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

Happy Friday! What great week we had in San Francisco. As always, new ideas and energy flowed, and we were renewed. LSC this week announced the pilot states for their legal portal initiative, and we check in on a few access to justice projects.

Here are the week’s headlines:

• Penn Law and Southern Poverty Law Center establish post-graduate fellowship;
• Legal Services Corporation announces pilot states for access to justice portal project;
• Indiana Legal Services celebrates 50 years of service;
• First participants in Texas Bar legal incubator program help close the justice gap;
• Update on the Alberta Limited Legal Services Project;
• Free legal advice to survivors of sexual assault through Newfoundland and Labrador pilot program;
• Bill regarding pro bono hours reporting passes California Senate Judiciary Committee;
• Spotlight on Outstanding Public Servants; and
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries:

April 24, 2017 – “Penn Law and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have created a new, two-year, post-graduate fellowship for a new or recent graduate to work with the SPLC’s Special Litigation Practice Group. The Penn Law Civil Rights Fellow will serve as an integral member of the SPLC’s legal group, conducting legal research and analysis and developing theories to support new litigation projects and advocacy campaigns; drafting legal memoranda, pleadings, affidavits, motions, and briefs; interviewing witnesses and potential clients; participating in discovery and trial practice; and engaging in public speaking and attending meetings and conferences.” “‘Now, more than ever, we need public interest lawyers who are dedicated to representing those who face discrimination and injustice,’ said Arlene Rivera Finkelstein, Associate Dean & Executive Director of the Toll Public Interest Center. ‘Through this partnership, a Penn Law graduate will serve on the front lines of the fight for civil rights. It is an extraordinary opportunity made possible by the generosity of our alumni, and we are truly grateful.’ The fellowship is being funded through the combined efforts of several Penn alumni. They include: Todd R. Snyder, L’88 and Phoebe Boyer; The Joseph H. Flom Foundation; Mr. David J. Loo, WG’87; and The Harry Shapiro Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation, recommended by the Shapiro family.” (Penn Law News and Events)

April 24, 2017 – “The Legal Services Corporation (LSC), Microsoft Corporation, and Pro Bono Net have named Alaska and Hawaii as state partners in a pilot program to develop online, statewide legal portals to direct individuals with civil legal needs to the most appropriate forms of assistance. These portals will use cutting-edge, user-centered technology to help ensure that all people with civil legal needs can navigate their options and more easily access solutions and services available from legal aid, the courts, the private bar, and community partners.” “‘Many people find it difficult to access legal services,’ said LSC President James J. Sandman. ‘The goal of the portals is to simplify that process by providing a single, statewide point of access to effective help for people needing civil legal assistance. Each user will be guided to available resources based on the nature of the matter and the user’s personal circumstances.’ Alaska’s proposal was submitted by the Alaska Access to Justice Commission and Hawaii’s proposal was submitted by Legal Aid Society of Hawaii with support from the Hawaii state judiciary and other justice community partners. Alaska and Hawaii were selected because of their demonstrated track records in establishing new and collaborative resources for meeting civil legal needs; their embrace of technology’s potential to expand access to legal assistance; and their vision of partnering with allied non-legal networks such as social services, public libraries, and health care institutions to help people identify and resolve their legal issues and related social needs.” (Legal Services Corporation)

April 24, 2017 – “Saturday night’s gala marking the 50th anniversary of Indiana Legal Services had the feel of a family reunion. Former and current ILS attorneys, paralegals and staff along with lawyers who volunteer their services and friends of legal aid hugged, laughed and traded stories throughout the dinner held at the Indiana State Museum. Employees were recognized and standing ovations were given to former executive director Norman Metzger and longtime administrative assistance Ida Hayes.” “[Indiana Supreme Court Justice Steven David] praised ILS employees and alumni for having a commitment and work ethic that benefits not only the individual clients but improves the legal health of the entire state. ‘Everyone is better in Indiana because of Indiana Legal Services,’ David said.” (The Indiana Lawyer)

April 24, 2017 – “It’s the first day of the rest of the lives of 10 lucky lawyers who are the first group of participants in the State Bar of Texas’s new legal incubator. The participants in the Texas Opportunity and Justice Incubator, which opened this month, have emerged from an intense three-week boot camp that turbocharged the launches of their solo practices, which will at least in part serve poor and middle-income Texans. ‘They have an entrepreneurial spirit and the desire to build something for themselves while giving back to the community,’ TOJI Director Anne-Marie Rabago said. ‘A big piece of what these incubator programs work toward is making legal services available to those who don’t qualify for legal aid because of income or other reasons, yet can’t afford attorneys at market rates.’ In addition to helping to close the justice gap, TOJI, the main project of State Bar of Texas President Frank Stevenson, aims to help lawyers set up sustainable legal practices that serve modest-means clients.” (Legal Tech News)

April 25, 2017 – “The Alberta Limited Legal Services Project, a research effort looking at the effects of unbundling on access to justice, was formally launched on 18 April 2017. The project offers Albertans a roster of lawyers prepared to provide work on a limited scope retainer and aims to gauge lawyers’ and clients’ satisfaction with limited scope work and ultimately determine whether some legal help is better than no legal help at all. At present, the project boasts a roster of 49 lawyers with offices throughout Alberta, from Peace River to Medicine Hat, practicing in almost every area of civil law, including 39 whose services include family law matters. The project’s website is intended to link potential clients with participating lawyers. It promotes participating lawyers and their firms, and lists their contact information, the areas of law in which they offer limited scope services and the locations of their practices. Roster lawyers are also being promoted through the National Self-Represented Litigants Project.” “The data-collection phase will end in September 2018, following which the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family will analyze the results of the client and lawyer surveys and produce a report evaluating the project and its implications for access to justice in Alberta.

Some interesting observations may already be made.

• The concept of coaching as a legal service provided to litigants without counsel, which [the author] had thought was relatively new, is surprisingly popular among roster lawyers, 24 of whom will provide coaching for court appearances and other aspects of the ligation process, including disclosure and examinations for discovery.
• More than a fifth of roster lawyers will provide their services by telephone or online, disposing of the need for a physical office.
• Three-fifths of roster lawyers will provide help drafting pleadings and other court documents. Two-fifths will appear in court on behalf of a client, and half will provide advice on commencing or continuing court proceedings.

Lawyers may join, or leave, the project at any point during the data-collection phase of the project.” (Slaw)

April 25, 2017 – “Victims of sexual violence will soon be able to avail of free and independent legal advice in Newfoundland and Labrador following the announcement Tuesday in St. John’s of a sexual assault response pilot program. The federal government is funding the three-year program with an annual grant of $250,000. Details are still being finalized, but Justice and Public Safety Minister Andrew Parsons said he hopes the service will be available by the end of this year. ‘By offering free legal advice, the sexual assault response pilot program will help ensure survivors of sexual crime have access to justice,” Parsons said during a joint announcement alongside federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.'” (CBC News)

April 26, 2017 – “A bill by Senator Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) to expand access to justice among indigent Californians by requiring attorneys to report to the State Bar the number of pro bono hours they have worked and the amount they have donated to legal aid organizations passed the Senate Judiciary Committee. SB 316 is a mandatory reporting, voluntary disclosure bill that gives attorneys the option of disclosing the information publicly on their State Bar profile. The public would be able to see if an attorney failed to report at all or chose to keep the reporting private.” (Union City Patch)

Spotlight on Outstanding Public Servants:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issues a yearly list of law firms who meet its “40 at 50” goal — firms where at least 40 percent of attorneys dedicated 50 or more hours to pro bono work the prior year. Seven firms made the first list in 2004, and by 2015, that number jumped to 33. It remained at 33 for 2016. For 2016, 11 firms had at least half of all their lawyers meet the 50-hour mark, compared to 14 firms for 2015. Of those, three firms had 60 percent or more attorneys meet the 50-hour mark in 2016: Jenner & Block and Miller & Chevalier, where more than 65 percent met the mark, and Ropes & Gray, where 75 percent of attorneys met the goal. View the complete list here. Congratulations to the firms and lawyers making a difference in their communities. (National Law Journal)

1Ls & 2Ls: Apply to sit on the Equal Justice Works National Advisory Committee!

Image courtesy of Equal Justice Works

The Equal Justice Works National Advisory Committee is comprised of public interest law students and professionals who provide guidance and advice to the organization and help us achieve our goal of expanding public interest opportunities for law students and lawyers. The annual summer kick-off includes an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C. and the opportunity to meet face-to-face with national public interest law school leaders during our annual National Advisory Committee Retreat.

Equal Justice Works is now accepting applications for both law students and law school professionals to serve on the Committee for the 2017-2019 term. We are especially looking for applications from 1Ls and 2Ls! The *new* deadline to apply is Sunday, May 14^th at 11:59 p.m. (EST).

LAW STUDENTS: Apply now

PROFESSIONALS: Apply now

Email us at students@equaljusticeworks.org with any questions!

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

Happy Friday! The big news – the federal hiring freeze has been lifted. See the coverage below and join the continuing conversation on NALPconnect.

And we are looking forward to seeing our members at the NALP Annual Education Conference next week.  Because we will be sharing our news in person, the Digest will not be published on April 21. We will return on April 28 with all the news and exciting updates from our programming and events.

Here are the week’s headlines:

• New York state budget contains some indigent defense funding for counties;
• Tennessee Indigent Representation Task Force presents report and recommendations;
• Federal hiring freeze lifted;
• Law Society of British Columbia issues report: A Vision for Publicly Funded Legal Aid in British Columbia;
• Canadian Forum on Civil Justice issues Justice Development Goals Status Report;
• Spotlight on Outstanding Public Servants; and
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries:

April 10, 2017 – “The state will provide New York City and counties outside the city a measure of the relief they have been seeking for decades to pay for constitutionally mandated representation for New York’s indigent criminal defendants. While falling well short of a state takeover of the approximate $450 million annual cost of providing counsel as the Supreme Court mandated in Gideon v. Wainwright, the 2017-18 budget sets the stage for state assumption of a larger portion of localities’ indigent defense funding. The budget, signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday, obligates the state to reimburse counties for the improvements in indigent defense coverage promised to five counties through its 2014 settlement in Hurrell-Harring v. State of New York. Those improvements include having counsel at each defendant’s initial appearance in court, reducing caseloads for legal aid lawyers and improving the resources available to lawyers representing indigents. William Leahy, head of the state Office of Indigent Legal Services, said Monday the Cuomo administration estimates that extending Hurrell-Harring will cost about $250 million when fully implemented in 2023. In the budget, the state pledged to reimburse the counties and the city for those costs going forward. ‘This is less than whole, but it is what I have been saying since the day after the Hurrell-Harring settlement was signed, that the state has to make sure that all counties are in compliance with the constitution,’ Leahy said. When Cuomo vetoed a bill on New Year’s Eve that would have provided for a seven-year assumption of all local government costs to provide Gideon-mandated representation, he pledged to offer a more limited plan. The budget does not relieve the city and counties of the roughly $450 million spent each year to provide counsel to indigent defendants. Jonathan Gradess, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association, one of the legal services groups that have long advocated for Gideon improvements, said the indigent defense piece of the budget is ‘terrific’ and moves the state closer to assuming its rightful role as the sole funder of indigent legal services.” (New York Law Journal)

April 10, 2017 – “Almost a year-and-a-half after the Tennessee Supreme Court created it to review how Tennessee provides legal representation for poor criminal defendants, the Indigent Representation Task Force is presenting a set of recommendations Monday. Chief among them: Give District Public Defenders enough money to do their jobs and create another task force, one that would consider whether to create “an independent central commission to oversee” public defense in Tennessee. Although it avoids crisis language, the report makes it clear that the state’s criminal justice system, including the part of it designed to uphold the right to an attorney, is overloaded. ‘The information gathered by the Task Force established that there has been a dramatic increase in the ratio of cases to the justice system’s capacity during the past 20 years,’ the report says in an executive summary. ‘While the system has used its best efforts to manage the increasing caseload, its ability to continue doing so is not sustainable without additional resources.’ The task force’s report is extensive, at more than 200 pages, detailing the history of public defense in Tennessee, the system’s current architecture and the challenges it faces.” (Nashville Scene)

April 11, 2017 – “The White House will lift President Trump’s federal hiring freeze on Wednesday, following fire from critics who said it hampered the government from carrying out core functions. The end of the freeze is part of guidance ordering federal departments and agencies to submit restructuring plans to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by the fall. ‘It does not mean the agencies will be free to hire willy-nilly,’ OMB Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters Tuesday. ‘What we’re doing tomorrow is replacing the across-the-board hiring freeze that was put in place on day one and replacing it with a smarter plan, a more strategic plan, a more surgical plan.'” “The memorandum requires all agencies to ‘begin taking immediate actions’ to reduce the size of their workforces over the long term and achieve the savings called for in Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget. Agency heads must develop a plan to ‘maximize employee performance’ by June 30 and submit a final version of that plan to the White House budget office by September.” (The Hill)

“Mulvaney says under the new guidance, some agencies will wind up hiring more people, while others will end up ‘paring’ the number of employees ‘even greater than they would have during the hiring freeze.'” “Still, the impact of this latest move is likely to be limited too. It will be up to Congress to set actual spending levels for federal agencies, and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were highly critical of Trump’s spending plan.” “Mulvaney also said the administration is asking agencies, along with members of the public, to submit suggestions for how to rebuild the executive branch ‘from scratch.'” “However, nearly every recent administration has taken on the same rebuilding task, whether calling it ‘reinventing government’ as the Clinton administration did, or appointing a blue-ribbon commission as Reagan did, or instituting the Government Reform for Competitiveness and Innovation Initiative, as Obama did.”(NPR)

BUT the State Department will maintain the hiring freeze for an undetermined time. “The State Department will maintain a hiring freeze even as other federal agencies lift their freeze. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly told his agency’s employees in a Wednesday memo that State will keep its freeze in effect. ‘Although the Office of Management and Budget lifted the federal hiring freeze effective April 12, 2017, the Department will maintain its hiring freeze in effect for the present time. Any change to this policy will be notified promptly,’ the memo said.” (The Hill)

April 11, 2017 – “Legal aid should be publicly funded and available to all members of a democratic society, particularly those who are vulnerable or disadvantaged, says a new report from The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC). ‘All people, regardless of their means and without discrimination, should have access to legal information and publicly-funded professional legal advice to assist them in understanding whether a situation attracts rights and remedies or subjects them to obligations or responsibilities,” says the report entitled: ‘A Vision for Publicly Funded Legal Aid in British Columbia,‘ issued by the LSBC Legal Aid Task Force. Nancy Merrill, who chaired the nine-member task force, said: ‘Everyone should have universal access in terms of a diagnostic service and be able to find what legal services are available.’ While the vision was designed to be inclusive rather than excluding sectors of society, Merrill said the task force did not ‘drill down’ to examine who should provide this advice. The advice would also consider the individual’s ability to access the free market for legal services. The task force, struck in Sept. 2015, was charged with developing a vision of legal aid for the LSBC that was in line with s.3 of the Legal Profession Act. For the past 15 years, the LSBC has been silent on the issue. The report, though, stops short of advocating for universal legal aid. Merrill said that the full range of fully funded legal services (advice through to court appearances) would go to a society’s more marginalized or at-risk individuals. The LSBC vision sets these out as legal issues involving the state where liberty or security of the individual is at risk; children whose security is at risk; people with mental or intellectual disabilities that impair their ability to access government or community services; family law where the physical, economic, or emotional security of a family is at risk; persons disadvantaged because of poverty, and immigrants and refugees. Merrill acknowledges these categories are similar to those that the Legal Services Society lists as eligible for legal aid. The difference, she said, in the range of problems that should be considered. The LSBC vision is broader.” (Canadian Lawyer Legal Feeds)

April 13, 2017 – “The Action Committee’s “Canadian Access to Justice Initiatives: Justice Development Goals Status Report” has been published and is available in both English and French. This Report uses the nine Justice Development Goals set out in the Action Committee’s ‘A Roadmap for Change’ report as a framework to explore current initiatives and to identify areas for future work in access to justice in Canada. The Justice Development Goals Status Report was produced by the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice. In addition, the Forum has also published the ‘Status Report: Working Data Document’, which includes data from the ‘Canadian Access to Justice Initiatives: Justice Development Goals Status Report’, as well as raw data from the recent Justice Development Goals Survey that is not discussed in the Report.” The full reports are available at the link. (Canadian Forum on Civil Justice Action Committee)

Spotlight on Outstanding Public Servants:

For you baseball fans in honor of opening day. On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke the color barrier in a sport that had been segregated for more than 50 years. Exactly 50 years later, on April 15, 1997, Robinson’s groundbreaking career was honored and his uniform number, 42, was retired from Major League Baseball by Commissioner Bud Selig in a ceremony attended by over 50,000 fans at New York City’s Shea Stadium. Robinson’s was the first-ever number retired by all teams in the league. (History.com)

Photo: Brenda Gottesman – CC License

Civil Rights Compliance Officer

The Organization

The mission of the Civil Rights Division is to enforce civil rights laws, increase public awareness of civil rights and provide dispute resolution services. The Division’s major duty is to enforce state and federal statutes that prohibit discrimination in employment, voting, public accommodations, disability and housing by investigating and litigating civil rights complaints. In addition, the Division provides conflict resolution services and mediation programs statewide, including many court and agency programs. The Division not only is responsive to complaints it receives, but actively addresses discriminatory activity by providing education awareness. It also conducts surveys and inquiries in efforts to eliminate discrimination and publishes reports to highlight civil rights issues in the State. The Division has both administrative and enforcement functions. Its staff is comprised of lawyers, compliance officers, program coordinators, support personnel, volunteer mediators and interns.

The Position

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office Civil Litigation Division, Division of Civil Rights Section is seeking a Civil Rights Compliance Officer I to review and analyze claims of discrimination from the public, to determine if discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, voting or disability may have occurred, in violation of the Arizona Civil Rights Act, Arizona Fair Housing Act or Arizonans with Disabilities Act (the “Acts”), and determine jurisdictional matters pertaining to the alleged violations. The position will draft administrative complaints and perform thorough investigations of the allegations stated in the complaints; maintain all investigative files assigned, including review, analysis, sorting and filing of evidence received from parties, attorneys, governmental agencies and other sources; draft administrative discovery, including interrogatories and subpoenas for documents and testimony.

Does this job have every you’re looking for from A to Z? Check out the full-post on PSJD.

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