By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  Here in DC, presidential politics is all the buzz.  Earlier this week erstwhile Pennsylvania senator and sweater-vest supermodel Rick Santorum achieved impressive primary wins in Alabama and Mississippi.   Years ago a political guru famously quipped that Pennsylvania is Philly and Pittsburgh with a whole lot of Alabama in the middle.  Maybe this explains Mr. Santorum’s ability to connect with Southern voters.  Meanwhile Mitt Romney racks up delegates and the show goes on.

What else have we got?  Here’s an interesting piece of Pew research about how Millennials could be impacted by growing up “wired,” with near-instant access to all kinds of information.  I’m a Gen Xer, so while I’m vaguely inclined to write something about Millennials being impatient, I’m just too apathetic to get into it this morning.  I’d rather listen to some Liz Phair and be sullen.

Here is the week’s news:

• LSC has a new chief lobbyist;
• PBI says low bono ain’t pro bono;
• NYC’s plan for changes in indigent defense case assignment gets a court’s okay, but still controversial w/in the bar;
• An AmeriCorps VISTA writes about his work on Statesidelegal.org, an online resource for vets with legal needs;
• the Maine governor’s budget proposal includes a boost for legal services funding;
• Washington State’s high court will weigh in on indigent defense caseload woes;
• a new chief defender nominated in the Ocean State;
• the growing docket of the “Amvets” legal clinic run out of Chapman Law School;
• federal courts are busier, but also prepping for less funding;
• legal services layoffs in Kentucky;
• also on Cape Cod;
• where does one go for a pair of jeans, lingerie, and a foreclosure defense?;
• the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is staring at a $1.4million budget cut;
• show me a rise in pro se litigation;
• NY State sweetens the CLE pot for pro bono attorneys.

The summaries:

• 3.15.12 – from an LSC press release: “The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) announced today the appointment of Carol A. Bergman as Director of Government Relations and Public Affairs.  Beginning on March 19, Ms. Bergman will oversee LSC’s relationships with Congress, the Government Accountability Office and other government agencies.”  During her career Ms. Bergman has logged time on the Hill, in the White House, and in the nonprofit lobbying arena.  I suspect she will call upon all of that experience when the thorny business of FY13 budget wrangling gets underway.

• 3.15.12 – Pro Bono Institute prez Esther Lardent on why so-called “low bono” – or reduced-fee – legal services should not count as pro bono.  Lardent, while lauding the value of low bono as a way to deliver services to those who otherwise could not afford representation, writes: “Although [low bono services] are tools that help broaden access [to the justice system], they are primarily designed to broaden the market for legal services.”

• 3.15.12 – From Thomson Reuters: “New York City’s plan to shift tens of thousands of cases involving indigent defendants from private lawyers to the Legal Aid Society and other legal aid groups can go forward, a divided appeals court ruled Thursday. The disputed plan, which had been stayed pending the appeal, would only affect cases in which the initial legal aid group assigned to a case cannot provide representation due to a conflict. Five city bar associations had argued that the city’s proposal required their consent under the statute that governs the assignment of indigent defense cases, Article 18-B of the County Law. But in a 3-2 decision, the Appellate Division, First Department, said the plan was valid under 18-B and did not “improperly usurp the role of the County Bars.”

• 3.15.12 – writing in the Bangor Daily News, AmeriCorps VISTA member Peter MacArthur explains his work on a legal services project for vets: “I have worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Pine Tree Legal Assistance on its veteran and service member specific website www.statesidelegal.org since November…. With the vital help of many other individuals and organizations, Pine Tree Legal developed the Stateside Legal website as a clearinghouse of information on various legal needs, especially for low-income members of the military, veterans and their families. The website includes both original content on legal problems (such as foreclosure, divorce and service member Civil Relief Act issues) and links to quality legal content on other sites.”

• 3.14.12 – speaking of our country’s ruggedly beautiful northeastern corner, a budget proposal from Maine governor Paul LePage would boost state funding of legal services by $400K.  (Story from the Morning Sentinel.)

• 3.13.12 – in Washington State, the high court will weigh in on whether justice demands the imposition of public defender caseload limits.  Here’s the story from KEPR.

• 3.13.12 – Rhode Island looks to be getting a new chief public defender.  From the Providence Journal: “Governor Chafee on Wednesday named Mary S. McElroy as the state’s new public defender…. McElroy comes to the office from the federal public defender’s office…. McElroy will oversee an office of 93 staff, about 40 of whom are lawyers, that provides legal representation free of cost for Rhode Islanders who cannot afford a lawyer. McElroy’s appointment will need state senate approval.  If confirmed, the governor’s office said, McElroy would be the first woman to hold the position since it was established in 1941.”

• 3.13.12 – the growing docket of the “Amvets” legal clinic run out of Chapman Law School.  The clinic, which began helping vets with problems around housing, benefits, and other economic security needs, is now involved in a case about the employment termination of over 100 Air Force officers in what the clinic argues was a budget-cutting move that will strip the officers of their retirement benefits.  Here’s a press release with more information.  

• 3.13.12 – the federal courts are sorting out how to deal with increased caseloads in a time of budget austerity.  From the National Law Journal:  “The policy-making arm of the federal judiciary on March 13 discussed steps to reduce costs as workload increases and congressional budget cuts loom. The federal judiciary’s budget this year was funded at the same level as last fiscal year even as case filings increased, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said.”

• 3.12.12 – “Legal Aid of the Bluegrass has eliminated nine positions to make up for an unexpected cut in federal funding…. By year’s end, Kentucky’s four independent legal aid societies estimate they will have reduced their combined staffs by 40 positions, or 18.6 percent, since 2010…. Before the most recent cuts, Legal Aid of the Bluegrass was already turning away 7,062 people who requested help and were eligible in terms of income.”  (Story from Cincinnati.com.)

• 3.12.12 – “The same recession that caused many low-income and elderly persons to seek free legal help with their worsening problems is undermining the very agency that is supposed to be there to help them. South Coastal Counties Legal Services Inc., or SCCLS, which once had offices throughout Southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, has been forced to lay off 10 attorneys, secretaries and paralegals and close three offices, including the one in New Bedford, Executive Director Richard McMahon told The Standard-Times.”  (Here’s the full Standard-Times story.)

• 3.12.12 – much has been made of the paucity of affordable legal services for those of moderate means.  In response, and in the wake of an unprecedented foreclosure crisis, one Florida attorney provides low- and reduced-fee services from a booth in a shopping mall.  From Huffington Post: “In November, [Melva] Rozier founded a new type of law firm — or rather, a law store — inside the Boynton Beach Mall near West Palm Beach, Fla. The Law Booth counsels walk-in clients on divorce, foreclosure and other legal topics at discounted rates from a kiosk planted between American Eagle Outfitters and Victoria’s Secret shops.”

• 3.11.12 – the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland has fought hard in the recession’s wake to serve increasing numbers of clients, but the inevitable has caught up.  From the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which until now has weathered the economic downturn by tapping reserves, must cut $1.4 million from its budget in the coming year — at a time when poor clients are in greatest need of legal assistance.”
  • More recently this week a Plain Dealer editorial called on the local community to support the Legal Aid Society: “It falls upon the private sector to step up. Leaders in the local corporate community should consider giving preference to firms whose lawyers volunteer their time and effort to Legal Aid. Voters should contact their congressional representatives to demand restoration of funding for the Legal Services Corp…. The local United Way, which helps to support several Legal Aid programs, also ought to consider increasing its contribution.”

• 3.11.12 – a piece in the Missourian looks at the trend of increased pro se litigation – which has seen litigants initiating their own lawsuits in addition to representing themselves in defensive postures – and the legal industry’s response to it.  The piece highlights the challenges faced by pro se litigants and court systems as they adjust to litigation driven by non-attorneys.

• 3.9.12 – New York State is sweetening the CLE pot for lawyers who do pro bono work.  From the New York Law Journal: “Experienced lawyers now can earn more than 40 percent of the continuing legal education credits they must complete every two years by providing pro bono services to low-income New Yorkers. The four presiding justices of the Appellate Division departments recently voted to increase to 10 from six the credits for uncompensated work in family and other civil courts that lawyers with more than two years of experience can apply to their 24-hour CLE requirement.”

by Kristen Pavón

My résumé is ever-changing. I have about five or six different versions focusing on different types of jobs with varying templates. However, the one section that I can never seem to improve is my “skills” section.

I never know what is appropriate to include — what do employers expect to see in this section? I have the usual “proficient in XYS legal research engine” and my language skills… but what else goes in there? Should computer skills go on there at all? Should I only have a “language” section?

On Linkedin, you can add skills to your profile. I’ll admit, I went a bit skill-crazy. I’ve added things like strategic development, issue advocacy, counseling, nonprofit management, etc. That got me thinking —  what about on your résumé? Are these the types of skills you should add or should you just stick to computer and language skills?

According to Guerrilla Tactics For Getting the Legal Job of Your Dreams, your skills section is for languages, computer skills and other licenses. However, Harvard Law School’s Office of Public Interest Advising suggests omitting computer skills altogether. I tend to agree.

What do you think? What do you include in your “skills” section?

The Prisoners’ Rights Office (PRO) of the Vermont Defender General litigates a wide variety of civil, criminal and administrative cases, working to protect the constitutional rights of prisoners in such areas as unlawful convictions, medical care, and parole violations. The PRO internship offers experience in developing research and writing skills, drafting complaints and motions, making courtroom/parole board presentations, investigating cases, performing client outreach at the prisons, and assisting with legislative advocacy.

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By: Steve Grumm

Lists are all the rage among journalists, bloggers, and publishers these days.  Everybody loves a list.  They are 1) simply organized and 2) easy to read.  Some people – and these are typically college literature majors – get a bit snooty and talk of the death of longer-form writing.  Pish-posh.  Law school re-trained my brain to think in outline form, so lists are fine by me.  I still know when to go to the treatises if necessary. 

At the Huffington Post, Heartland Alliance president Sid Mohn (cool name!) lists eight mind-blowing facts about poverty in the U.S, including (and the below parentheticals are my own editorializing):

1. Our kids are poor. (This one I already knew but the latest census data are still astonishing.)
2. Too many of our workers are poor. (This is related to one of the worst mistruths that gained currency during the mid-1990s welfare reform efforts.  Some AFDC reform was needed, but there was a mischaracterization of welfare recipients as being (largely) lazy system-manipulators content to live on the dole.  In fact welfare recipients were (largely) the working poor who cycled on and off of benefits as work came and went.)
3. Our building blocks out of poverty are weak.

By: Steve Grumm

From the National Law Journal:

The policy-making arm of the federal judiciary on March 13 discussed steps to reduce costs as workload increases and congressional budget cuts loom.

The federal judiciary’s budget this year was funded at the same level as last fiscal year even as case filings increased, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said.

The administrative office reported today that total civil and criminal filings in federal district courts rose 2 percent to more than 367,600. The office reported an 11 percent increase in intellectual property cases and a 15 percent increase in consumer credit filings.

…

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The Homeless Veterans Project represent military veterans with disabilities before the Department of Veterans Affairs to help them obtain income support, health care, and other benefits that are rightfully due to them.  In 2009, ICLC recognized a tremendous unmet demand for legal services for the increasing number of female veterans.  To meet this growing need, ICLC launched a female veterans legal program. The program is one of the first of its kind in the country and has been featured on National Public Radio. The Project also specializes in psychological trauma claims, especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) arising from combat, or sexual assault.

Clerks within the Project will help conduct intake, manage cases and clients, research applicable laws and regulations, attend hearings and community meetings, and draft persuasive documents to file with the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Each clerk is also expected to write for publication about some aspect of the process or his or her experience.

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by Kristen Pavón

This morning, I read an interesting Above The Law post on the rise of social media in the practice of law and how Gen Y attorneys are too caught up in the technology craze instead of focusing on traditional methods of lawyering (I came across this post on Flipboard on my iPad, of course).

Here’s a snippet:

While younger generations have always looked at their elders as “stupid,” and not worthy of listening to, it has never been as much a part of the legal profession as it is now. The Gen Y cheerleading squad of lawyers and their marketers believe there actually is a “revolution” in the legal profession and that if those who have come before don’t get with it and move their practices to the iPad, they (we) will go the way of the dinosaur. . . .

While many Gen Y lawyers see the use for mentors, there is little room for the thought from the worst of Gen Y that they could learn something over a cup of coffee or an intelligent email discourse with someone that’s been practicing law (and still practices) longer than four minutes.

And so they continue to wonder why the few clients that call them for legal representation after seeing them “on the first page of Google” don’t seem to have any money but “really like your website.” . . .

I believe their mentors, those they turn to for advice, those they respect, are the webmasters, the SEO hacks, the marketers –- not lawyers, not those who came before them. When your practice is a website, an iPad, some videos, and a price list, why would you want to listen to someone with a bad website, no iPad, no videos, who still markets “organically” – through doing good work and developing relationships with real people? . . .

Futures are built, they are earned, and they are created through hard work. I don’t care what year it is or what new technology or social media site is out, your future will never be something you can purchase from someone else.

Attorney Brian Tannebaum (who practices in my beautiful and sunny hometown of MIA!) makes some good points about the relevance of social media and technology in how we build law practices and a strong client base. I agree that a solid, traditional foundation is the real key to success in our industry. Sure, I think technology can be a way to attract some clients and build a certain level of expertise — but you have to take your efforts offline to be a real player.

However, I (a “Gen Y” attorney) and other newbie attorneys like me do want mentors (and sponsors), not marketers! We do want mentors who will tell us “where they’ve been, where they’ve failed, and  . . . how they became who they are.”

There were two takeaways for me from Tannebaum’s piece on how to snag a well-respected attorney as a mentor:

1. Stalk.
2. Ask if they’ve “got a minute?”

Read the rest of Tannebaum’s post here.

Thoughts?

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• Ending violence against women
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• Defending women’s sexual and reproductive rights, including working to end maternal mortality
• Ending gender discrimination

Interested? Check the listing at PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

The Internets weren’t even a series of tubes when I was high school.  In college I used Netscape Navigator to browse while doing school papers, and Yahoo! was the latest thing in web search technology.  So I’m greatly interested in how the technology-driven Millenials will change the ways we work as the years unfold.  Here’s some new research from the Pew Internet Project and Elon University’s Imaging the Internet Center:

Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders, according to a new survey of technology experts.

Many of the experts surveyed by Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Internet Project said the effects of hyperconnectivity and the always-on lifestyles of young people will be mostly positive between now and 2020. But the experts in this survey also predicted this generation will exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep-thinking ability due to what one referred to as “fast-twitch wiring.”

The survey results are based on a non-random, opt-in, online sample of 1,021 internet experts and other internet users, recruited via email invitation, Twitter or Facebook from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University.  Since the data are based on a non-random sample, a margin of error cannot be computed, and the results are not projectable to any population other than the experts in this sample.

From Huffington Post:

. . . [Attorney Melva] Rozier founded a new type of law firm — or rather, a law store — inside the Boynton Beach Mall near West Palm Beach, Fla. The Law Booth counsels walk-in clients on divorce, foreclosure and other legal topics at discounted rates from a kiosk planted between American Eagle Outfitters and Victoria’s Secret shops. . . .

While lawyers can play a crucial role in helping those in need, the cost of their services is out of reach for many Americans. Free
legal services, offered by nonprofit organizations, typically serve only those most destitute, while private law firms tend to charge expensive fees. A 2011 survey by the World Justice Project called the U.S. judicial system “inaccessible to disadvantaged groups,” ranking it 52 out of 66 countries when it comes to “access to civil justice.” . . .

In Rozier’s regular law office, clients schedule appointments in advance and pay an initial $125 fee for a consultation. At the Law Booth, they can walk in at, say, 8 p.m. on a Saturday, sit in a chair, eat a pretzel and consult her or one of her two partners for a fee that starts at $25. People can stop in for preparation of a will, advice about starting a business or questions about bankruptcy or a personal injury matter.

The idea for the Law Booth grew out of Rozier’s experiences of working with clients affected by foreclosure. Palm Beach County has the fourth highest number of foreclosures of any county in Florida — a state that ranks among the ones with the highest counts, according to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure database. Rozier started her career by representing clients at real estate closings, only to see her business “dissolve” when the real estate downturn hit, she said. “I started realizing how much people were hungry for information.” . . .

Some lawyers argue that the commercialization of legal services has changed the industry for the worse, causing a huge surge in claims and a culture of litigation as people try to sue for just about anything. Others say that marketing and advertising simply help disenfranchised people learn about services that they wouldn’t otherwise know about.

“Allowing access [to lawyers] has been a great benefit for the community,” said Richard Carey, 28, one of Rozier’s two partners at the Law Booth. “We want to be where the people are. If people are shopping at 4 a.m., we want to make sure we’re there.”

Read more here.

Thoughts?