Citizens United has re-ignited debate about the rights and responsibilities of corporate entities.  Well, it seems as though a line’s been drawn.  Corporations can spend all the campaign cash they want, but even that kind of clout isn’t gonna get them into the carpool lane.   From the San Francisco Chronicle:

It is the rare motorist, however, who hopes his explanation will overturn more than 100 years of Supreme Court rulings and challenge the legal notion of corporate personhood.

Jonathan Frieman, a 56-year-old San Rafael resident and self-described social entrepreneur, failed to convince a Marin County Superior Court jurist Monday after he argued that he was not alone when a California Highway Patrol officer pulled him over in October while driving in the carpool lane.

Instead, Frieman admitted that he had reached onto the passenger’s seat and handed the officer papers of incorporation connected to his family’s charity foundation.

By Frieman’s estimation, if corporations are indeed persons as was first established in the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., and he offered evidence that a corporation was traveling inside his vehicle – riding shotgun, of course – then two people were in his car.

Next week, we’ll be participating in the first of two webinars aimed at giving job-seekers the best advice on the process of looking for a summer job. Check out the message below for links to register!

Want insight from nonprofit and government employers about what they look for in cover letters, resumes, and interviews? We’re thrilled to partner with our friends at Equal Justice Works to present two webinars offering tips and best practices on the public-interest summer job hunt.

Attorneys with years of application review experience will highlight do’s and don’ts; explain how and why public interest application materials may substantively differ from law firm materials; and explore the dynamics of personal interactions in interviews and networking situations. While the webinars will focus on the summer public interest job search, the information is applicable to postgraduate positions.

• Webinar Uno: Cover Letters and Resumes on Tuesday, January 15, noon Eastern. Register here.  Presenters:
  • Paul Chavez, Senior Attorney, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights on the San Francisco Bay Area
  • Steve Grumm, Director of Public Service Initiatives, NALP
  • Ashley Matthews, PSJD Fellow, NALP
  • Jennifer Thomas, Legal Recruiting Director, Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia
• Webinar Dos: Interviewing and Networking on Tuesday, January 22, noon Eastern. Register here.  Presenters:
  • Nita Mazumder, Equal Justice Works
  • Kate Devlin Joyce, Associate Director of Public Interest Programs, Boston College Law School
  • Daniel Goldman – Assistant Capital Defender, Northern Virginia Capital Defender’s Office

We’ll be taking Q&A during the webinars.  So while we’ll record and archive them, we encourage you to join us for the live webcasts.  Contact Steven Grumm at sgrumm@nalp.org if you have questions.

The Ludwig Center for Community and Economic Development at Yale Law School is an interdisciplinary law clinic that works at the intersection of law, policy, entrepreneurship, economics, and social innovation to “research and design creative, testable, and scalable solutions to community development challenges at the local, national, and global levels,” according to their site.

The clinic is currently accepting applications for paid interns. From the PSJD job listing:

The Eugene and Carol Ludwig Community and Economic Development Clinic (CED) at Yale Law School is an interdisciplinary law clinic drawing students from law, management, public health, and forestry and environmental sciences disciplines. The Clinic serves the legal and policy-related needs of local, state, and national clients. This is a business/transactional clinic, in which we work on loans, leases, investments, and housing development contracts for our local, nonprofit clients.

This summer, the Clinic will have an intern program for approximately 3-5 part- and full-time students from Yale and other law schools. The program officially runs from the day after Yale Commencement (the Monday before Memorial Day) until the Friday before Labor Day. It is possible to start prior to Commencement. Most students work full time (40 hours per week) for twelve weeks.

The three CED clinic projects continuing during the 2013 summer are as follows:

1. Community Development Financial Institutions: CED represents First City Fund Corporation (FCFC), a non-profit foundation formed to support community development activities in the City of New Haven, with a primary purpose of organizing New Haven’s first community development bank: Start Community Bank. Start Bank is also a Clinic client.

2. Community Development Organizations: The Clinic represents several area nonprofits that are seeking to improve the economic well-being of New Haven residents through residential and commercial redevelopment projects, including the Greater Dwight Development Corporation, the Dixwell Plaza Merchants Association, and St. Luke’s Development Corporation; and

3. Social Innovation: The Social Innovation Group assists clients working to bring new strategies to address complex social problems facing low- and moderate-income communities, including: community child care, urban agriculture for local food production, and strategic philanthropic investments in non-profits serving the New Haven community.

See our website at http://www.law.yale.edu/academics/Ludwig.htm for more information on the CED Clinic and the three projects that will be ongoing throughout the coming summer.

Interns will be paid $14.00 an hour. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  Your author’s a bit under the weather, so you’re spared from my typical ruminations and editorializing.  Here’s what we’ve got on the public interest and access-to-justice fronts (it being a good week for Maryland-based AtJ enthusiasts):

• $6.2 million to Old Line State legal aid providers for housing work;
• 20 Biglaw attorneys to work as special assistant DAs in suburban Philly county;
• the NLJ’s Pro Bono Hot List, hot off the presses;
• a Maryland Access to Justice Commission report on legal aid’s economic impact;
• Michigan Law’s new entrepreneurship clinic.

The summaries:

• 1.10.12 – “Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and officials from the Department of Housing and Community Development on Thursday awarded $6.2 million from the national mortgage settlement to nine legal aid groups in order to expand the availability of low-cost and pro bono legal services to Maryland homeowners facing foreclosure.  Here’s how the funds are being distributed: Maryland Legal Aid, $3.6 million; Civil Justice Inc., $1.4 million; Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, $930,000; St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, $600,000; Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland, $565,000; Public Justice Center, $510,000; Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County, $850,000; Mid-Shore Pro Bono Inc., $342,000; and Allegany Law Foundation Inc., $200,000.”  (Full piece in the Baltimore Sun.)

• 1.7.12 –  “The [suburban Philadelphia] Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office is gaining a bit of free human capital, thanks to a relatively new partnership with an international, Philadelphia-based law firm. Twenty lawyers from the firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius are joining the DA’s office for some experience as special assistant district attorneys.”  (Story from the Times Herald.)

• 1.7.13 – the National Law Journal released its 2013 Pro Bono Hot List: “There’s an unfamiliar face in the crowd this year — the crowd being the 10 legal organizations we selected for The National Law Journal‘s Pro Bono Hot List. For the first time, we’ve included a corporate legal department — that of International Business Machines Corp. We did so in recognition of IBM’s work on behalf of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, but also to highlight increasing corporate commitment to pro bono projects.”  

• 1.7.12 – “Maryland civil legal service programs not only benefit the poor but also save the state millions per year. Legal assistance to low-income Marylanders is a significant economic boost to the state and benefits more than just those receiving aid, according to a report just released by the Maryland Judiciary’s Access to Justice Commission…. In 2012, Maryland legal service programs preserved or found housing for almost 1,000 individuals and helped obtain 2,825 civil protective orders for clients. But the economic impact of legal services for the poor went far beyond the families helped, creating $190 million in total economic impact, including $12.6 million in economic stimulus to the state, $3.7 million in state expenditures saved, and $882,096 in tax revenue.”  (Here’s the full op-ed in the Baltimore Sun.  And here’s the AtJ Commission’s report.)  

• 1.6.12 – a profile of Michigan Law’s new entrepreneurship clinic: “In addition to helping student entrepreneurs, the program and clinic benefit law students who hope to one day work in the startup sector.  ‘For the law school students, the clinic consists of two parts, a classroom component and then actually representing their clients,’ clinic director Dana Thompson said. ‘… Most of law school is about taking classes and learning about the theory of corporations or torts or contracts. Then they come to us so we can put everything together and they can actually work with a startup.’  The clinic utilizes the ‘student practice’ rule, which allows law students to represent clients as long as a licensed attorney supervises them. Thompson said she…received more than 100 applications for 16 spots in the clinic’s first semester in the spring of 2012.”

• Super Music Bonus!  How about some Neko Case?  This is the beautiful “Bought and Sold.” 

Indian Legal Assistance Program (ILAP) based in Duluth, Minnesota, is a private non-profit corporation that provides legal services to low income individuals. Although they emphasize legal services to the Indian population, they offer legal services to all who meet their financial guidelines, regardless of race.

The ILAP is currently seeking a staff attorney. From the PSJD job listing:

The Program provides criminal defense, family law, and juvenile law representation to low income clients. Extensive travel over a five (5) county region and daily court appearances are routine. The Program boasts a proud history of legal services and advocacy on behalf of the Native American population. However, clients need only meet economic criteria to qualify for services.

Responsibilities:
Legal representation of clients in criminal, family, and juvenile court covering an extremely wide range of matters from felonies to divorce.

Qualifications:

Licensed Minnesota attorney. The ability and commitment to work with indigent clients on a wide range of legal matters. Flexibility, independence, and confidence to work well under pressure. The ability to cooperate and coordinate well with other ILAP attorneys on case management, case strategy, and office management.

The application deadline is January 21, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

The Children’s Law Center (CLC), a D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on family, health and education, is currently accepting applications for a full-time Staff Attorney to work with the CLC’s Healthy Together program.

From the PSJD job posting:

Children’s Law Center works to give every child in the District of Columbia a solid foundation of family, health, and education. We are the largest provider of free legal services in the District and the only to focus on children. Our 80-person staff partners with local pro bono attorneys to serve more than 2,000 at-risk children each year. We use this expertise to advocate for changes in the District’s laws, policies, and programs. Learn more at www.childrenslawcenter.org.

CLC’s Healthy Together is a medical-legal partnership for DC’s children. CLC partners with Children’s National Medical Center and Mary’s Center to help poor children and their families overcome barriers to good health by holding agencies, landlords, and schools accountable for inappropriate school programs, the failure to provide medically necessary services, and illegal, unhealthy housing conditions.

Position Description

The Staff Attorney will represent parents and caregivers in education/special education, health care access and housing matters. The Staff Attorney will also be responsible for conducting intakes with potential clients, providing advice and referral information, and performing community outreach activities. The Staff Attorney will work out of CLC as well as within a medical clinic setting.

Qualifications

It’s a new year, and for many unemployed 3Ls and recent law grads, this means it’s time to renew job search efforts with even greater intensity. Aside from scouring PSJD.org for the latest job postings from public interest employers, what else can you do to stay sane during the job hunt?

Last spring, the Girl’s Guide to Law School tackled this issue with the help of lawyer-turned-career-coach Katie Slater, releasing a 5-part job hunting series tailored to fit the needs of unemployed 3Ls and recent grads. Here’s a snippet of the wealth of advice Slater offered:

How Do You Start a Legal Job Search?

Developing a plan for your approach is a must.

Consider it your first project management endeavor and good practice for the future, as most legal jobs require solid project management skills.

Your plan needs to attack the issue on multiple levels, operating from each at the same time.

• The first level is developing the big picture view about: yourself, what you might want, and what you offer to prospective employers to meet what they need.
• The second level is tactical: what are the concrete steps do you need to take to get to the ultimate goal of getting a job.
• And the third level is being aware of the mental and emotional toll the process might exact from you, and finding ways to combat it.

Part One: The Big Picture

Let’s take the big picture level first.

You need a concrete picture of yourself, what you offer, what you like, and how you are able to help your future employer. The end goal is to have parameters for your job search.

One of the reasons the job search for law grads is much more difficult now is that the automatic treadmill or recognized framework that has been in place for the past 10-15 years is not as defined due to the changing economic landscape.

That means we have to come up with our own parameters.

The Goal: Know Thyself

Where do you start?

You need to spend some time analyzing yourself and what you like, how you operate, and what you offer.

This is not on-the-couch-crying-about-your-parents stuff, but you do need to subject yourself to a little introspection. The goal is to flesh yourself out as a person and employee, as well as start developing a list of your skills. And no, you are not just a 3L with no job and no other abilities besides being able to pass law school classes!

Ideally, you should come up with a list of 4 things:

1. Your strengths
2. Your skills
3. The field(s) of work that interest you
4. Some sense of the type of work environment where you’d thrive

Generate a List of Your Strengths and Skills

How do you generate this list? Start with some of the following questions:

• What strengths and skills did you bring with you into law school? If you can’t start listing these immediately, consider what were you good at before law school — either in your undergraduate studies, or what you did before you went to law school. To provide you some examples of how to pull out your strengths and skills from this question, if you were one of those who put on events, or ran clubs or organizations or associations (particularly if you were told you did a good job, or you received any accolades!) your strengths may include being detail-oriented, good at project management, and able to manage people.
• What have you found highly rewarding? One way to shake loose some strengths and start identifying areas and environments in which you shine is to think back to some of your really rewarding experiences. These should be times where you felt you really accomplished something or felt that you made something a success. It needs to feel personally successful or like a personal accomplishment — not whether other people thought it was so. Identify several of these occasions, and ask yourself what you were doing, what abilities were you using, and who were you around. You should be able to identify some core strengths and perhaps some skill sets that you enjoy using.
• What non-legal skills do you have that could be helpful in the workplace? On the skills front, an example of an existing skill you have would be getting frequent positive comments on your non-legal writing abilities. Legal jobs still require non-legal writing for everything from comprehensible emails to clients to pitch pieces to articles written for the general public. Being able to communicate clearly is a valuable skill set, independent of legal writing.
• Also, what skills have you picked up in law school that you enjoy using? Have you written great notices or law review articles or papers — these are examples of solid legal writing skills.
• Do you have any tech skills? Have you developed a website, organized any new social media or pushed it in a new direction, or developed any IT — either before or in law school? Any of those fairly obviously indicates skills in coding/web-based development, and shows strengths in innovation, creativity, and design.
• Are there any other bright shining moments? Do not overlook things like being captain of the intramural team — there are still things to be learned from those experiences. Maybe this speaks to your ability to lead a team, or engage well in a team dynamic, or be quite tactical or strategic.

Click here to read the full article, and don’t forget to check out the rest of the series:

• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: What Do You Want?
• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: Who Do You Know?
• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: How to Get the Inside Scoop
• Job Hunting for 3Ls and Recent Law Grads: Coping with an Extended Job Search

The Habeas Corpus Resource Center (HCRC), located in San Francisco, provides representation to indigent men and women facing the death penalty in California. Their mission is to “provide timely, high-quality legal representation for indigent petitioners in death penalty habeas corpus proceedings before the Supreme Court of California and the federal courts”.

The HCRC currently has vacancies for both staff attorneys and habeas corpus counsel. From the PSJD job listing:

The Habeas Corpus Resource Center (HCRC), located in San Francisco, has an exciting opportunity for attorneys interested in indigent capital defense litigation.
The primary purpose of the HCRC is to provide, through its own staff, direct representation to death row inmates in post-conviction proceedings in state and federal courts and to serve as a resource to private appointed counsel in capital post-conviction proceedings.

STAFF ATTORNEY:
Staff attorney is the entry-level classification in the HCRC attorney job series. Under direction, staff attorneys provide representation to indigent death row inmates in habeas corpus proceedings.

HABEAS CORPUS COUNSEL:
Habeas corpus counsel is the journey-level classification in the attorney job series. In addition to providing representation to indigent death row inmates in habeas corpus proceedings, habeas corpus counsel provides lead direction to and reviews the work of assigned staff, serves as consultant, and performs specialized legal work.

Travel may be required both within California and out-of-state.

The deadline is January 31, 2013. For more information on qualifications and application instructions, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

If your New Year’s Resolution is to get a handle on your student debt, Equal Justice Works is here to help! Check out their message below detailing their upcoming debt webinars for this month:

As we enter 2013, educational debt remains a crippling burden for far too many, and especially for those who want to pursue careers in public service. Equal Justice Works provides in depth information on loan repayment assistance programs and relief programs like Income-Based Repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness to help everyone pursue the career of their dreams.

If you or someone you know needs a detailed guide to dealing with their student loans and earning forgiveness, it’s never too late to give them our new student debt eBook Take Control of Your Future as a gift! We go into the details borrowers need to understand and the exact steps they need to take to manage their educational debt and take control of their future.

 Our weekly U.S. News blog, the Student Loan Ranger kept us busy during the last month of 2012. We reported on how the increasing student debt burden is impacting parents, took a look at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s report on private student loan servicers, discussed the feasibility of public service careers for law school graduates and examined the true scope of student loan borrower distress.

Every month, our free, live webinars also provide a comprehensive overview of the debt relief options available for students and graduates – including Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Income-Based Repayment – and provide viewers with the opportunity to ask questions. Click here to view a schedule of our webinars and to register for an upcoming session.

Our January sessions include:

Plan Before You Borrow: What You Should Know About Educational Loans BEFORE You Go to Graduate School

Thursday, January 10, 3-4 p.m. EST

Interested in government or public interest work after graduating? This webinar will help you plan ahead and make sure you can take full advantage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, the most significant law affecting public service in a generation.

The webinar will teach you about:

– Taking out the right kind of loans

– Consolidating or reconsolidating your previous student loans

– How the College Cost Reduction and Access Act can free you to pursue a public interest career

 How to Pay Your Bills AND Your Student Loans: Utilizing Income-Based Repayment

Thursday, January 24, 3-4 p.m. EST

Saddled with high student debt? This webinar reviews Income-Based Repayment, a powerful provision of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act that allows anyone with high debt relative to their income to reduce their federal student loan payments.

This interactive webinar will teach you:

– How to understand your federal loans

– How Income-Based Repayment works and if it is right for you

– How to sign up for Income-Based Repayment

Get Your Educational Loans Forgiven: Public Service Loan Forgiveness

Thursday, January 31, 3-4 p.m. EST

For recent graduates with jobs in government or at a nonprofit, this webinar explains how to make sure you immediately begin fulfilling requirements to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness so that your educational debt will be forgiven as soon as possible.

You will learn about:

– The importance of having the right kind of Federal Loans

– What you need to do to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness

– How long it will take to have your educational debt forgiven

P.S. –  Don’t forget to register for the upcoming Summer Public Interest Job Search webinars on 01/15 and 01/22, co-sponsored by NALP and EJW!

If you’re a 1L or 2L committed to empowering low-income communities through innovative organizing and strategic policy development, the Center for Public Democracy is looking for you!

From the PSJD job listing:

The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) is a new national organization that promotes equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy by partnering with grassroots and membership-based organizations around the country to build power and transform the state and local policy landscape. Working with base-building groups in North Carolina, New York, Maryland, Colorado and elsewhere, CPD provides legal and strategic support on state and local legislative campaigns that advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial justice agenda. CPD also collaborates with emerging grassroots groups as they develop and refine their community organizing methodology and internal management, fundraising and communications infrastructure. Through this combination of law and organizing, CPD seeks to generate the upward pressure and momentum necessary to refocus national policy on furthering the values of equity, opportunity and democracy for all.

CPD seeks talented, public interest-oriented 1Ls and 2Ls to participate in our summer Internship in Community Lawyering & Policy Innovation. Through legal and policy research, interns will assist in the development and execution of state and local legislative campaigns taking place across the country and will have the unique opportunity to help launch a new social justice start-up. Interns will be expected to work 40 hours/week and will be supervised directly by CPD’s staff.

The application deadline is April 6, 2013. For more information, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!