By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  Greetings from a rainy, gloomy Washington, DC.  This is perhaps appropriate, as most everyone inside the Beltway is mindful that almost 10 years have passed since the September 11th attacks.  Things here livened up a little bit this week with the Republican presidential candidates’ debate and last night’s presidential address, the combination of which suggests that the 2012 election season is already upon us.  Thirteen months of this.  Oh, what unmitigated joy. 

This week in public interest news: the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau hits the century mark; a handful of law schools create “incubation programs” for aspiring solos, and at least two of them are serving low-income clients; some much-needed matching funding for Pisgah Legal Services; an eleventh-hour layoff aversion in the Sacramento D.A.’s office; Vermont Law School’s doing its part to aid flood victims; the Mass. Bar Association goes all medical-legal partnership on us;  UVA Law’s Innocence Clinic scores some big wins;  read about a not-so-good proposal to change Tennessee’s indigent defense system; an in-depth look at pro bono programs within large, Windy City law firms; Utah prosecutors support bolstering indigent defense; how a huge, potential LSC $ cut will impact Legal Services of Southern Missouri; an anonymous, non-lawyer drops $2 million on the Maine Bar Foundation’s’ doorstep (metaphorically).  My money’s on Steven King. 

• 9.8.11 – I’ve been feeling my joints creak since I turned 35 in August, but the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau is 100.  That’s really old.  WBAL has details on the community birthday party that MDLAB is hosting in Charm City tomorrow.

• 9.7.11 – the National Law Journal looks at a handful of law schools that have created “incubation” programs which provide in-kind support and mentoring for recent grads who aspire to solo practice but want to hedge against the insecurity of going it entirely alone.  Why am I mentioning this?  Two of the schools, the Univ. of Maryland and CUNY, have built a public interest dimension into their programs: “At CUNY, incubator participants do a significant amount of…”low bono” work. They earn $75 an hour for providing legal representation to underserved communities…, paid for by contracts with New York City. The work provides the new attorneys with experience and exposure, and provides representation to people who otherwise could not afford an attorney….  The University of Maryland’s solo incubator…also promotes civil justice. Participants…assist on grant-funded cases through Civil Justice Inc., a nonprofit law office that serves low-income clients….”  

• 9.7.11 – some good news for Pisgah Legal Services in North Carolina.  It may not seem that having $17K in county grant money restored is newsworthy.  But the money constitutes matching funds for domestic-violence grants.  So it’s important.  The Times-News reports: “The Henderson County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to give Pisgah Legal Services money it needs to match domestic-violence grants, essentially reinstating the funding that they denied the regional nonprofit in June.  While the grant was requested by Pisgah Legal Services Executive Director Jim Barrett to match domestic violence prevention grants his organization has secured through the Governor’s Crime Commission, it is nearly the exact same amount — $16,833 — that Barrett previously asked the board for during county budget talks.”

• 9.6.11 – layoffs averted in the Sacramento DA’s office.  And we can thank Big Oil.  Sort of.  KCRA reports:  “Three months ago, [District Attorney Jan] Scully said budget cuts were forcing her to lay off 64 people, eliminate several units and stop prosecution of most misdemeanor crimes.  Now, Scully said a $24.5 million settlement in a lawsuit against Chevron for violating the state anti-pollution laws is making the difference.”  The DA’s office will get 6.5 million from that pot of money.

• 9.6.11 – news from the Great Wet North.  Vermont Law School, which itself fell victim to post-Irene flood damage, has been doing its part to help its neighbors, according to the National Law Journal: “The law school’s land use clinic and its South Royalton, Vt., legal clinic have teamed up to assist residents in filling out applications for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Students are on hand daily in the school’s law library to help people complete emergency paperwork.  The law school has designated two staff members to work full time on relief efforts and is allowing staff members to receive full pay while volunteering.”

• 9.6.11 – the Massachusetts Bar Association has gotten into the medical-legal partnership game with a new pro bono initiative, according to a piece in The Republican:  “To address the intertwined health problems and legal needs of such vulnerable patients, the Massachusetts Bar Association and Massachusetts Medical-Legal Partnership network have joined forces to launch the MBA Pro Bono Prescription.  This pioneering effort unites health-care teams and lawyers toward a shared goal of strengthening struggling communities. The MBA Pro Bono Prescription aims to increase the supply of lawyers who can prescribe legal remedies to help avert both legal crises and health emergencies.”  (For the law students in our readership, you can learn much more about medical-legal partnerships, which have been steadily increasing in number across the country, via the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnerships.  The basic goal is for poverty lawyers to work with other social services providers in providing more holistic services to clients, and ideally addressing root causes of medical and legal problems to avoid their recurrence.)

• 9.6.11 – the Cavalier Daily reports that the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project has done well in the overturned conviction department, first removing a man from Death Row and then having his other, related convictions tossed: “Twelve University Law students helped overturn the wrongful drug and weapon conviction of Northern Virginian man Justin Wolfe last week, bringing an end to a decade-long struggle for freedom. The decision comes more than a month after the students, as part of the Law School’s Innocence Project Clinic, helped convince a federal judge to dismiss Wolfe’s murder-for-hire conviction and death sentence.  The clinic, part of the Innocence Network, is an organization which works to overturn wrongful convictions of prisoners in Virginia who could be proven innocent — many of whom are convicted as a result of ineffective legal counsel or flawed police techniques.”

• 9.4.11 – an op-ed in The Tennessean appropriately skewers a really bad idea for saving cash on the state’s indigent defense funding:   “The state’s indigent defense fund’s cost has grown from $19.9 million to $37.5 million since 2004. There were 126,000 legal bills submitted by attorneys to represent poor clients last year. Lawmakers cried “whoa!” and asked the courts’ administrative office to figure out how to save money.  What they came up with is a proposal that has been widely poo-pooed by attorneys, judges, experts and professional groups. It would set up a bidding system in which attorneys or law firms would get the right to represent the indigent for a flat fee if they are the lowest bidder. All the sudden, in Tennessee, justice would be akin to road contracts or buying computers.”  (“Poo-pooed” did not pass spellcheck, but frankly I have no interest in learning how to spell it.) 

• 9.4.11 – the Chicago Lawyerhas a long, detailed piece surveying the pro bono models at several of the Windy City’s large law firms: “In recent years, as pro bono leaders in Chicago law firms worked to increase pro bono participation, they began to integrate pro bono…into the operations of their firms. Many of these programs now serve as separate practices, often with their own staff and policies….  While some…firms still encourage lawyers to select their own projects, other firms take a more focused approach, searching for specific opportunities to help those in need while training young associates. They also adopt and offer holistic services to nonprofit organizations and secure finance or real estate matters for transactional lawyers.”  Firms highlighted in the article include Katten, SNR Denton, Holland & Knight, DLA Piper, Winston & Strawn, and Mayer Brown, among others.  Chicago Bar Foundation executive director Bob Glaves, a friend of the PSLawNet Blog and a superb advocate for the local public interest community, is quoted in the piece.  This provides an opportunity for me to note that the Cubs record is 62-81.  Hi, Bob!

• 9.2.11 – three county prosecutors in the Beehive State take to the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune to argue, wait for it, for bolstering Utah’s patchwork of county indigent defense systems:  “Because prosecutors are committed to doing justice, we support a strong and vigorous indigent defense system. We stand ready to work together with all interested parties to meet our constitutional obligations to do justice as effectively and efficiently as possible.”  But there’s a catch, of sorts.  The authors are writing in the wake of an ACLU of Utah Report, Failing Gideon, which called for a statewide fix for what is now an uneven county-by-county system.  The three prosecutors prefer a local approach, as they don’t think a statewide solution is feasible in the present economic climate. 

• 9.1.11 – the Ozarks First website looks at how the House’s proposed 26% cut to Legal Services Corporation will impact the local LSC grantee, Legal Services of Southern Missouri.  LSSM executive director Douglas Kays “says proposed federal cuts would translate to about $500,000” lost.  “‘We help about 2,500 people a year [out of 10,000 applications for assistance, on average],’ says Kays. ‘We’d probably have to reduce that by 500 or 600’.”

• 9.1.11 – Ready, set, $2million.  The Bangor Daily News reports unexpected good news on the legal services funding front in Maine: “The Maine Bar Foundation has announced the receipt of a $2 million gift from an anonymous donor. The endowment, the first of its kind for the foundation, is dedicated to providing support for people in need of legal assistance in Washington and Hancock counties, according to a press release issued Thursday…. The foundation will set up an endowment with the gift and use the interest to pay for legal services.”  This has got to feel good for the bar foundation after some disappointing IOLTA years.