by Christina Jackson, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives & Fellowships

Happy Friday!

Here are the week’s headlines:

• 2015-2016 White House Fellowship finalists announced;
• OPM announces then pulls back contract award for social media screening for applicants;
• New collaboration in Victoria, British Columbia brings new help for child protection issues;
• Changes in leadership in public interest organizations demonstrate a national trend;
• Washington state study shows many low-income households don’t seek legal aid;
• ACLU sues Idaho for lack of action to fix public defender system;
• Office created to coordinate civil legal services in New York City;
• Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law establishes Veterans Disability Law Clinic;
• Spotlight on Public Service Servants;
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries:

June 11, 2015 – “The President’s Commission on White House Fellowships announced the National Finalists for the 2015-2016 White House Fellowship. This year’s class of Finalists represents an accomplished and diverse cross-section of professionals from the private sector, academia, medicine, and our armed services. National Finalists have advanced through a highly competitive selection process, including a comprehensive written application and regional interviews with civic leaders at eight different cities across the country. The National Finalists were evaluated by the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships in Washington, DC over the weekend.”  (The White House)

June 15, 2015 – “The Office of Personnel Management began taking a few first steps last week toward incorporating social media and other publicly available information about prospective hires into the traditional background check process. But less than a week a later, the agency has backtracked without explanation. OPM, still dealing with a massive data breach that potentially compromised personal information from every federal employee, last week posted a notice stating its intent to award a sole-source contract to California-based tech company Social Intelligence. The company, which also has offices in Washington and Western Pennsylvania, claims to be able to use social media and other publicly available information to compile reports detailing ‘whether an individual’s publicly available online data contains information that may be relevant for the security clearance or employment suitability process,’ according to its website. Social Intelligence relies on proprietary algorithms and analysts, the site said. But on Monday, the solicitation was canceled, according to a notice on FedBizOpps.gov.”  (NextGov)

June 15, 2015 – “A new collaboration between Victoria Legal Aid and two community legal centres aims to achieve better outcomes for local families with child protection problems. Under the two-year pilot announced this week, lawyers with Women’s Legal Service Victoria and Loddon Campaspe Community Legal Centre will for the first time help people in the Family Division of the Children’s Court in Bendigo and Moorabbin, and at the pilot Family Drug Treatment Court. The community legal centre lawyers will provide eligible clients with advice, representation and referrals on the day they first come to court with a child protection legal problem, then continue to work with them on related ongoing casework.”  (Victoria Legal Aid News)

June 15, 2015 – “The Philadelphia public interest community is in the midst of a flurry of leadership changes, and as longtime pillars of the community pass on their organizations’ torches, the same appears to be happening nationwide as a generational shift occurs. ‘It’s a national phenomenon,’ said Catherine Carr, who is leaving Community Legal Services after serving as its executive director for 20 years. ‘Just in the last few days, I’ve seen probably three ads around the country.’ Carr attributed the increase in national turnover to the aging of the baby-boom generation. Many public interest organizations were founded 40 or 50 years ago, she said, and their leaders are reaching the ends of their careers.” This is an interesting article about the national trend.  (The Legal Intelligencer)

June 17, 2015 – “Despite an overwhelming percentage of low-income households in Washington facing civil legal problems, very few actually seek legal aid, according to information gathered in a study by the Washington State University Social and Economic Sciences Research Center. According to the report, more than 70 percent of low-income households in Washington had a civil legal problem within the past year, but three-fourths of those people did not seek or obtain legal aid, said Arina Gertseva, co-principal investigator with the SESRC. Those surveyed most commonly said they were unable to receive legal assistance because it was too expensive, they didn’t know where to go or their phone calls were never returned, she said.”  Many of the conclusions may already be known anecdotally, but the results are an interesting read.  (Moscow-Pullman Daily News)(subscription required)

June 17, 2015 – “Citing Idaho’s persistent failure to fix a broken public defense system, the ACLU followed through Wednesday on a threatened lawsuit to force the state to create a centralized public defense system and take other steps to insure compliance with federal and state laws on right to counsel and due process. The class-action lawsuit on behalf of five Idaho residents names Gov. Butch Otter and members of a legislative commission created in 2014 to address deficiencies in the state’s patchwork network of county public defender offices and practices. That commission was itself an outgrowth of an earlier governor-appointed panel. Commission after commission ‘passed the buck,’ the lawsuit charges. The group said it would file the suit Wednesday.”  (Idaho Statesman)

June 17, 2015 – “Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation this week to create an Office of Civil Justice, which will be responsible for coordinating civil legal services for low-income New Yorkers. The office will fall under the auspices of the city’s Human Resources Administration and mirror the Office of Criminal Justice, which was established last year. It will issue regular reports on the need for civil legal services by low-income residents and the availability of free and low-cost services to meet that need, as well as review budget requests from city agencies that provide such services.”  (New York Law Journal)

June 18, 2015 – “Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law has established a Veterans Disability Law Clinic. The school says the clinic, which it calls the first of its kind in the state, will represent veterans whose disability benefits applications have been denied. Income-eligible veterans in Monroe, Greene, Lawrence, Brown, Owen and Morgan counties will be eligible for services. The clinic plans to begin accepting clients next month.”  (Inside Indiana Business)

Spotlight on Outstanding Public Servants: 

Theodore Howard of Wiley Rein has long defended the rights of prisoners and fought against prison overcrowding across the country. John Relman of Relman, Dane & Colfax has championed the development of integrated communities in the fight for racial and economic justice. Howard and Relman received the Washington Lawyers’ Committee’s 2015 Wiley A. Branton Award, named for civil rights advocate Wiley A. Branton Sr. Nearly 1,000 attorneys and business leaders gathered at the Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel for the awards ceremony.  Read more about their great work here.

Super Music Bonus!  https://youtu.be/tqw4LCOdD04