The Law School at the University of Chicago is seeking qualified applicants for a full-time position supervising law students and representing federal criminal defendants as a Fellow, appointed with the rank of Lecturer, in the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic’s Federal Criminal Justice Clinic. The position will begin in the 2011-2012 academic year and will last through June 2014. Working with the clinical faculty, the successful candidate will supervise clinic students in pretrial federal criminal cases, representing defendants from arrest through trial or guilty plea and sentencing, and possibly on Seventh Circuit appeals, and will also be expected to assist in teaching clinical pre-trial and trial skills courses. One goal of this Fellowship is to train aspiring clinical teachers and federal public defenders.

Qualifications
Candidates must have a J.D.; must be a member in good standing of the bar of Illinois or another state; and must have at least three years of experience representing criminal defendants. Excellent writing, editing, advocacy, and supervision skills are required. Some experience representing criminal defendants in federal court, as well as familiarity with the United States Sentencing Guidelines and the current federal sentencing regime, are a plus. A demonstrated commitment to criminal defense and/or indigent populations is also a plus. The Fellow must be eligible for and able to obtain the following bar admissions/memberships: U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois; Northern District of Illinois Trial Bar; Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals; Federal Defender Panel for the Northern District of Illinois.

Click into the listing on PSLawNet for application instructions (login required).

By: Steve Grumm

It’s a UVA Law two-fer.  First, the Cavalier Daily reports that the law school’s Innocence Project scored an overturned conviction, first removing a man from Death Row and then having 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.

Judge Raymond Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed with a motion drafted by members of the clinic arguing that the jury’s verdict was the result of a flawed trial. He consequently tossed out the convictions and a 33-year sentence, according to a statement released by the Law School.

After an evidentiary hearing last November, Jackson found that the prosecutor had failed to share critical evidence with Wolfe’s attorney. This information helped the clinic work to exonerate Wolfe from involvement in the murder, said Clinic Director of Investigations Deirdre Enright.

Second, here’s a pretty innovative fundraiser for the school’s public interest student group.  As reported by Virginia Law Weekly, UVA Law’s Public Interest Law Association runs a law book sale.

At the beginning of each semester, the Public Interest Law Association sells used text and horn books at greatly discounted prices, and this semester is no different.

Opened on August 23th, the event had already raised over $10,000 within its first four days and, as of press time, was on its way to doubling that figure. The proceeds of the sale are crucial for filling PILA’s public interest summer grant pool, out of which it gives $3,500 to qualifying 1Ls and $6,000 to qualifying 2Ls planning to do unpaid work over the summer.

I know of auctions, charity runs, basketball tournaments, and bake sales, but this is the first I’ve heard of a student association selling law books to raise cash for summer public interest stipends.  If memory serves, the bookstore at my law school had a monopoly on book sales, and they ruled with an iron fist.  So this never seemed like an option.  Maybe there’s more flexibility at other schools.  Anyway, great idea.

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

Happy Friday/Labor Day Weekend/September, dear readers.  As summer is (unofficially) winding down this week, we wish you all a happy Autumn, and we wish the best of luck to law students, clinicians, and law school administrators who are beginning a new academic year. 

This week: the first months of the Last Resort Exoneration Project; indigent counsel reform in Tennessee(?); USAJobs due for some downtime in October; AtJ news in the Mountain State; a dispatch from the ABA’s oval office; reaction to an ACLU report about Utah’s rickety indigent defense infrastructure; in NOLA, physical altercations and officers of the court and lawsuits, oh my!; unpaid legal internships raise eyebrows across the pond; USA Today presents the short version (as always) of legal services funding struggles nationwide; changes (and hiring!) in the Massachusetts indigent defense system; pro bono on a DLA Piper salary ain’t so bad.    

• 9.1.11 – the new Last Resort Exoneration Project, housed at the Seton Hall University School of Law, is complementing the work of the Innocence Project.  While the Innocence Project operates nationally and primarily uses DNA evidence to free the wrongfully convicted, Last Resort operates only within the Garden State and focuses on cases in which DNA evidence is not in play.  Check out this profile of Last Resort, which began operations this past February, on MyCentralJersey.com.

• 8.31.11 – is change afoot in the way that Volunteer State public defenders are assigned?  The Tennessean reports on a proposal being kicked around by the Tennessee Supreme Court: “To rein in the state’s fast-growing indigent defense fund, the court has drafted an amendment to its rules that would allow the cash-strapped state Administrative Office of the Courts to solicit bids and award contracts to lawyers or firms ‘to provide legal services to indigent persons for a fixed fee.’ The proposal has come under a barrage of criticism from lawyers, judges and state and national legal organizations who warn that flat-fee contracts will put many lawyers out of work, undermine the authority of local judges and deny poor people the effective assistance of legal counsel.”

• 8.31.11 – heads up, federal job seekers!  Government Executive reports that USAJobs will go down temporarily in October while Uncle Sam readies a new version of the website: “The Office of Personnel Management will take the government’s job application platform offline in October to transition to a new system. USAJobs 3.0, designed to make the process smoother for potential hires and federal recruiters alike, will debut on Oct. 13. Agencies will have to close all open job announcements before Oct. 6, when the system will be made unavailable to all applicants for nearly a week. The downtime will allow agencies to transition data to the new platform built by OPM and create a level playing field for job seekers and human resources staff, said Angela Bailey, the agency’s associate director of employee services.”

• 8.30.11 – two access-to-justice developments in West Virginia. 
• First, the Journal reports on hearings held by the state’s 2 year-old AtJ Commission to explore the problems that low-income West Virginians confront in navigating the justice system: “A shortage of funding for more Legal Aid attorneys [and] the difficulties citizens face when trying to hire an attorney…were among several issues discussed Monday night in Martinsburg during the second of six statewide public forums on the issue of access to the state’s civil justice system. The forum was held by the West Virginia Access to Justice Commission, which was formed two years ago.”  Here’s a troubling statistic (emphasis mine): “There are only 52 Legal Aid attorneys for the state’s 55 counties.”  And of course many of those attorneys are concentrated in population centers, which makes things very difficult for would-be clients in rural locales.
• Second, on a more positive note the Record reports that Legal Aid of West Virginia has launched a LawHelp site to empower litigants with self-help resources.

• 8.30.11 – In a letter to editor of the New York Times, new ABA president William T. Robinson, III offers perspective on a recent NYT editorial which presented solutions to narrow the civil justice gap. The letter supports the Times’s view that LSC funding should be expanded, but takes issue with the Times’s call to deregulate the delivery of legal services.  Writes Robinson: “[A] rush to open the practice of law to unschooled, unregulated nonlawyers is not the solution. This would cause grave harm to clients. Even matters that appear simple, such as uncontested divorces, involve myriad legal rights and responsibilities. If the case is not handled by a professional with appropriate legal training, a person can suffer serious long-term consequences affecting loved ones or financial security. It also could lead to a violation of the law.”  (Personally I’d look at unbundling – i.e. limited-scope representation – innovations before farming traditional lawyer work out to nonlawyers.  In practice, those outfits that market to low-income clients by offering quasi-legal services have patchy records, and are certainly not substitutes for legal services providers.  Although I grant that it’s the people who are over-income for legal services but can’t afford to retain counsel who present a very difficult challenge.)

• 8.29.11 – in Utah, a Deseret News editorial reacts to a recent ACLU of Utah report on the state’s indigent defense system: “This week, the ACLU released an in-depth study of criminal defense for the poor in Utah, and found the state system woefully inadequate. Utah is one of only two states that doesn’t fund public defenders, requiring counties to foot the bill and resulting in a funding rate of $5.22 per capita, less than half the national average of $11.86.  Attorneys [in rural counties] are ‘chronically underfunded and overworked,’ according to the report, receiving an average of just $400 per case…. There are several things the state can do to remedy the situation, and not all of them require money. For starters, public defenders should be granted greater access to the state’s crime labs, on par with that of prosecutors. It should also institute statewide standards for selecting public attorneys, eliminating conflicts of interest, and provide more oversight of county justice systems. But ultimately, funding for public attorneys must increase.”  Here’s a link to the ACLU report: Failing Gideon.

• 8.28.11 – now this is an adversarial justice system.  A New Orleans Times-Picayune opinion piece looks at the recent, bizarre goings-on between NOLA public defenders and court staff.  “Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton was getting a bit worried a couple of years ago because his attorneys were coming back injured after appearing before Judge Ben Willard.  First Steve Singer had to have surgery for a torn ligament after Willard ordered sheriff’s deputies to kick him out of the courtroom. A few months later, Stuart Weg also needed medical treatment following a similarly unceremonious departure, and Bunton asked for a Judiciary Commission investigation.”  This quoted passage notwithstanding, it does not appear as if the defenders are entirely without blame.  They seem to take seriously their responsibilities as zealous advocates.  (On a related note, the PSLawNet Blog interviewed Mr. Bunton several months ago.  He struck us as one cool cat.  Let’s hope cooler heads prevail in the Big Easy.)

• 8.29.11 – a little legal internship hullabaloo across the Pond.  A piece in the Guardian laments the increased number of unpaid legal internships in both public interest and for-profit law firm settings.  The author argues that some “employers” may be skirting regulations that distinguish paid employment relationships from volunteer learning opportunities, and that blossoming lawyers are too vulnerable at this early stage in their careers to raise a stink.  The author further contends that the entities charged with regulating the legal profession are not paying sufficient attention to the issue.  It’s hard for me to draw parallels with the U.S market because it seems that our labor regulations may be a bit more permissive, particularly in allowing government and nonprofit entities to take on unpaid interns. Nonetheless, it’s an issue worth watching in the U.S. given the glut of law graduates looking for practice experience.

• 8.29.11 – a piece in USA Today highlights the deteriorating condition of the nation’s civil legal services infrastructure, especially as the Legal Services Corporation is threatened with a 25% funding cut by congressional appropriators.  Some notable data points:
• “The House Appropriations Committee has proposed slashing…$104 million [from LSC’s budget] for fiscal 2012, rolling back funding to $300 million — a level not seen since 1999.”
• “The number of people eligible, based on income levels, for LSC programs across the country has gone up 27% since 2007. About 64 million people qualify [according to LSC president Jim Sandman].”
• “Idaho Legal Aid Services has started unpaid monthly furloughs, and offices are closed one day each month. Several employees have been downgraded from full-time to part-time status.”
• “Legal Services of New Jersey plans to lay off 100 employees by the end of the year.”

• 8.28.11 – big news on the indigent defense front in Massachusetts, including some new public-defender hiring.  From the Milford Daily News:  “Leaders of the state’s public defender system will soon detail a plan to hire more staff attorneys to represent the poor and contract less of that work to about 3,000 private lawyers across Massachusetts. The cost of defending low-income people came under the spotlight on Beacon Hill this year when Gov. Deval Patrick proposed hiring about 1,000 new state attorneys and ending the use of private attorneys altogether….  After lawmakers offered less sweeping proposals of their own, Patrick ultimately signed a state budget last month that makes less ambitious reforms. It requires at least 25 percent of cases with indigent defendants to be handled by state attorneys by next July, up from about 10 percent now…. Lisa Hewitt, the committee’s general counsel, said the plan will likely require hiring 346 new full-time employees, including attorneys, support staff, social workers and investigators.  A final number is still in the works, she said. The state now has 252   public defenders on its payroll.”

• 8.26.11 – DLA Piper creates a pro bono immersion program of sorts for public-interest minded associates.  From AmLaw Daily: “DLA Piper unveiled a program…that creates what many first-year associates might call a dream job–the opportunity to work on pro bono cases while taking home a six-figure salary unheard of at most public service organizations.  Starting in January, two incoming DLA Piper associates each year will be selected to do exclusively pro bono work for a year as part of the firm’s DLA Piper/Krantz Fellowship Program.”

Autumn being my favorite season, I leave you with this pop music gem from one of the most unlikely songwriters to write a cartoon movie soundtrack.

The Vera Institute of Justice, founded in 1961, is an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit organization that combines expertise in research, technical assistance, and demonstration projects to assist leaders in government and civil society, examine justice policy and practice, and improve the systems people rely on for justice and safety. Vera has offices in New York City, Washington, DC, and New Orleans, and its projects and reform initiatives, typically conducted in partnership with local, state, or national officials, are located across the United States and around the world. Vera is an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity in the workplace.

Vera’s Center on Immigration and Justice seeks a Program Analyst to work primarily on three federally-funded projects that aim to improve police-immigrant relations through researching the impact of cultural and language barriers, identifying promising practices, and training law enforcement. One of these programs specifically focuses on law enforcement relations with Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities in the post-September 11th environment. Vera has a long history of collaboration with community stakeholders and law enforcement to improve public safety. Vera is widely acknowledged as one of a few national experts on police-immigrant relations. Our work positions us at the forefront of the policing field’s growing interest in police-immigrant relations. The Program Analyst will have a key role in our currently funded projects, as well as in identifying gaps to be covered in future projects.

Click into the listing on PSLawNet for application instructions (login required).

Our buddy, and student debt expert, Heather Jarvis thinks so.  There’s no doubt the House will soon move forward on plans to trim cut the dickens out of federal spending.  But Heather thinks the College Cost Reduction & Access Acts’s loan forgiveness provision is safe.  Check out her blog post to find out why…