From a New York State Bar Association press release:

 Government and public interest lawyers burdened by student loan debt can apply for grants through the New York State Bar Association.

To be eligible for the Steven C. Krane Special Committee on Student Loan Assistance for the Public Interest grants, attorneys must have practiced for at least five years. Priority will be given to civil legal services attorneys. Each grant will be for a minimum of $2,000.

…

Applications are due November 30, 2011. Applications must be mailed to: SLAPI, New York State Bar Association, One Elk Street, Albany, NY 12207. Recipients will be announced in January.

For more information, please visit: www.nysba.org.slapi.

Last week Office of Personnel Management officials spoke about the problems that job-seekers have experienced with the recently launched USAJobs website.  OPM folks were surprised by the immediate, postlaunch user traffic, and in some respects the new system was overwhelmed by it.  Officials, while apologizing to those who experienced problems, also noted that many of the service requests they received stemmed from user error.   Read the full Government Executive story here.

The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia is looking for an attorney for its Domestic Violence / Family Law Unit.

The Legal Aid Society was established in 1932 to “provide legal aid and counsel to indigent persons in civil law matters and to encourage measures by which the law may better protect and serve their needs.” Legal Aid is the oldest general civil legal services program in the District of Columbia.

The Staff Attorney will handle a caseload of family law cases, including custody, child support, protection orders, and divorce matters; interview prospective clients; participate in community outreach; and engage in systemic reform efforts.

To find out more and to learn how to apply, check out the listing at PSLawNet!

by Kristen Pavón

Here’s some warm & fuzzy public interest news to kick off your weekend!

The Columbia Spectator reported today that Ahmed A., a 37-year-old gay man from the West African country Mauritania, was granted asylum  last month with the help of Columbia Law’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic.

“When I saw the headline, ‘Immigration approval’ and the small red stamp ‘Approval guaranteed’ on the bottom, I couldn’t believe myself,” says Ahmed, who identifies as gay and applied for asylum with the help of Columbia Law School’s Sexuality & Gender Law Clinic. “I was crying.” . . .

Columbia’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic, which is the only of its kind, adopts one or two asylum candidates every year. The clients, who are referred by the non-profit Immigration Equality, all seek to flee their countries for fear of persecution due to sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or HIV status. Mauritania is one of seven countries in the world where same-sex sexual activity is punishable by death. . . .

Ahmed said that because of his sexual orientation, his tribe banished him, his father signed away his legal relation to him, and his sister’s husband, who now works for the Mauritanian government, asked her for a divorce.

After calling Columbia clinical law professor Suzanne Goldberg [about his approval], Ahmed celebrated by sleeping, something he had barely been able to do for the six months that he waited for his application to be processed.

Ahmed’s case is a great reminder of why we, the public interest enthusiasts, do what we do.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers. From my perch at the NALP Global Headquarters I’m looking out at a gray-but-still-beautiful autumn morning.  Well, actually now I’m looking out at a trash truck picking up garbage from a restaurant.  So much of urban beauty is in the eye of the beholder.   

This week: LSC funding movement on the Hill (or in French: le Hill); how Virginia prosecutors and defenders are weathering funding challenges; speaking of, are layoffs coming to the Chicago PD’s office?; the lawyers representing “Occupy” protestors; DV funding for New Hampshire Legal Assistance; controversy surrounding a proposal to put caseload limits on Washington State defenders (story from the glorious city of Yakima, which I once called home). 

• 11.2.11 – our friends at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association offered a useful update about Legal Services Corp. appropriation developments in Congress: “Yesterday the Senate approved by a vote of 69 to 30 a package of three appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) appropriation bill for FY 2012.   The measure includes an appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation of $396.1 million for next year.  This amounts to a 2 percent cut from the current level of $404.2 million…”  Read on for discussion of how this may be reconciled with the much lower House LSC appropriation.
• The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog opened up debate about the importance of funding LSC.  You can read the blog post and some commentary (which is pretty good by Internet standards) here.

• 11.1.11 – a piece in the Virginian-Pilot provides numbers on how Virginia prosecutors and PDs are handling funding challenges.  Some data points:
• “In Virginia, the State Compensation Board decreased the budgets for commonwealth’s attorneys statewide by 10 percent in 2010.”
• “Norfolk has lost five prosecutors since last July, dropping the number of attorneys from 44 to 39, Commonwealth’s Attorney Gregory Underwood said.”
• “Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney Nancy Parr said in an email that she…lost two attorney positions, which she said she was able to do through attrition rather than layoffs.”
• “A handful of open positions in the Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office have remained unfilled, prosecutor Earle C. Mobley said.”
• “Virginia Beach public defender Peter Legler said his office has gone several years without raises but has not lost any attorney positions.”

• 10.31.11 – layoffs among Chicago public defenders?  Quite possible.  From the Sun-Times: “Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle sent out the first wave of layoff notices Monday to roughly 100 employees under her authority, a spokesman said….The layoffs will hit a range of offices under her control, from the public defender’s office to the highway department….County Public Defender Abishi Cunningham didn’t have a precise count of workers in his office receiving notices today but said he hopes the county and the unions will work out a deal as they did before.  ‘We’re still negotiating,’ Cunningham said, adding that he initially thought he was going to have layoffs in his office at the start of this year but negotiations avoided that through furloughs.”

• 10.30.11 – a McClatchy piece looks at the role of lawyers assisting “Occupy” protestors throughout the country.  Noting that many protestors are running into legal entanglements, the piece goes on, “The resulting legal skirmishes have spurred the largest mobilization of pro bono protest attorneys since the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s. ‘It’s probably bigger than the anti-war movement, because there are so many simultaneous demonstrations. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Carol Sobel, co-chair of the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild.  Some of the volunteer lawyers draft and file motions, or simply monitor the protests as legal observers. Some advise the activists on how to negotiate with city leaders. Others show up in court – usually on short notice – to represent jailed protesters at their initial court appearances.” 

• 10.29.11 – New Hampshire Legal Assistance received good funding news: the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women renewed a grant which allows NHLA to serve DV victims.  The Nashua Telegraph reports: “The grant, $540,000 over two years, is the prime funding source for the statewide program that offers civil legal services to low-income victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence….”  It’s been a tumultuous funding year for NHLA (as has been the case with so many other programs), so this is certainly welcome news.  (Congrats, John and company!)

• 10.29.11 – the Yakima Herald-Republic reports on the controversy surrounding the Washington State Supeme Court’s consideration of a proposal to put upward limits on public defender caseloads:  “In an effort to make sure indigent clients are receiving adequate legal representation, the state Bar Association recently recommended limiting the number of cases public defenders can handle at any one time.”  The story focuses on arguments against the proposal by Washington cities, including Yakima, which don’t have a way to finance the costs that could attend the rule’s promulgation.  (Unsolicited autobiographical tidbit: I spent a post-college year volunteering with a legal services program in Yakima.  Such a wonderful, formative experience.  And I sure miss hiking the eastern Cascades.)   

by Kristen Pavón

Hello readers!

I found a few more great free webinars for ya!

• Veterans Issues: Family Law, Consumer Rights, Job Protection and Diversionary Courts – November 8, 2011. Register here.
• Elder Rights training – Recorded Feb. 2011 to July 2011. Find them here.
• Auto Fraud training – Recorded 2009 to Sept. 2011. Find them here.
• Domestic Violence training – Sort of old, Recorded 2010. Find them here.

Enjoy!

by Kristen Pavón

On July 2, 2010, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles T. Canady established the Florida Innocence Commission to offer solutions to the Florida Supreme Court for decreasing wrongful convictions.

The commission met on October 10 to discuss recommending mandatory recording of interrogations in serious cases.

Ultimately, the group voted on recommending a mandate that Florida law enforcement investigators electronically record custodial interrogations of suspects in cases of serious felonies, with a cautionary jury instruction as the sanction for failing to record interrogations.

Opponents of the recommendation took issue with the light sanction attached to the mandate.

Florida International University College of Law Dean Alex Acosta, along with University of Florida Levin College of Law professor Kenneth Nunn and Senator Joe Negron, R-Palm City, argued that excluding statements should be the sanction for failing to record interrogations.

“I believe if you mandate something and the sanctions are relatively meaningless, you haven’t mandated anything,” said Jacksonville criminal defense attorney Hank Coxe. . . .

Kenneth Nunn, a University of Florida law professor, said: “What I am concerned about here is whether or not this jury instruction is the big bad junkyard dog with teeth that everybody says it is.” . . .

“Why not say to a police agency — if they can’t say they had good cause not to record that statement, that it wasn’t in a location where it was appropriate to do so, that the suspect said he didn’t want it recorded, or there was equipment failure — why not say you can’t use the statement? To me, that seems to be the biggest sanction you can have,” Nunn said.

Nunn joined Acosta and Coxe in asking whether the commission’s job is to come up with the strongest recommendations on best practices to prevent wrongful convictions — or to compromise on what is politically feasible.

Interesting. I have the same concern as Professor Nunn, will the jury instructions have enough bite to get law enforcement officials to record interrogations? You can read more here.

Thoughts?

The Center for WorkLife Law (WLL) is looking for a Summer Law Clerk! WLL is a nonprofit research and advocacy group based at U.C. Hastings College of the Law that works on issues of employment discrimination based family caregiving responsibilities and workplace flexibility.

WLL has a unique “six stakeholder” model, reflecting our belief that many different stakeholders have a role to play in social and organizational change around work-life issues. WLL works with employees, employers, plaintiff-side employment lawyers, management-side employment lawyers, unions, and public policymakers. WLL also works with social scientists to spark interdisciplinary studies of bias against caregivers, and works extensively with the press.

Under the supervision of and reporting to the Director and the Managing Director of WLL, the Law Clerk is responsible for assisting in the work of WLL, and will conduct legal research and writing on topics related to WLL’s work, including in the substantive areas of employment discrimination, labor law, and the legal profession and help develop public education and training materials for WLL’s website and presentations.

To apply, check out the listing at PSLawNet!

From a National Legal Aid & Defender Association email:

Yesterday the Senate approved by a vote of 69 to 30 a package of three appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) appropriation bill for FY 2012.   The measure includes an appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation of $396.1 million for next year.  This amounts to a 2 percent cut from the current level of $404.2 million.   The entire 2 percent comes from basic field funding.  Both LSC management and the Office of Inspector General are funded at the same levels as FY 2011.

The House Appropriations Committee has previously allocated $300 million for FY 2012, a cut of $104.2 million (27.5 percent) from FY 2011 levels.  It appears likely that negotiations between the House and Senate on the three appropriations bills passed by the Senate will proceed without any final House floor action on the CJS appropriations bills.  The bill also includes funding packages for the Agriculture Department and Transportation – HUD.

The Senate bill was passed under budget level authority agreed to by the House and Senate during the debt ceiling debate last August.  The House bill passed the committee under significantly lower overall budget authority included in the House budget resolution authored by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI).   If House-Senate negotiators stick with the overall $1.043 trillion spending ceiling previously agreed upon in August, the process could proceed relatively smoothly toward a reconciliation of the two bills.   Negotiations could begin as early as today.  However, a number of House members have indicated their opposition to the overall spending ceiling adopted in August, and such opposition could slow down negotiations on the Senate package that includes LSC funding.   

Vermont Legal Aid is looking for a full-time, one-year contract attorney in their Burlington office to assist in carrying out their anti-discrimination work.

Responsibilities for this position include representing individual and organizational housing discrimination victims in federal and State courts and in administrative hearings; testifying before State and municipal planning and zoning entities; and limited community legal education and committee work.

Vermont’s most common forms of housing discrimination occur on the prohibited bases of race/color, national origin, ethnicity, families with children, and disability. Help Vermont fight housing discrimination!

If you’re interested, check out the listing at PSLawNet!