By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  The News Bulletin took a break last week, so I didn’t get a chance to offer Veterans Day thanks to my favorite vet: Thanks Dad!  This week we return with a broad range of content.  Sadly the most significant story is that of the congressional cut of $56 million in Legal Services Corporation funding.  In summary here’s what we’ve got:

• Themes emerge from ABA’s October pro bono summit;
• Large LSC funding cut;
• A look at “veterans court” programs;
• Best places to work in federal government;
• Funding woes facing NC legal aid lawyers;
• More LSC: a development in the LSC/CRLA legal proceedings;
• More more LSC: 5 additions to the Pro Bono Task Force (including a friend of mine!);
• LAFLA + TCC = SoCal MLP;
• USAJobs Version 3 stumbles out of the gates;
• Funding news about Minnesota legal aid lawyers, defenders, and prosecutors;
• The worst of the foreclosure crisis yet to hit NY courts;
• Demand for Maryland Legal Aid Bureau’s services going nowhere but up;
• The Big Easy’s public defender seeks more local funding; and
• Practice-area specialization in law firm pro bono: yea or nay?   

This week(s):

• 11.16.11 – in the L.A.-based Daily Journal, O’Melveny & Myers’s managing counsel for pro bono David Lash recaps his experience at a first-ever Pro Bono Summit hosted by the ABA last month: “We agreed upon and built on a number of themes:
  • Pro bono involvement by the private bar leverages meager resources right now;
  • Professionalization of the pro bono legal services delivery system is critical to maximizing that leverage;
  • Pro bono programs will be only as effective and help only as many clients as the size and strength of the country’s legal aid providers will allow;
  • The advantages of technology must be better tapped …to bring more services to more people in more areas.”

• 11.15.11 – the week’s biggest news is bad news.  Congress has cut Legal Services Corporation funding by over $56,000,000 (about 14%).  Here is National Law Journal coverage, and here is a press release from LSC.  The most recent news, that of the House and Senate passing the bill and of its expected signature by President Obama, comes from The Hill.  No good comes from this.  Programs will be forced to cut staff and reduce services at a time when more and more Americans need legal assistance.  One partially mitigating factor is that some LSC grantee programs planned to absorb a budget-cut shock in their budgets.  But that doesn’t change the underlying reality: a cut in legal services funding at a time of acute need means fewer poor people will be served.  And there will be fewer lawyers to serve them.  Indeed, the NLJ article reports: “In 2010, the groups had 9,059 employees, including 4,351 lawyers. But they shed 445 staffers – including more than 200 lawyers – during the first half of 2011.”

• 11.15.11 – Should some veterans’ offenses be adjudicated in a specialized civilian court?  A piece in the The Atlantic explores this question: “Nearly 80 veterans courts have sprung up across the country over the past four years, and 20 more are expected to open by the end of this year. Many courts accept only nonviolent offenses. Some, like Dallas County, also take violent crimes on a case-by-case basis. Most consider only those veterans who are struggling with mental-health or substance-abuse problems. Many of the judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and court administrators have served or have family in the military, and some volunteer for the courts before or after normal hours. (One attraction of veterans courts is their low local cost, a result of this volunteerism and the provision of counseling by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.)”

• 11.15.11 – want to know who’s happiest working for Uncle Sam?  The Partnership for Public Service has released its 2011 “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” report.  There are no specific ratings for lawyers’ job satisfaction, but the report offers general insight about which agencies cultivate happy, motivated workforces. 

• 11.14.11 – according to the Public News Service, there are hard times on the horizon for both legal services and indigent defense lawyers in the Tar Heel State.  The state cut 20% of its funding to Legal Aid of North Carolina.  “The cuts have forced [LANC] to close four offices and lay off 60 attorneys….  The hourly rate for public defenders was cut as well, and a lapse in funding expected in March of next year will force those attorneys to work without pay until the fiscal year begins again in June.”

• 11.14.11 – the Legal Services Corporation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) scored a legal victory in its effort to gain access to otherwise confidential client information held by California Rural Legal Assistance attorneys.  From McClatchy’s “Suits and Sentences” blog: “The subpoenas [that OIG sought to enforce] will enable investigators to troll through some 37,000 case files, as they search for evidence that California Rural Legal Assistance attorneys may have strayed into politics or in other ways [run afoul of LSC restrictions on grantee program activity]. The legal-aid organization has already turned over some 6,000 pages and several megabytes of data; now, they will have to turn over client names and other information as well.”

• 11.14.11 – more LSC news.  From a press release: “John G. Levi, Chairman of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), today announced the addition of five new members to the Board’s Pro Bono Task Force.  The new Task Force members are Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Deborah Leff, Deputy Counselor for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice; Larry S. McDevitt, Chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service; Linda K. Rexer, Executive Director of the Michigan State Bar Foundation, and Angela C. Vigil, Partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP and the firm’s Director of Pro Bono and Community Service for North America.”  Hey, that’s my buddy Angela!  Good choice.  The task force is playing an important role for LSC because a message that came from Capitol Hill in the appropriations process is that engaging the private bar must be a priority.  LSC has long done this but I suppose that the funding cut will necessitate a re-exploration of the best ways to harness private bar support.

• 11.9.11 – Fun with abbreviation: in SoCal, LAFLA and TCC have formed an MLP.  From a press release: “The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) and The Children’s Clinic, “Serving Children and Their Families” (TCC) in Long Beach have formed the Greater Long Beach Medical-Legal Partnership to provide an integrated approach to health-related, legal challenges faced by low-income individuals and families in their everyday lives, particularly in the areas of housing, family law and public benefits.”

• 11.8.11 – Government Executive catches us up on the federal government’s efforts to solve glitches in the new USAJobs website: [An official] announced that the number of resumes uploaded to the redesigned website is fast approaching 1 million. Many users have complained that not all the information on their resumes is being properly uploaded to their online applicant profile.  [The official] explained that though all the information is there, users cannot see the resumes in their entirety. The USAJobs team will be addressing these visibility issues in the coming week, along with a continued focus on password-reset complaints, which remain the topic generating the most help desk tickets.”

• 11.7.11 – Minnesota Public Radio catches us up on funding difficulties confronting civil legal services lawyers, public defenders, and prosecutors in the North Star State.  Some takeaway (and note that Hennepin County is where Minneapolis sits):

• [S]tate funding makes up one-third of [Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance’s] budget. This year, the state reduced its contribution…by $1.6 million.  [MMLA] has already had to cut positions because of decreases in funding from their other public and private sources…. In 2009…they had 73 attorneys; at the beginning of 2012, they’ll be down to 55.
• Unlike Legal Aid, the State’s Board of Public Defense got a slight increase in their state funding…. but it’s not enough to make up for past years of budget cuts [according to Hennepin county’s chief defender]…. [H]e doesn’t have enough lawyers to keep up with caseloads that are more than double the amount recommended by the American Bar Association.
• [Hennepin County Attorney Mike] Freeman said county attorneys haven’t received pay raises in several years. And his office hasn’t hired a new attorney in the last 10 years, he said.

• 11.7.11 – a Thomson Reuters piece conjures up a scary prospect: the full impact of the foreclosure crisis has yet to hit New York courts.  “The flood of foreclosure cases created by the subprime mortgage fallout and high unemployment rates is expected to clog cash-strapped New York courts for the next several years, a New York judge told members of the state Assembly….  [T]he number of homeowners in foreclosure cases who are unrepresented by attorneys has risen from 63 percent in 2010 to roughly 67 percent in 2011….And cuts to the state court budget have decreased the number of judicial hearing officers available to preside over foreclosure settlement conferences, which were made a mandatory part of foreclosure cases in 2009….According to a 2010 report from the New York State Unified Court System, the number of foreclosure cases pending in 2010 rose to 77,815, up from 54,591 the year before.”

• 11.6.11 – a story in The Capital, based in Annapolis, MD, highlights the swelling demand for services at the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, as well as the changing demographics of its client community.  “[A]s the economy has slowed…former middle-income wage earners are flocking to Maryland Legal Aid to take seats next to the traditional low-income clients…. Legal Aid…has seen its annual caseload increase from about 40,000 in 2007 to nearly 70,000 in the fiscal year that ended in June….”  MDLAB has seen huge increases in unemployment and other public benefits cases.  One nitpick: the article refers to a “shortage of lawyers willing to work in lower-paying public service roles.”  Come again?

• 11.5.11 – the Times-Picayune on indigent defense funding in New Orleans:  “The head of the Orleans Parish public defender’s office…asked City Council members to increase the agency’s budget for next year, saying the state cannot bail the agency out of its $1.9 million shortfall. Derwyn Bunton, the chief public defender, said his office is looking at cost-cutting measures and whether some of the clients can afford to pay for part of their legal representation. But the sheer magnitude of cases at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court and cutbacks from the state will leave the agency with a deficit next year unless the city provides more money….”

• 11.4.11 – on his “Access to Justice” blog, Richard Zorza explores whether law firms should focus on an area (or areas) of pro bono practice in order to build institutional expertise and deliver high-quality, efficient representation.