interest rates holding at record lows, IOLTA funding streams remain weak.  LSC grantees have already felt the small pinch that came with a modest cut in the FY11 appropriation.  Frighteningly, that will become a big squeeze if the proposed 26% cut to LSC’s FY12 appropriation goes through.  This week we learn of funding troubles in Florida, Maine, and Mississippi, as well as another office closure at Legal Aid of North Carolina.  It’s frustrating, at times, to be the aggregator of bad news.  But we hope our modest efforts to provide a nationwide snapshot of the goings-on in the public interest world may be of some use to advocates who over the next several months will be fighting to sustain legal services funding.  So, with that, let’s look at legal services and other public interest news…   

This week: the motivation for pro bono lawyers to fight in defense of civil liberties; legal services funding woes in Broward County (at least it’s not more hanging chads); a cynical attempt to kill the Legal Services Corporation?’; CAP offers some data to highlight the rise in pro se litigation; some more data, this time about funding troubles affecting state court systems; Magnolia State LSC grantees are bracing for more cuts; ditto up in Maine; solid career advice for tomorrow’s public interest lawyers; office closure and staff cut news from Legal Aid of North Carolina; the ABA’s outgoing president on funding the courts and legal services; speaking of pro se, the success of the Civil Law Self Help Center in Vegas; capital punishment is pricey in Indiana; strengthening pro bono collaborations in, appropriately, the Volunteer State; getting pro bono buy-in from law firm leadership. 

• 8.10.11 – if you’re looking for some public interest motivation, the New York Law Journal has run a nice piece by Arnold & Porter partner Peter Zimroth, who is part of a pro bono team fighting a zoning ordinance which was enacted to stop the building of a house of worship – a mosque – in New Jersey.  Reprinted in the article are remarks Zimroth delivered at a thank-you event for the pro bono team.  The remarks highlight common principles of justice and equal treatment running from the efforts of the mosque’s supporters back through older civil right struggles, and ultimately grounded in the framework of the Constitution.

• 8.10.11 – an op-ed in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel looks at the dire funding situation of the Legal Aid Service of Broward County, particularly as the specter (which I always spell “spectre” because I’ve seen too many James Bond films) of additional LSC cuts looms.  The Legal Aid Service, along with Coast to Coast Legal Aid, which is not an LSC grantee, is “facing additional 20 percent to 25 percent budget cuts for the upcoming fiscal year, meaning a new round of layoffs, wage freezes and five-day unpaid furloughs for workers. The agencies have gone from a peak of 50 attorneys to 39.  And because of cutbacks at big local law firms, fewer outside attorneys have been volunteering for pro bono work.” And on the issue of support from the private bar: “Making matters worse: As the agencies’ foreclosure defense caseload grows, banks and big law firms that represent lenders have stopped giving contributions.” 

• 8.10.11 – Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, known for his wry observations of the goings-on on Capitol Hill, takes an aggressive stance in criticizing freshman Congressman Austin Scott, who recently proposed his first bill: a total evisceration of the Legal Services Corporation.  The bill, Milbank writes, “says a great deal about Scott, because it is a transparent attempt by the young lawmaker to defend a company in his district that discriminates against U.S. citizens in favor of Mexican migrant workers. Scott introduced the bill abolishing Legal Services exactly three days after it became public that Legal Services had won a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determination that Georgia’s Hamilton Growers” engaged in discriminatory practices which adversely affected American farmworkers in favor of H2-A guest workers.  (Georgia Legal Services program, an LSC grantee, had represented workers in the action against Hamilton.)  Milbank goes on to argue that Rep. Scott, a “Tea Party favorite”, “chose to side with a large employer of foreign migrants in his district – against his out-of-work constituents.”  

• 8.9.11 – the Center for American Progress offers a by-the-numbers look of the woeful state of civil legal services funding in the U.S., along with the sharp rise in pro se litigation, as more and more poor people who can’t be helped by legal services due to resource shortages opt to represent themselves.  Some of the data CAP cites on pro se trends is dated, but there are also some noteworthy figures, including:
• “1-to-6415: The ratio of free legal services attorneys available to the number of low-income Americans who need one”;
• “235,000: The estimated number of low-income Americans eligible for civil legal assistance at LSC-funded programs that would be turned away if [a proposed 26% cut to LSC’s appropriation goes forward.]”

• 8.8.11 – the National Law Journal reports that a recent panel at the ABA’s Annual Meeting highlighted the work of the Task Force on Preservation of the Justice System.  Legal luminaries David Boies and Ted Olson lead the task force, which has been documenting the recession’s impact on state courts.  Among the group’s findings: 
• “26 states have delayed filling judicial vacancies, 31 have delayed filling judicial support positions and 34 have delayed filling open positions in clerks’ offices.
• 31 states have frozen or reduced judge or staff pay.
• 14 states have laid off court staff.
• 14 states have curtailed hours or cut operating days.”

• 8.8.11 – the Jackson Clarion-Ledger looks at the impact that an LSC funding cut would have on two of the Magnolia State’s three grantee programs: the Mississippi Center for Legal Services and North Mississippi Legal Services.  These programs rely very heavily on federal funds to support their work; about 80% of their funding comes from LSC.  As is the case in other jurisdictions, IOLTA funding has all but dried up: “North Mississippi Rural Legal Services and Mississippi Center for Legal Services each received $1 million last year from the
  IOLTA funds. This year, each program will receive $120,000.”  So one can see why a significant cut in LSC funds would be devastating.  And in terms of service capacity, the programs are already stretched to the breaking point: “The number of legal services attorneys is
  about one per 20,000 low-income residents.”

• 8.7.11 – the Bangor Daily News looks at how the House’s proposed 26% cut in LSC funding could impact Pine Tree Legal Assistance.  Pine Tree executive director Nan Heald “estimated that if the proposed reduction in funding is approved, her budget would be cut by about 35 percent.  ‘We’ve already lost six staff positions through attrition that we’re not replacing, including two in our Bangor office,’ she said. ‘We’ve also lost staff in Portland and Lewiston we can’t replace, including a full-time foreclosure attorney’.”

• 8.7.11 – the Washington Post carries profiles from three young attorneys who are making it in today’s economy. One of the featured attorneys, Laila Leigh, graduated from Catholic University Law and now works with the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau. She offers this advice to aspiring public interest lawyers (with which I can’t more strongly agree):  “A lot of law students think, ‘I have to be in law review, I have to be in moot court.’ I just stayed focused on what I wanted to do and selected internships and opportunities that would put me in a position to do what I wanted to do when I was done.”  In spite of the bad job market, there are public interest jobs out there, and they’re going to go to those law grads who have immersed themselves in the work and developed the best professional networks in the communities they wish to work in.  

• 8.6.11 – Mountain Express reports that Legal Aid of North Carolina will be closing more offices in the year ahead. “Cuts made this year to state and federal legislative appropriations amounted to annual reductions of more than $2M. With such substantial cuts to its core funding, Legal Aid of NC (LANC) could not avoid the closings and the elimination of about thirty staff positions. The LANC offices located in Smithfield, Boone and Henderson immediately will stop taking new cases and will close entirely by the end of September. LANC offices in Rocky Mount, Winston-Salem and Sylva also are affected.”

• 8.6.11 –in the Miami Herald, outgoing ABA president Stephen Zack expresses concerns that under-funding the nation’s courts and the civil legal services system – the need for fiscal austerity notwithstanding – could do fundamental damage to our system of government.  “In the weeks and months ahead, the American people and those we elected to represent us will have serious conversations about the size, shape and funding of our government. And naturally, there will be differing opinions. But on the issue of protecting our fundamental liberties, freedoms, rights and values by protecting our courts and legal aid, there should — and must — be complete support.”
  8.6.11 – For Nevada residents, access to civil justice has improved for the 55,000 people who have visited the Civil Law Self Help Center since it opened in December 2009. Free services range from assistance for small business owners to individuals facing eviction or foreclosure. The Las Vegas Sun has the story here.

• 8.6.11 – For Nevada residents, access to civil justice has improved for the 55,000 people who have visited the Civil Law Self Help Center since it opened in December 2009. Free services range from assistance for small business owners to individuals facing eviction or foreclosure. The Las Vegas Sun has the story here.

• 8.6.11 – a detailed piece in the Evansville Courier and Press looks at the high cost of administering capital punishment processes in Indiana.  Costs, which are borne partly by the state government and partly by county governments, continue to rise.  However, “[o]nly 16% of Indiana’s death penalty cases – 30 out of 188 – filed from 1990 through 2009 ended in death sentences, according to the Indiana Public Defender Council.  Such statistics have given death penalty foes a solid economic argument, and even supporters of the death penalty are calling for reforms to control skyrocketing defense costs often born by local and state governments.”     

• 8.5.11 – I can’t believe I let my Nashville Business Journal subscription expire!  Now I can only link to the teaser for this password-protected article about the Legal Aid Society for Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands’s efforts to engage the private bar on pro bono collaborations. 

• August, 2011: “If You Them to Lead, You Need to Speak Their Language: Strategies for Encouraging Law Firm Leaders to Support Pro Bono Work” (long title!) is a piece by SNR Denton’s Benjamin Weinberg on how pro bono proponents in large law firms can make both the moral and financial cases for pro bono in order to enlist the support of leaders in all corners of the firm.  Good read.  (Tip o’ the cap to our friend David Lash for passing it along.)