By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, ladies and gents.  Washington, DC has been touched only by a bit of rain today, but a few hundred miles north of here folks are preparing for a large snowfall.  A winter storm is a bittersweet pill: great for some, terrible for others.  As I wrote after Sandy hit the Northeast, storms of this size remind us that we are as much subject to nature as masters of it.  If you are affected by the storm I hope you get through it just swell.

On to this week’s public interest and access-to-justice news, through which we’ll explore Montana public defender salaries, a faith-based ATJ project, and the relationship – if any – between pro bono work and kittens.  The week in very, very short:

• Montana public defense program looking to shore up salaries and attorney retention;
• NYSBA, focusing on civil and criminal legal aid funding, gets behind New York judiciary’s proposed budget.
• progress(?) in a Pennsylvania lawsuit about the alleged inadequacy of a county public defense program;
• a faith-based ATJ innovation in the Volunteer State;
• could/should compulsory law student pro bono be implemented in the UK?;
• government hiring, which had been growing, grows no longer;
• expanding conversation, and action, on pro bono and ATJ;
• the growth of corporate pro bono;
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries:

• 2.6.13 – “Public attorneys tasked with defending high-profile criminal cases are among the lowest paid in state government, prompting many of them to take jobs as staff attorneys in state agencies and elsewhere, the Office of the Public Defender told lawmakers Wednesday.  Turnover in a year can exceed 40 percent due to pay inequity, agency officials said in arguing that a budget increase is needed to boost pay and add more attorneys to reduce the caseload. Lawyers right out of college are routinely handling 600 cases in their first year….  The public defender’s office is asking for about $5 million in each of the next two years to hire around 37 more staffers, on top of the 209 it has right now, and to increase pay closer to market standards.  A law school graduate…currently receives a starting salary of $43,000, the agency said.”  (Full story from the Billings Gazette.)

• For a little bit of context, according to NALP’s 2012 Public Sector & Public Interest Attorney Salary Report the national median starting salary for defenders was $50,500.  Read the report’s accompanying press release for more data on defender and other public-interest salaries.

• 2.6.13 – “New York State Bar Association President Seymour W. James, Jr. today urged state lawmakers to adequately fund the state Judiciary and provide that ‘all people, including the weak, poor and unpopular as well as those who rely on the courts to resolve their business and commercial disputes,’ have access to the courts.  ‘The effective operation of the court system is crucial to maintaining an orderly society,’ James said in testimony submitted to the fiscal committees of the state Legislature.  James (The Legal Aid Society in New York City) endorsed Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s no-growth budget plan for the Unified Court System.”  (Read the full NYSBA announcement, which includes details on how the proposed budget would handle short- and long-term legal aid funding.)
  • Oh, hey, as I’m putting finishing touches on the Bulletin I see this National Law Journal op-ed from Seymour James (who besides being NYSBA president is also the Legal Aid Society’s head criminal defense lawyer: “Just six weeks ago, Congress took last-minute action to avert automatic across-the-board federal budget cuts that would have significantly harmed the federal court system and legal assistance programs for the poor.  With the new March 1 deadline, the federal judiciary and the Legal Services Corp. (LSC) continue to find themselves in dangerous fiscal waters. Their day-to-day operations are threatened by cuts that will devastate the ability of businesses to resolve their disputes, for the middle class to be heard on civil rights and bankruptcy cases, and for our most vulnerable citizens to secure access to justice.  That is why the New York State Bar Association will be proposing a resolution at the upcoming American Bar Association midyear meeting on Monday, February 11, that urges the ABA, the national voice of the profession, to speak out and condemn these cuts.”

• 2.6.13 – from the Keystone State: “A judge has scheduled a conference next month to discuss the failed attempt to settle a lawsuit alleging gross underfunding of the Luzerne County Public Defender’s Office.”  The ACLU of Pennsylvania filed the suit in state court on behalf of the county defender and other plaintiffs.  (Full story from the Citizens Voice.)

• 2.5.13 – “In an effort to reach more people in need of information about legal services, the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission has formed a faith-based initiative to engage lawyers within their place of worship.  The Tennessee Faith and Justice Alliance (TFJA) is a program developed by the Access to Justice Commission to support and encourage faith-based groups in Tennessee who commit to providing legal resources to their congregations and communities….  It is one of the first programs of its kind in the country created to align needs seen at the local church level with possible legal resources that are nearby, perhaps even within the same congregation.”  (Full story from The Chattanoogan.)

• 2.4.13 – compulsory law-student pro bono, a la New York State, in the UK?  A piece in The Guardian notes that there is presently no momentum to make this change in legal education, and that there is no infrastructure in place that could support such a program.  Nevertheless, with huge legal aid cuts coming down the pike this spring, “…there is a new call for more law students in the UK to attend pro bono clinics and an increase in partnerships between pro bono organisations and law schools.”

• 2.4.13 – Government hiring on all levels, which had been growing in the recent past, grows no more.  “Federal agencies shed 5,000 jobs in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.  On the whole, government, including the state and local sectors, lost 9,000 jobs during the month. Further losses may be on the horizon, with budget sequestration that would cut tens of billions of dollars from agency budgets looming at the end of February. Several federal agencies already have implemented hiring freezes in anticipation the sequester could go into effect.”   (Story from Government Executive.)

• 2.1.13 – Chicago Volunteer Legal Services director Meg Benson chimes in on how to turn pro bono talk into action: “Pro bono, as a concept, is stronger than ever. Pro bono, as a solution, is also stronger than ever. Pro bono, in practice, continues to limp along.  Why this disconnect? No one in the legal community, either local or national, dares to suggest that pro bono is not awesome. That’s like suggesting that kittens are not adorable. The problem is that, while most people agree that kittens are adorable, many would not have one in their home. Pro bono is like an adorable kitten — we love it, but not in our professional homes.”  Benson goes on to explore two possible reasons why there isn’t more pro bono engagement: 1) many attorneys are not personally touched by access-to-justice issues, and 2) “[m]ost attorneys have not been invited to participate in the access to justice crisis discussions…. At a minimum, we need to invite solo practitioners and attorneys from small and midsize firms to help formulate effective pro bono policies and strategies. This also means involving attorneys from diverse practices such as divorce, real estate, commercial and business, probate, etc.”.  (Read the full piece in the Chicago Lawyer.)
  • On a personal note I do not find kittens to be cute.  They grow up to be cats.  Cats are cunning, untrustworthy creatures.  I’ve met Meg a few times and have a lot of respect for her, but this conflation of kittens and pro bono threatens to shatter my entire pro bono worldview.  Very troubling.

• 1.30.13 – a blog post from the Pro Bono Institute reminds us of the growing role that corporate counsel play in delivering pro bono services, and that the Association of Corporate Counsel has been leading the charge to promote more pro bono from in-house counsel.

Music!  This week’s song, from Canadian songwriter A.C. Newman, is called “Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer.”  The song’s first lines are “Like a hitman, or like a dancer – all muscle.”  I’ve always thought this a clever, artful way to express the idea of two things having exact likeness of form but unlikeness of purpose.  I also love the line in the refrain, “You’re gonna change sides, but you wanted to wait,” which speaks to me about the moral push and pull we feel when forced to choose between what’s right and what’s popular, and how we sometimes cling to the hope that what’s right will become popular.   Enjoy this nearly note-perfect, in-studio performance of “Like a Hitman, Like a Dancer.”