Good news for public-interest minded students at Stanford, Harvard, NYU and Yale law schools! Today, the Ford Foundation announced a commitment to fund 2013 summer public interest placements for about 100 law students from these prestigious law schools.

From the National Law Journal:

Public interest fellowships typically pay stipends just large enough to cover basic costs. By contrast, the Ford fellows will receive $15,000 for summer work at an array of high-profile public interest organizations, including the Brookings Institution, the Environmental Defense Fund and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The foundation has committed $1.75 million for the inaugural year.

“This program opens up a new pathway for law students to gain practical and transformative experience working on many of the defining social justices issues of our age,” said Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas. “We believe it will offer them invaluable knowledge and understanding that will inform their careers, whether public or private, while bringing fresh talent to organizations working to advance fairness and freedom.”

The fellowships will go to “high performing” 1Ls and 2Ls at the designated law schools, which were selected because of their history of partnership with the Ford Foundation, he said.

Interested in international law and women’s rights? Today’s job of the day is just for you!

The International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) in Washington, DC is looking for law clerks to start in the summer of 2013. From IRAdvocates:

International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) builds and supports the capacity of women, human rights, labor, and legal organizations to develop and promote innovative legal strategies to hold multinational corporations accountable for labor, human rights, and environmental violations. IRAdvocates does so by supporting direct legal advocacy both in the U.S. and abroad, and by working with local partner organizations to develop and undertake precedent-setting legal actions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. IRAdvocates believes that only when multinational corporate actors are subject to meaningful and enforceable legal mechanisms both in the country
where the violation occurs and abroad can individual human rights be fully realized.

Law clerks will be expected to research legal issues relating to multinational corporate accountability litigation, specifically the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victims Protection Act. In addition, clerks will draft legal memos and help out with depositions.

Check out the full listing on PSJD.org (log-in required).

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.   It’s been a light news week, and I’m traveling.  So you’re spared from my typical musings, ramblings and editorializing.  Here’s the access-to-justice and public interest news in very short:

• defense lawyers association backs NM measure to convert public defense program to independent state agency;
• Honoring lawyer pro bono/public interest contributions in NY;
• from UT, a look at the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake;
• new U.S. poverty data;
• in CA, Riverside County’s public defender blasts budget decisions that amount to “amputations”, not just cuts;
• the rotten state of IOLTA funding in FL
• back in CA, a unique new clinic at UC  Davis Law;
• Michigan’s state house considers creating a commission to promote public defender standards;
• public defender reality TV in NY;
• public defender caseload standards to take effect in MO.

The news in less short:

• 9.14.12 – “Criminal defense lawyers are helping to finance a campaign for a ballot proposal to make the New Mexico Public Defender Department an independent state agency.A campaign finance report shows the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers contributed $10,000 last month to a newly formed political committee that’s promoting voter approval of the proposed constitutional amendment.  (Here’s the short AP story.)

• 9.12.12 – the New York Law Journal honors its “Lawyers Who Lead by Example”: We asked the legal community to nominate their colleagues who demonstrate a sustained commitment to improving the lives of poor or nearly poor New Yorkers. We received about 70 nominations, all of them worthy.  Our 14 honorees for 2012 are truly part of the solution, demonstrating the highest level of commitment to their profession and their communities, tapping their training, business acumen, creativity and humanity to solve legal problems for those in need.  This year the Law Journal expanded the range of categories. Our 2012 honorees include one law firm; eight private attorneys; an in-house lawyer; three public interest attorneys who reached beyond the borders of their programs to bring attention and resources to the cause, and a law school clinic.”

• 9.12.12 – a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune looks at the Legal Aid Society’s nine decades of work on behalf of low-income Utahans.

• 9.12.12 – The U.S. Census Bureau released 2011 poverty data this week (press release).  The poverty rate remained essentially unchanged between 2010 and 2011.  Here’s a little more from the Census Bureau.

• 9.11.12 – Riverside County’s new budget is balanced, but hardly fair, in the view of the public defender: “Public Defender Gary Windom protested what he characterized as a draconian cut to his office, which earlier this summer laid off three people. Lawyers in the office represent people accused of crimes who cannot afford their own attorneys.  ‘These cuts are not cuts, they are amputations,’ Windom said. Windom said he was particularly concerned about a $1.5 million reduction for a unit that represents people who face the death penalty, if found guilty. He said that unit handles 20 death penalty cases a year and the cut would cripple the program by gutting 50 percent of its revenue.  Windom also objected to an additional $1 million cut to the public defender’s office budget overall.  And he questioned a projection that a new $50 fee charged to the accused when county lawyers are assigned to them would generate $1 million for the office.” (Article from the Californian.)

• 9.11.12 – the rotten state of legal services funding in Florida.  “[Florida Bar Foundation Executive Director Jane Curran] said that the Foundation’s revenues, generated by short-term interest on trust accounts, shrank from $44 million in 2007, before the recession, to $5.58 million last fiscal year, which ended June 30. ‘Our funding cuts alone … will result in the layoff of 120 legal aid lawyers,’ Curran said.”  (Story from the Daytona Beach News-Journal.)

• 9.11.12 – at UC Davis Law, a clinic focused on the state high court.  “The only course of its kind in the country, the California Supreme Court clinic is designed to train select students in the art of researching and writing briefs for the state’s highest court.  Some law schools in California and other states have similar programs that focus on the U.S. Supreme Court, but none is devoted to a state high court.
  [T]he students will provide pro bono representation to individuals and organizations in both criminal and civil matters pending before court. The class will enter a case either as co-counsel to a party or as an amicus curiae…”  (Article in the Sacramento Bee.) 

• 9.10.12 – a short article on Michigan Public Radio’s website: “Michigan’s public defender system is consistently rated one of the worst in the country. But this week, the House Judiciary Committee will consider creating a commission to establish standards for indigent defense.”

• 9.10.12 – public defender reality TV. “The special, Criminal Defense: And Justice for All, was scheduled to air in two half-hour episodes beginning Tuesday [9/11] at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on the National Geographic Channel. Filmed over a span of three weeks, the shows offer a day-in-the-life look at several lawyers as they defend their clients.  The show’s executive producer…says most television programs focusing on criminal justice are based on the police or prosecution point of view. ‘The idea of having access to the work of public defenders is something that has almost never been shown before to the public,’ he tells the ABA Journal in an interview.  Law-and-order policies get lots of public debate, he points out. Now viewers will get ‘an opportunity to see how the policies that are talked about in the abstract and in the public square affect individual people’s lives’.”  The two episodes were filmed as a pilot and have the potential to become a series.”  (Full story from the ABA Journal.) 

• 9.7.12 – in Missouri, a new public-defender caseload standard to take effect on 10/1: “Boone County public defenders might have to decline immediate representation for some clients under a formula set to take effect Oct. 1 that will cap their monthly caseload.”  (Story from the Columbia Tribune.)

The following government programs have 3L deadlines coming up soon:

• Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General – Fellowship Program (Paid, Deadline 09/14/12)
• Oregon Department of Justice – Honors Attorney Program (Paid, Deadline 09/14/12)
• Federal Trade Commission – Bureau of Competition Entry Legal Attorney Program (Paid, Deadline 09/15/12)
• Comptroller of the Currency – Law Department Chief Counsel’s Employment Program (Paid, Deadline 09/17/12)
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – Louis D. Brandeis Attorney Honors Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/17/12)
• Federal Communications – Office of General Counsel 2013 Attorney Honors Program (Paid, Deadline 09/21/12)
• Department of Energy – Office of General Counsel Attorneys Honors Program (Paid, Deadline not yet established was 09/23/11)
• Office of Personnel Management – Presidential Management Fellows Program (Paid, Deadline not yet established was 09/25/11)
• Housing & Urban Development – Office of General Counsel Legal Honors Program (Paid, Deadline 09/28/12)
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – 2013 Legal Division Honors Program (Paid, Deadline 09/30/12)
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission – Atomic Safety & Licensing Board Panel Judicial Law Clerk Program (Paid, Deadline 09/30/12)

• Health & Human Services – Office of Counsel to the Inspector General Legal Extern Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/21/12)
• The White House Internship Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/23/12)
• Environmental Protection Agency – R8 Office of Regional Counsel Volunteer Intern Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/30/12)
• Sacramento County CA District Attorney’s Office – Law Student Internship Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/30/12)

For more information on these listings and more, check out The University of Arizona College of Law’s 2012-2013 Government Honors & Internship Handbook. Please note that the Handbook is available to subscribers only. Don’t worry, though – most law schools are already subscribed.  Just talk to your Career Services counselor for your school’s username and password.

[Ed. Note: Expert Opinion” is a weekly feature which offers insight , opinion, and career advice from attorneys in a broad array of public interest positions.  This week’s post features Q&A with Professor Emily Benfer of the Loyola University School of Law.]

Emily A. Benfer is a Clinical Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Health Justice Project a medical-legal partnership at at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Beazley Institute for Health Law and Policy.  Professor Benfer has dedicated her career to serving the public interest. She was a legal intern for Judge David Hamilton, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the Indiana Protective Order Pro Bono Project, and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. She received an Arnold & Porter Equal Justice Works Fellowship to implement the advocacy and litigation strategy that she designed in order to represent, and improve the District’s response to, homeless families, children and youth. She then represented preschool aged children with disabilities in a successful class action against the District of Columbia. As a Staff Attorney and Teaching Fellow in the Georgetown University Law Center Federal Legislation and Administrative Clinic, she supervised and mentored law students on an array of legislative advocacy projects.

***

Can you give us a brief outline of how you got to the job you are in today? Was this position what you originally planned on doing, or was your career trajectory part of an evolving process?

After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, I worked as a paralegal at New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc. in Connecticut. In both experiences, I confronted poverty, injustice and inequality and I gained a better understanding of the skills and strategies necessary to cause social change. I determined to develop and employ these skills in an effort to ensure social justice. At the time, I thought this meant working in the trenches and advocating for clients. I quickly learned that there is no one right way to tackle injustice and that, in order to be truly effective, one must become a lifelong learner and gather and hone skills throughout one’s career.

Toward that end, I am drawn to professional opportunities that will challenge me to expand my skillset to become a more effective advocate. During my career, I have represented individual clients, organized, and passed local legislation (as an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless). I responded to patterns of injustice by gaining experience in class action litigation (at a public interest firm where I successfully represented a class of students with disabilities). I learned about and contributed to public policy creation and the federal legislative process (as a Supervising Attorney and Teaching Fellow at Georgetown Law Center’s Federal Legislation Clinic). 

As a Teaching Fellow at Georgetown Law Center, I recognized the importance of mentoring and teaching the next generation of public interest lawyers. As a Clinical Professor of Law, I am able to simultaneously respond to social injustice in our communities while encouraging others to join in the effort by supporting and training law students.

What internships or activities did you complete in law school that helped prepare you for this position?

Logging over 800 hours, I took advantage of every pro bono opportunity offered by the law school. These cases gave me hands on experience and better prepared me to represent clients and develop the attorney-client relationship immediately after earning a law degree. I served as a law clerk at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, the Protective Order Pro Bono Program, United States District Court, Southern District of Indiana.

In addition, I served in leadership positions in law school organizations and on local and national boards of directors. These experiences provided me with insight about organizational management, coalition building, and perspective on nationwide approaches to injustice.

How did your contacts with previous employers, professors, and colleagues influence your job search, if any?

I have asked and followed the advice of my mentors (previous employers, professors and colleagues) throughout my career trajectory. It is incredibly important to seek out and build relationships with people who have similar goals and greater experience. They need not be lawyers but they should believe in a similar mission. Among the most fulfilling and important relationships in my life are those with my mentors. They have challenged me, inspired me, guided me, shaped my ethics, expanded my ambitions, and provided sage advice. They are exemplary heroes.

Would you change your preparation for this position in any way if you had the chance?

I would have enrolled in a clinic during law school.

Thanks, Emily!

by Ashley Matthews

Next year, New York will start implementing the nation’s first state-mandated pro bono for new lawyers trying to pass the bar. This requirement has led many graduating law students to amp up their volunteer efforts in hopes of meeting the 50-hour requirement.

But it’s not just New York’s graduating law students who are reaching out to populations in need. From the ABA Journal:

Call Richard Horstman the poster child for pro bono programs.

For more than 34 years, Horstman has worked in Houston-based Marathon Oil’s corporate legal department, where he now oversees all international legal operations. Until five years ago, he didn’t give a second thought about doing pro bono legal work.

“I always felt I did enough law at work,” he says. “I focused my public service and community work on nonlegal matters.”

In 2007, Marathon’s then-general counsel instituted a formal pro bono program for the company’s lawyers. As part of the new effort, Catholic Charities made a presentation highlighting the legal needs of immigrant children in the United States.

Horstman agreed to tackle a single case. It changed his perception of himself and his practice. “I realized that I am one of the few who can do this because of my expertise as a lawyer,” he says.

While Horstman doesn’t favor state-mandated pro bono, he thinks law firms and in-house corporate legal departments should implement formal pro bono efforts that strongly encourage their lawyers to get involved.

“I regret that I didn’t start doing pro bono earlier,” he says.

In New York, recent law graduates are now required by law to get the head start Horstman never had. Do you think state-mandated pro bono work should be required to practice law in your jurisdiction?

From Community Legal Services of Philadelphia:

CLS seeks bright, energetic law students who are committed to, or interested in learning more about, a career in public interest law. Interns will be assigned to a specific CLS unit and, depending on assignment, may have the opportunity to do legal research and writing, client interviewing and counseling, community education, representation at administrative or court hearings, and trial advocacy. In addition, through special programs and training sessions, interns will be exposed to the full range of CLS practice.

We particularly invite internship applications from students who are interested in later applying for a post-graduate fellowship. In recent years, CLS has been awarded Skadden, Independence Foundation, and Equal Justice Works fellowships, and the experience gained and contacts made during an internship at CLS can be invaluable in the fellowship application process.

Want more information? Check out the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

The Emory Public Interest Committee (EPIC, Emory Law School’s public interest student group) is delighted to announce their conference entitled “And Justice for All? Criminal Justice in the South.”  The conference will be held on Saturday, October 13, 2012, at Emory University School of Law, and it will broadly track the core stages a criminal defendant goes through as s/he moves throughout the justice system:  pre-trial, trial, and post-conviction.  The conference seeks to engage participants in a meaningful and balanced dialogue concerning the flaws within the Southern justice system, as well as possibilities for alternatives and reform.

Following a keynote address by Stephen Bright, president and senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights, the conference will feature three sets of panel discussions with topics such as search and seizure, prison conditions, and rehabilitation of released defendants.  All panels will address these issues with a special emphasis on identifying existing inadequacies and possible reform within the South.  The conference will address and examine the existing problems and potential for change from a wide range of perspectives, including legislators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement officials, and judges.

Information is available at http://www.law.emory.edu/academics/conferences/2012-epic-conference.html, and registration is open now.  There is no fee to attend (small charge for those seeking CLE credits), but registration is requested in order to plan for materials and meals.  Please email conference co-chairs Anam Ismail and Steve Justus at epicconference2012@gmail.com if you have any questions.

by Ashley Matthews

This week, the topic of SCOTUSblog’s online symposium is the Voting Rights Act (VRA), but it’s one particular section of the 1965 legislation that has brewed a constitutional debate over 40 years in the making. From the Pro Publica blog:

A single provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been playing a key role on the election front this year. Section 5 has blocked photo voter-ID laws, prohibited reduced early-voting periods in parts of Florida and just Tuesday barred new redistricting maps in Texas.

For states and counties covered under Section 5’s jurisdiction, changes to voting laws can’t legally be enforced unless the proposed change is submitted for review to the Attorney General or after a lawsuit before the United State District Court for the District of Columbia. In order to be legally enforceable, the new voting law can’t deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.

In 2006, Congress voted to extend the Voting Rights Act for another twenty-five years. In the 2009 Supreme Court case Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, the Court declined to strike down the law but noted that it raised serious constitutional concerns.

Now, in South Carolina, a new law that would require a state-approved photo ID to vote prompted a Justice Department challenge. A 3-judge panel in Washington, DC is now considering whether the law will be allowed to take effect before November 6 election. Last month, a federal court struck down a similar law in Texas, ruling that it would harm the turnout from minority voters. In addition, voters who lacked proper documentation would have been required to pay a fee to obtain election ID cards – a provision the court called a “strict, unforgiving burden on the poor.”

Such blocks have many crying constitutional foul. Joshua Thompson, a guest contributor for SCOTUSblog, wrote earlier today about the burden of Section 5:

Given the rampant discrimination of the Jim Crow South, this burden seems quite reasonable.  Nevertheless, when the constitutionality of Section 5 was first brought before the Court in South Carolina v. Katzenbach in 1966, the Court called it an “uncommon exercise of congressional power” that was only justified by the “exceptional conditions” of the day.  Section 5 would not have been “otherwise appropriate” but for its structure targeting jurisdictions bent on “evad[ing] the remedies for voting discrimination” and violating the Fifteenth Amendment.

By targeting only those jurisdictions most defiant of constitutional protections, Section 5’s “burdens” were specifically tailored to its “needs.”  Fortunately, the snug fit between the burdens – the “uncommon exercise of Congressional power” – and the needs – eliminating pervasive discrimination throughout the Deep South – had a tremendous effect on the enfranchisement of black Americans.  Eliminating literacy tests, and requiring preclearance for the most discriminatory jurisdictions, immediately improved black enfranchisement.  Black voter registration in Mississippi, for example, jumped from seven percent in 1964 to sixty percent a mere four years later.

Thompson continues:

Alongside this sweeping cultural upheaval came scores of elected black officials, and the abandonment of the racially oppressive policies that once justified Section 5.  No jurisdiction imposes a literacy test today, or a poll tax, or a grandfather clause.  Today, as reported by the Northwest Austin Court, “[v]oter turnout and registration rates … approach parity.  Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels.”   Section 5 was so effective that there is little to distinguish the covered jurisdictions of the Deep South from the non-covered jurisdictions in the rest of the country.  Allegations of discrimination are just as likely to come from non-covered jurisdictions, and “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout is lower in the States originally covered by § 5 than it is nationwide.”

Further, Section 5 is ill-suited to address discriminatory voting practices of today.  The systemic, race-based discrimination that made Section 5 practical in 1965 no longer exists.  Moreover, modern voting problems often arise from failing to change existing practices.  Voters suffer from more problems like long voting lines in minority districts, voter identification problems, poor ballot design, or outmoded technology than from active efforts by states to impose new, discriminatory practices.  But Section 5 obstructs change by requiring all covered jurisdictions to undergo a costly and burdensome administrative process in order to preclear any changes with the federal government.  This encourages jurisdictions to maintain their old, perhaps discriminatory, voting practices.

SCOTUSblog’s Online VRA Symposium offers many different viewpoints. What do you think about the applicability of Section 5 to today’s modern electoral climate?

The American Civil Liberties Union in New York City and San Francisco are looking for summer interns for its Immigrants’ Rights Project!

Summer legal interns work on an array of litigation projects, conduct legal and policy research, draft memos and briefs, and research prospects for new litigation, among other duties.

The ACLU is seeking applicants with a demonstrated commitment to civil rights, social justice and civil liberties issues.

Sounds perfect for you? Check out the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!