By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday (and December), dear readers.  On this date in the year 1409, the University of Leipzig opened.  Never forget.  Also, on 12/2/70 the EPA began operations.  It is surprising to many that President Nixon established the EPA.  Guess what other federal agency he established.  It’s the Legal Services Corporation.  And LSC figures prominently in this week’s Bulletin, which includes coverage of:

• state court systems feeling the fiscal pinch;
• Maryland’s governor pressures law school clinic to back off environmental suit;
• Tennessee’s high court launches a pro se assistance website;
• OPM provides details on the new federal gov’t internship programs;
• an update on the deferred-associates-take-public-interest-placements phenomenon;
• a Florida legal services program’s fiscal struggles;
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Empire State;
• exciting law student pro bono news;
• outlook for state budgets bleak, according to new report;
• a Missouri legal aid lawyer fights for equal smiles under law;
• declining Biglaw pro bono hours – temporary or here to stay?
• Prairie State Legal Services’s $ struggles;
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Mountain State;
• boosting pro bono among retiring and retired lawyers;
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Old Line State
• the LSC funding cut’s impact in the Garden State.

This week:

• 11.30.11 – hardly surprising, but budgetary belts are tightening in state court systems throughout the country.  From the National Law Journal: “Deep state court budget cuts are hurting access to justice, according to a recent survey issued by the National Center for State Courts.  The survey, released on Nov. 29, tabulated a poll of state courts conducted from July through October.  Results indicate widespread recent budget cuts, including 42 states with substantial court budget decreases; 39 states where clerk vacancies were not filled; 34 states where court staff were laid off; and 23 states with reduced court operating hours.”

  

• 11.30.11 – a few days back my colleague Kristen posted about the Maryland governor pressuring a U of Maryland Law clinic to back off an environmental suit against a poultry farm.  (This gives me an opportunity to gratuitously refer to the poultry industry as “Big Chicken,” which I find funny.) Where were we?  Oh, a Washington Post editorial takes aim at Governor O’Malley: “Mr. O’Malley’s Nov. 14 missive was a misguided protest against the school’s environmental law clinic and its involvement in a lawsuit against Perdue Inc. and Alan and Kristin Hudson Farm, a Maryland-based operation that works for Perdue.”  Here’s some more detailed coverage and background from the Baltimore Sun.  Here’s Dean Phoebe Haddon’s – hey she was my torts professor! – reply to the governor.

   

• 11.30.11 – Tennessee’s high court is hands-on in addressing the justice gap.  From the Daily News Journal: “The Tennessee Supreme Court launched a new website this week to provide the public with valuable resources to help navigate the court system. The new site, JusticeForAllTN.com <http://www.justiceforalltn.com/> , is intended to assist people with civil legal issues who cannot afford legal representation.  The Justice for All website includes downloadable court forms, resources for representing yourself in court, information about common legal issues and an interactive map with resources for each of the state’s 95 counties. Thanks to a partnership with the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and the Tennessee Bar Association, the site also gives visitors the ability to email a volunteer attorney with questions.”

• 11.29.11 – lots of changes affecting employment pathways into federal government.  From Government Executive: “The Office of Personnel Management plans to launch the federal government’s new internship program by May….  The [Student Pathways Initiative] will consolidate several federal internship programs into three pathways, replacing the Federal Career Intern Program…. The initiative’s three options are an internship program for current students, a new Recent Graduates Program and the Presidential Management Fellows Program for graduate students. OPM confirmed that all three pathways will be launched simultaneously, and that the organization aims to be ready in time for the Recent Graduates pathway to accommodate students graduating in May 2012.”

• 11.29.11 – the Legal Intelligencer, based in the Glorious City of Philadelphia, has a piece reviewing the phenomenon of associates whose law-firm start dates were deferred taking short-term public interest placements.  This mostly affected the law school graduating class of 2009, but also some subsequent grads. According the article, while deferrals certainly marked a rocky patch on a law-school-to-law-firm employment path that was typically smooth, some deferred associates enjoyed rich experiences that have impacted their careers, and lives, for the better.  I’m glad to know that deferred associates are re-integrating into their law firms.  Here at PSLawNet we played a role in facilitating deferral placements, and in 2010 I looked in on the trend and concluded that things were going well.

• 11.29.11 – in Florida, Gulfcoast Legal Services has been battered by the recession.  IOLTA revenues in the Sunshine State have plummeted from $40 million to $6 million.  And the governor vetoed a $1 million appropriation that would have gone to GLS and other providers.  GLS has also seen other grants dry up.  “Because of the fallout [GLS], which started 2011 with 20 staff attorneys at its five offices, will end the year with 13.  Read more from the Bradenton Times.

• 11.29.11 –  The Rochester Daily Record reviews how Legal Services Corporation funding cuts will impact providers in Western New York State. 

• 11.29.11 – here’s a pair of stories about law school pro bono developments:
• at GW Law, six new pro bono programs are up and running according to Dean Paul Berman, including a new Street Law initiative, a homeless advocacy project, and a pro se resource project at the DC administrative hearings offices.  GW Law also launched an Innocence Project last year.
• from a Charlotte School of Law press release: “A pro bono student services organization at Charlotte School of Law has assisted more than 450 homebuyers file $3 million in claims against a multi-million dollar restitution fund supported by Beazer Homes U.S.A. The outreach is being offered to homebuyers who were victims of the fraudulent business practices acknowledged by Beazer in July 2009 as part of a deferred prosecution agreement reached with U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.”

• 11.29.11 – we’ve focused a lot recently on the federal legal services funding cut, but it’s important to remember that state-level legal services funding has declined in many jurisdictions too.  And as noted in this Washington Post piece, state governments face tough times ahead: “Things have improved since the worst of the recession, but states still face a dire fiscal situation, according to a report…released…by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO).  The Fiscal Survey of States says that even as states struggle with tepid revenue growth, they will be called on to spend more because of the economic distress caused by continued high unemployment.”  Here’s a link to the report.

• 11.28.11 – an attorney with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri has found an interesting niche practice: orthodontics.  LSEM’s Anne Morrow, now an attorney but formerly a nurse, “has secured orthodontics for 89 children in eastern Missouri who had previously been rejected under the state’s prohibitive Medicaid standards for orthodontics set by a dental advisory committee under MO HealthNet.”  State officials argue, however, that Morrow’s advocacy has the unintended consequence of setting back other children who have severe dental needs because her clients jump to the front of the line.  Read all about it in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch.  

• 11.28.11 – Fortune magazine looks at the recent declines in Biglaw pro bono hours: “Law firms are lagging in donating legal help because ‘they are anxious, and they don’t staff up quickly to meet the increase in client demand when the economy begins to improve,’ says Esther Lardent, chief executive of the Pro Bono Institute. ‘Much of the pro bono work is done by younger lawyers, but when they are in short supply, paid work is the priority’.”  Pro bono stakeholders are looking for new solutions in case this marks a systemic change and not a short-term fluctuation.  The piece reviews the ideas of building more pro bono into associates’ training curricula, and ramping up law student pro bono.

• 11.28.11 – in Illinois, funding cuts have forced Prairie State Legal Services to make significant cuts: “The agency has lost almost half its staff this year because of budget cuts and just last week congress approved another 14-percent budget cut. Because of limited resources, Prairie State can only help people with ‘basic human needs’ such as orders of protection, housing cases, and utility cases.”  Prairie State just announced that it’s cutting its telephone intake hours in half, according to WIFR.

• 11.28.11 -the LSC funding cut’s impact in West Virginia, reported by the State Journal: “West Virginia legal aid attorneys are searching for solutions following a congressional agreement that would cut services in the state by more than $400,000…. Adrienne Worthy, executive director of Legal Aid of West Virginia, said the state’s program has been fortunate to experience growth in the past few years.  ‘But as funding cuts have started to happen, we have gotten leaner and leaner,’ Worthy said. ‘There is no way we can lose those kinds of dollars and it not to have an impact on what we’re doing every day’.”

• 11.27.11 – a few stories above we read that they’re aren’t as many Biglaw associates to bolster pro bono hours.  What about the grayhairs partners heading toward retirement?  The Washington Post looks in on the issue of retiring/retired law-firm partners who, rather than leaving practice altogether, maintain robust pro bono dockets: “[M]any law firms in Washington are rethinking how they structure retirement and compensation for senior lawyers. Eleven firms…are working with the D.C. Access to Justice Commission on a project called the Senior Attorney Initiative for Legal Services. The program…targets a generation of attorneys who have retired or are on the cusp of retirement — the type of lawyers who at many firms make up a good chunk of the rainmaking roster — to encourage them to stay at their firms, transition commercial work to younger attorneys, and take more pro bono cases in-house.”

   

• 11.25.11 – the LSC funding cut’s impact on the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, courtesy of The Gazette: “[the] bureau received $4.3 million from [LSC] in fiscal 2011 and is slated to receive $3.7 million in fiscal 2012. [The figure is preliminary.] Maryland’s shortfall is roughly equal to the salaries of 11 of the bureau’s 154 staff attorneys, each of whom makes about $60,00 annually, [bureau official Shawn] Boehringer said.  Although bureau officials have not yet decided how to fill the funding gap, they likely will look to first cut travel and office expenses in order to avoid direct cuts in services to clients, Boehringer said.”

• 11.24.11 – the LSC funding cut’s impact on New Jersey legal services providers, courtesy of The Record.