NALP is accepting nominations for the 2011 PSLawNet Pro Bono Publico Award, which recognizes the extraordinary contributions that law students make to under-served populations, the public interest community, and legal education by performing pro bono or public service work. 

Eligibility: The Pro Bono Publico Award is available to any second- or third-year law student at a PSLawNet Subscriber School. The recipient will be honored during an Award Luncheon at NALP’s Public Service Mini-Conference on Thursday, October 20, 2011 at the Washington, DC office of Arnold & Porter, LLP. The Award recipient will receive transportation to Washington, a one-night stay in an area hotel, a commemorative plaque, and a small monetary award.

Award Criteria: Law students are judged by the extracurricular commitment they have made to law-related public service projects or organizations; the quality of work they performed; and the impact of that work on the community, their fellow students, and the school. Though a student’s involvement in law school-based public interest organizing and fundraising is relevant, actual pro bono and public interest legal work will be the primary consideration.

Nominations must be received by Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 5pm Eastern Time. View/download the nomination form here.

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.)  

An updated version of NYU’s Public Defender Handbook is now available on PSLawNet, http://www.pslawnet.org/uploads/Public_Defender_Handbook–_PUBLIC_VERSION_CURRENT.pdf.

NYU’s PD Handbook provides advice to students on how to prepare for careers and internships in public defense.  It also features a section that lists select PD offices that hire entry level lawyers, with hiring information for permanent and summer jobs.

An invaluable resource.  Check it out today!

New York Law Journal ran a piece yesterday about the ongoing efforts of Arnold & Porter to challenge a zoning law in New Jersey, written by Peter Zimroth, a lead attorney on the case:

Arnold & Porter is leading a pro bono effort—together with Archer & Greiner, the Brennan Center, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund—to challenge a newly enacted zoning law in Bridgewater, N.J., which was designed to block the development of a proposed mosque in that town. Recently I was asked to talk to a gathering of more than 200 Muslim supporters of the proposed mosque. The lawyers were being thanked for their pro bono effort, and I was asked to talk about the case and about why lawyers chose to undertake a case like this pro bono.

According to Zimroth, the case is already making a difference in Bridgewater and elsewhere, and he had this to say to supporters:

You have helped bring this community together to support the cause of religious freedom. You have shown skeptics that you can fight for your rights with dignity, with restraint, and within the best traditions of American law.

Your case has brought your cause to the attention of allies and potential allies. The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the behavior of the town officials. Some time before our case began, the Anti-Defamation League sponsored an interfaith coalition on mosques comprised of important Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim leaders. That group recently wrote a strong letter to the mayor of Bridgewater and the president of the town council supporting your case. And there are more supporters; and there will be still others added.

Read the full story here.

The Center for American Progress chimes in on the impact of legal services funding shortages..

The number of low- and moderate-income litigants representing themselves in civil legal matters has increased in recent decades. And there remains a significant gap between these individuals’ legal needs and the civil legal assistance system’s ability to fulfill them—the “justice gap.”

Self-representation, or pro se, features prominently in a wide range of civil legal cases, including but not limited to domestic violence, foreclosures, landlord-tenant disputes, bankruptcy, and consumer issues. Pro se litigants face many challenges in their quest to reach fair resolutions to civil disputes.

The following statistics illustrate the increase in self-representation over the last several decades and the need for additional funding for civil legal aid programs to ensure efficient, effective delivery of legal services to those who need them…

Read the full CAP piece: “Civil Legal Aid By The Numbers”

By Lauren Forbes

The Public Justice Center seeks two staff attorneys – one with 2-7 years of experience and one with 7+ years of experience with a strong litigation background — to work in its Baltimore, Maryland office.

The Public Justice Center (“PJC”): The PJC is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that seeks to protect and expand the rights of people who are denied justice because of their economic status or discrimination. The PJC selects and designs its cases and projects to effect systemic legal and social changes, using diverse strategies including individual, class action, and appellate litigation; legislative and regulatory advocacy; and education. Most projects work in coalition with other advocates. Current projects focus on tenants, prisoners, workers, health care, education rights for homeless children, and establishing a right to counsel in civil cases. For more information, visit: www.publicjustice.org .

Position Description

Staff attorneys are assigned to work in one or more of the PJC’s projects.  As a member of the work team on that project, the attorney will be working with other attorneys and staff within the PJC, and collaborating with allies and partners outside the PJC.  The PJC is currently seeking attorneys for two positions:

(1)  An attorney with 7 or more years of legal experience, including a strong litigation background and a desire to be lead attorney, co-counsel, and/or mentor of other attorneys in litigation. Desirable traits include background in public interest law, supervision/training experience, and/or subject matter expertise in one or more of PJC’s focus areas.

(2)  An attorney with 2-7 years of legal experience.

By Jamie Bence

Washington Post runs advice today from three young attorneys who have been successful in today’s difficult job market. Laila Leigh, a 2010 graduate of the Columbus School of Law had advice which will ring true for aspiring public interest lawyers:

“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”

“I wasn’t trying to get an experience that looked good on my resume. I asked, ‘Where can I work with immigrant communities? Where can I work that will get me in a courtroom? Write briefs?’ I wanted to do substantial work. That’s what I sought out, those are what gave me an advantage.”

Read the full story here.

By: Steve Grumm and Jamie Bence

Happy Friday, Dear Readers!  Much of the content for this week’s Bulletin was drafted with assistance from Intern Extraordinaire Jamie Bence.  It takes a special kind of nerdiness to put together this news bulletin.  And Jamie’s got it!

This week: $12.5 million to New York State legal services providers; but in Montana, funding woes force a legal services branch office closure; speaking of funding woes, mounting pushback against Garden State legal services cuts; from the Upstream Swim Department, an Illinois prosecutor is pushing to raise his attorneys’ salaries(!); salt-in-wound: the debt-ceiling madness even managed to produce bad news for grad student loans; the San Diego D.A.’s prisoner re-entry program earns kudos; pretty big changes to Seattle’s indigent defense system; what will deficit-cutting measures mean for Uncle Sam’s civil servants?; LSC announces its star-studded Pro Bono Task Force; a Bay Area debate about employers looking at prior convictions of job applicants; NDAA appoints its first woman president; the growth in unpaid legal internships; a report on the Empire State’s strained indigent defense program; an op-ed out of Seattle in opposition the proposed 26% LSC budget cuts; more opposition to legal services funding cuts in New Jersey; Wisconsin’s public defenders are way, way short-staffed; and New York State’s new indigent defense office gets moving. 

• 8.3.11 – good news, for a change, concerning legal services funding.  In New York, the state judiciary has begun making good on its plan to bolster legal services by distributing $12.5 million among 56 organizations.  The New York Law Journal reports that the funds will be applied to serving clients who face troubles with the “essentials of life,” like housing, public benefits, and safety from domestic abusers.  The funding is seen by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman as the beginning of a steadier stream of funding to support legal services providers at a time when other funding streams have diminished.

• 8.3.11 – bad news from the Treasure State.  The Montana Legal Services Association is being forced to close its office in Butte, and to relocate that office’s sole staff attorney to Helena.  The Montana Standard reports, “Butte District Judge Brad Newman said Tuesday while the effect of the closure remains to be seen, he said that the office provided ‘critical legal services that would be difficult to replace’.”

• 8.3.11 – in New Jersey, the battle for legal aid funding continues. The Assembly Judiciary Committee requested a public hearing over the recent line-item veto, Shore News Today reports. Even fiscally conservative members point out that current funding will probably not sustain an already stressed system.

• 8.2.11 – in Kane County, top prosecutor Joe McMahon is seeking better salaries so that he can retain his experienced staff. McMahon pointed out that keeping a top-flight staff requires several years of training before new attorneys can prosecute the more difficult cases, and by that time they may move on to more lucrative private-sector jobs. “We need to take a significant step in closing the gap in the disparity of pay,” McMahon said according to the Courier News.

• 8.2.11 – while many in Washington were excited to avert a downgrade in the nation’s credit rating this week, our friend Heather Jarvis points out that the Budget Control Act of 2011 has some unfortunate consequences for graduate students. “The elimination of the graduate and professional in-school interest subsidy and the direct loan repayment incentives are estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to produce a savings of $21.6 billion.   $17 billion of that savings will go to shore up the Pell Grant program, and $4.6 billion will be used to reduce the deficit.”

• 8.2.11 – congratulations are in order for the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, which recently won prestigious Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties (NACo) for the DA’s Helping Others Pursue Excellence (HOPE), a prisoner reentry program. Corrections.com has the story.

• 8.1.11 – more news from the Left Coast. This time, the City of Seattle is making changes to its indigent defense contracting.  The Seattle Times reports: “For the first time in 40 years, the King County public defense firm The Defender Association will not have a presence in Seattle Municipal Court.  On Monday, the Seattle City Council awarded a $1.5 million annual contract for a portion of the city’s misdemeanor public defense work to Northwest Defenders Association, said Eileen Farley, executive director of the Northwest Defenders Association. The city’s decision not to award the contract to The Defender Association had been met with a restraining order, a lawsuit and an appeal. But The Defender Association lost its legal battle.”

• 8.1.11 – Washington Post points out that the debt deal discussed above could also squeeze federal jobs. “I am pleased to see that the deal does not include any immediate cuts to federal pay or pensions,” National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen M. Kelley said in a statement Monday. “However, the impact on the federal workforce remains uncertain and agencies are likely to face reductions in their budgets.”   Government Executive has additional details, as well as perspectives from federal employees unions.

• 8.1.11 – LSC has appointed over three dozen public interest luminaries to its pro bono task force. The Blog of the Legal Times reports: “The task force is a project of the Legal Services Corp., the federally funded nonprofit that is the largest source of funding for civil legal aid. Republicans in Congress have warned the organization that it faces potentially deep budget cuts, and they’ve pushed it to find new ways to help the poor with problems like home foreclosures and domestic violence cases.”  Here’s a press release from LSC that lists all task force members.   This push for pro bono has historically been a double-edged sword.  On one hand, it’s absolutely vital to engage the private bar in efforts to support legal services.  On the other, pro bono should not be seen as a means to substitute for funding.  Pro bono to supplement the work of legal services providers: yep.  Pro bono to substitute for the work: nope.  We’ve already offered our thoughts on this topic in a prior blog post.

• 8.1.11 – Time Magazine reports from San Francisco on a new movement to keep employers from considering prior convictions when they review job applications. “‘These people are in the community regardless,’ said San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón. ‘Do we want to marginalize them and keep them on the edge’?”

• 8.1.11 – as we reported earlier this week, the National District Attorneys Association has named Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully their new president. Ms. Scully becomes the first female president of that organization, but as PublicCEO points out, it’s merely the latest in a series of groundbreaking roles for her.

• 8.1.11 – PilotOnline investigates the growing number of unpaid internships for law students, and how many unpaid positions are becoming remarkably competitive. Even students at elite schools, and those working for large government agencies, face an increasingly tight market.

• August, 2011 – New York’s public defender and legal aid systems are in crisis, but with the state budget quickly shrinking, it’s unclear whether they will get a desperately needed overhaul. Some in the state are questioning whether public defenders, faced with growing caseloads, are meeting the constitutional standard of care, Gotham Gazette reports.

• 7.31.11 – LSC board chair John Levi and LSC board member Harry Korrell take to the pages of Korrell’s hometown newspaper, the Seattle Times, to pen an op-ed laying out the potential 26% funding cut that LSC is facing, and explaining how this will hurt Washingtonians: “In Washington, nearly a quarter of the population is eligible for civil legal assistance.  At the Northwest Justice Project, there are pleas from women trying to escape domestic violence and protect their children. There are requests for help from elderly people deceived by scam artists. Families who are desperate call, worried about losing the roof over their heads because of foreclosure or eviction. Often callers are seeking unemployment benefits, or feel financially overwhelmed and see bankruptcy as the only path to a fresh start.”

• 7.31.11 – more from the growing legal aid funding crisis in New Jersey. The New Jersey Record said the following in a Sunday editorial: “Legal Services President Melville Miller Jr. told legislators the new bottom line most likely will mean 100 fewer lawyers, the closure of at least three offices and 10,000 fewer people getting legal help by the end of the year. As a result of the last cuts, Miller estimates that two out of three people seeking help are turned away. This new round may mean three out of four people with a real need for attorneys’ services are out of luck. It’s a deplorable state of affairs.”  There has been considerable backlash on the legal services funding cut, and it will be interesting to see if Gov. Christie reconsiders.

• 7.29.11 – as we blogged about earlier this week, Wisconsin’s public defenders face a dire situation. Less than 25% of offices have enough attorneys to staff the cases referred to them. In many counties, public defense has been contracted out to private firms. WTAQ has the full story.

• 7.29.11 – New York’s newly created State Office of Indigent Legal Services has sent out its first contracts this week, Gotham Gazette reports. “If [you’re] a cynic you can look at it as a small step,” ILS director William Leahy said of sending out the first contracts, “but we look at it as an important step forward.” Leahy said that when discussing indigent services with county officials he was repeatedly told, that it was the first time they had ever, “talked to anyone from the state about public defense and what they need.”

By Lauren Forbes

The Support Center for Child Advocates (Child Advocates) is seeking a full-time Coordinator of the Outcomes in Behavioral Health Project. Work for a premier child advocacy program with outstanding staff collegiality and commitment to quality service. Organize and administer this Project in all aspects of the grant-funded program.

Agency: The Support Center for Child Advocates is Philadelphia’s volunteer lawyer program for abused and neglected children, providing legal and social service advocacy, through the service of volunteer attorneys, paralegal and legal assistants, who work in conjunction with staff social workers, attorneys and other staff. Child Advocates seeks to protect children by securing social services, finding alternative homes and helping them testify in court. For all of the children committed to our care, we work to ensure safety, health, education, family permanency and access to justice. Systemically, we promote collaborative, multi-disciplinary casework and solutions to recurrent problems. For the community, we provide educational programs to increase awareness about the problems of and ways to prevent child abuse. Whenever possible, Child Advocates seeks to maintain children and families in their own homes. Respected for diligent and effective advocacy throughout its more than 34 years of service, Child Advocates attorneys and social workers move public systems to deliver entitled services and private systems to open their doors to needy children and their families.

Position Summary: In continuing the work of the Pew-funded Outcomes in Behavioral Health Project, Child Advocates will improve access to work on the twin tracks of internal agency strategy and wider, multi-county engagement and system reform. Focus on: support and improve case management functions with cross-system access to information and commitment to trauma-focused care; engagement of system leadership to improve timeliness and appropriate service delivery, quality of behavioral health assessments, and other identified systemic barriers; and training professionals and other caregivers responsible for the well-being of children involved in the child welfare system. Utilize tools of client engagement, direct representation and advocacy, and specially-designed training sessions in a multi-faceted, multi-disciplinary approach, to advance and reach goal of improving access to and participation in behavioral health services for this needy and chronically underserved population.

By Jamie Bence

Gotham Gazette reports on efforts to overhaul New York’s Public Defender system, generated by widespread complaints about the quality of services and pressure on the accused to accept plea deals. However, the necessary changes will require more than talk:

While recent efforts by the state legislature and Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman have lead to the first steps in reforming the system, a true overhaul in which the state would take over the reins and set standards now seems long off due to the state’s fiscal trouble. In fact, even the small gains that have been made seem in jeopardy. Meanwhile the New York Civil Liberties Union has brought suit against the state in hopes that it can expedite justice for thousands of poor New Yorkers.

Families are frustrated with court appointed attorneys, who in turn are strapped for resources and often juggling huge caseloads. It has led some to question whether the system meets minimum constitutional standards for representation:

The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the state charging that the public defender system does not provide the constitutionally required quality representation for indigent defendants. The case is currently in discovery. Some advocates hope the case will eventually force the state to reform the system.

“This is a systemic deficiency we are talking about,” said Corey Stoughton, lead counsel on the NYCLU case, “not simply one bad apple.” Because funding for indigent defense in New York is left up to New York City and 57 upstate counties, each locality has a different structure for their system and provide various levels of financial support.

While New York has taken steps to reform the structure of its legal services, no state-wide standard for legal services yet exists. Read more here.