By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  It’s been a relatively slow week as many of us have eased our ways back into the office.  Political junkies likely braved the fiasco that is cable news as it aired BREAKING, UNIVERSE-ALTERING DEVELOPMENTS (not involving grain elevators) from places like Coon Rapids, Iowa.  Today the Washington Post has run a funny picture of candidate John Huntsman reacting to a goat bite in New Hampshire.  This man is a former two-term governor and Mandarin-fluent ambassador to China.  Now he dodges Isak the Goat.  And that’s exactly how democracy should work.

Where was I? Oh, before we get to the news, one quick plug for a NALP/Equal Justice Works webinar series aimed at law students on the summer public interest job hunt.  Our two webinars will focus on cover letter and resume writing (part one) as well as interviewing and networking (part two).  Get the dates/details here.

At last, this week in public interest news:       

• criminal and civil justice gaps in the Volunteer State;
• possible monkey business in a Utah criminal case reads like a Law & Order script;
• is it more than the economy driving more law students into public interest careers?;
• the National Law Journal’s Pro Bono Hotlist profiles some headline-generating work;
• public interest items from January’s ABA Journal include a feature story on controversy involving an Illinois-based innocence project;
• animal law practice blowing up in Portland, OR (and why I loathe cats);
• the fiscal woes confronting Virginia-based legal services programs;
• the fiscal woes confronting West Virginia’s legal services program.

Here are the summaries:

• 1.5.12 – the widening civil and criminal justice gaps, as seen from the vantage point of Shelby County (Memphis, TN) Public Defender Stephen C. Bush, who writes in the Memphis Flyer: “In this moment, we cannot compromise on justice; living in poverty is hard enough. Our community has more than its share of hurting families, unemployment, substance abuse, hunger, sickness, mental illness, homelessness … the list goes on. These problems create more have-nots, more gaps. We cannot afford that. We must bear these costs together.”  Trivia: Shelby County has the 4th oldest defender program in the country.

• 1.4.12 – how’s this for a Law & Order twist: a prosecutor in the Utah County Attorney’s office faxed to county commissioners and the local defender’s office a letter which “called the public defenders’ [sic] office a ‘huge embarrassment’ and a ‘waste of money’.”  The letter referred to three defenders who worked on a homicide case – the defendant was convicted – as “a huge joke” and opined that “monkeys would do a much better job.”  The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the letter, which also referred to a defender sleeping at trial and throwing “temper tantrums,” was “signed by a ‘taxpayer in Utah County’.”  The prosecutor claims that an unknown third party handed her the letter, which she did not write but did fax…from a FedEx office.  Is there monkey business afoot?  Who knows?  But here’s the crazy part: in appealing the homicide conviction, a new defense legal team is asserting ineffective assistance and using the letter in making its case!  Apparently Utah’s standard for effective assistance is something above just monkeying around. 

• 1.3.12 – a short piece entitled “New Lawyers Have Rising Interest in Public Interest,” published on the higher-ed-focused Braintrack website, suggests that: “While the vast majority of new law school graduates find jobs with private law firms, many law schools have seen a significant uptick in the percentage of students pursuing careers in public interest….  Undoubtedly, the economy has played a role in these numbers: Since fewer opportunities are available at private firms, presumably students are more open to pursuing careers in public interest. But experts say that’s not the whole story.”  The piece goes on to suggest that students are increasingly public service minded and looking for meaningful careers in service.  Interesting.  Certainly the relative dearth of law firm jobs isn’t the only factor that’s driven more law students to consider careers in nonprofit and government arenas. But the weight of the anecdotal evidence that’s come my way suggests the altered job market is by far the biggest driver.  While I think it’s terrific that more students are considering public service careers, and while I have high hopes for the Millenials, I just haven’t seen evidence of non-economic factors having an oversized impact on student career choices.  But I was wrong about the Eagles making the playoffs and maybe I’m wrong about this.  

• 1.2.12 – Biglaw pro bono.  The NLJ’s Pro Bono Hotlist profiles the work of a handful of large law firms.  Their causes range from Holocaust victim reparations to education and election reform.  Without question, these pro bono efforts are laudable and I’m heartened to see Biglaw resources channeled to these ends.  But I’m disappointed that more pro bono poverty law work – those unsexy, non-headline-generating eviction, domestic violence, and veterans’ benefits cases – doesn’t figure prominently into the HotList mix.  Even the firms selected by NLJ are doing great poverty law work.  I’d love to see the HotList zoom in on the unheralded work of lawyers helping poor clients with nowhere else to go.

• January, 2012 – this month’s ABA Journal includes some noteworthy public-interest items:
  • one feature piece, entitled “Journalism & Justice: Did Innocence Project Student Reporters Get Too Close to Lawyers?” looks at a controversy that enveloped Northwestern’s Medill Innocence Project and which has raised questions about the role of student journalists in investigating convicts’ claims of innocence.
  • some coverage of the ABA’s work w/ the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to address the justice gap.
  • an interesting new corporate structure for socially conscious entrepreneuers is being accepted in a growing number of states.  The new “…corporate form – seven states in the last two years have amended their constitutions to allow for it – allows corporate officers to consider a social, community or environmental purpose as part of their mission.  It also helps shield benefit corporations from shareholder lawsuits for doing what they think is the right thing.”  

     

• 12.30.11 – the Portland Business Journal looks at the growth of “animal law” practice.  The article is password-protected and I don’t have access to it, so I include this just as an FYI to the animal enthusiast types in our readership.  (I am an animal enthusiast, having in my youth owned a retriever named Reggie and a rabbit named Crusader.  Turns out it’s tough to raise a rabbit in a Philadelphia neighborhood.  Cats paid all kinds of attention to Crusader and did not have his best interests at heart.  I have loathed cats ever since. Vile creatures.)  

• 12.31.11 – Virginia legal services programs are facing extraordinary fiscal challenges.  They expect layoffs and service cuts, particularly with last November’s LSC appropriation slash.  The legal services community is looking to the state legislature for help, in the form of establishing mandatory IOLTA program and increasing some court filing fees.  From the Virginian-Pilot: 
  • The program that sends interest on money held in trust to legal aid in Virginia is voluntary. It is mandatory in all states except Virginia, Alaska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska and Idaho. With backing of Virginia’s bankers, the General Assembly passed a law in the 1990s stopping the program from becoming mandatory.  Delegate Manoli Loupassi, a Richmond Republican, has introduced a bill to repeal that law and thus allow the Virginia Supreme Court to consider requiring all lawyers to participate in the program. Similar bills died in the General Assembly a year ago.
  • Legal aid will ask lawmakers to approve a budget amendment that would increase the civil filing fee that goes to legal aid from $9 to $13.

•  12.30.11 – a call to the West Virginia bar: pick up pro bono efforts because legal aid is underfunded.  An editorial in The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register (a newspaper so badass it needs two names) highlights how the LSC cuts will impact Legal Aid of West Virginia and continues, “If Legal Aid is forced into layoffs, it will be up to local attorneys to swallow the loss of pay and offer their services pro bono. Here in our area, lawyers have a praiseworthy record of stepping up to the plate. In the past, they have been recognized for their high rate of pro bono work. The need for help will not disappear, even when the money does.