Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Read on for two weeks worth of news, as I missed delivering the digest last week due to an illness. The most consequential story this week is out of Canada, where the Canadian Intern Association questioned the legality of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s internship program. Additional highlights include class action status for the ACLU’s indigent defense funding lawsuit in Idaho and a new report from Brookings with even more dire predictions about potential student loan default rates.

Until next week,
Sam

Disaster Legal Aid

• Legal experts anticipated a looming crisis in Puerto Rico as the majority of mortgage payment moratorium agreements issued after Hurricane Maria expire this month.

Student Loans

• The Brookings Institute, using newly-available data, issued a report predicting that in the near future the default rate on student loans may rise more sharply than previously anticipated, predicting “nearly 40 percent may default on their student loans by 2023.“
• Washington State’s Attorney General reintroduced a bill establishing a “student loan advocate” to “field complaints from loan borrowers, help them understand their loans and compile data on loans.“
• Prof. Jeffery Dorfman of the University of Georgia advocated in Forbes for Congress to adopt “automatic income-based payroll deduction programs for student loans” modeled on programs in Australia and Great Britain. The professor cites other experts to argue that this idea would “allow borrowers to cover basic living expenses first, remove an enormous amount of bureaucracy, and increase collections.”

Legal Technology

• The Legal Services Corporation held its “Innovations in Technology Conference” in New Orleans, LA. Interested readers can catch up on many of the conference presentations on the LSC’s Facebook feed.
• BYU Law’s legal design lab launched its first application: a tool designed to address Utah’s “debt collection epidemic.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, the Canadian Intern Association warned the Canadian Civil Liberties Association that its summer internship program “likely” violates Ontario law.
• In Canada, the Supreme Court issued a decision expanding the scope of “public interest standing”–a development that may give advocacy groups increased access to administrative tribunals.
• In Ontario, Lakehead University’s student legal clinic expanded its services from the city of Thunder Bay into the surrounding district.
• In Ontario, the Law Society of Ontario’s board of directors voted unanimously to deepen its relationship with Legal Aid Ontario and to “champion the need for robust legal aid.“

• In Hawaii, the Legal Aid Society of Hawai’i will receive $300,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to assist victims of housing discrimination.
• In Virginia, the Virginia Law Foundation launched a free online portal for attorneys providing poverty law training and resources to help them prepare to assist in pro bono cases.
• In New York City, CityLimits.org wrote a lengthy profile of early reactions to Mayor DeBlasio’s Right to Counsel initiative in housing cases.
• In Delaware, the Combined Campaign for Justice and the Delaware Community Foundation created a new legal aid fellowship in honor of recently-retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Randy Holland. Holland Fellows will serve at one of Delaware’s three legal aid organizations for two years at a time.
• In St. Louis, Missouri, ArchCity Defenders announced a plan to expand its operations under a new Executive Director.
• In Kentucky, legal aid directors spoke out against the Governor of Kentucky’s proposal to eliminate all Access to Justice civil legal aid funding in the state’s 2018 budget.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Idaho, a court granted an ACLU lawsuit concerning public defender funding class action status.
• In Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton recommended a public defender to fill a judicial opening in Minnesota’s 3rd Judicial District.
• In Yolo County, CA, a long-serving public defender announced his candidacy for District Attorney, “outlining a platform tackling overprosecution, racial inequity in the court’s and Yolo County’s high jury trial and incarceration rates.“
• In Wisconsin, private attorneys lobbied the state Supreme Court to increase the pay rate for indigent defense contract work; the current pay rate is the lowest in the country.
• In response to a report he commissioned from the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School, Manhattan’s District Attorney announced “he will no longer accept campaign contributions from lawyers with business before his office, including those representing people being investigated or prosecuted.“
• In Wyoming, the state’s top public defender warned the state legislature that if it does not fund additional staff, “her attorneys are going to have to start refusing cases.“
• In New Mexico, the Albuquerque Journal interviewed a legendary public defender to create a history of indigent defense in Lincoln County tying growing caseloads and lengthening pre-trial detention to the fact that “legislators over the years have criminalized more and more behavior and added increased penalties to some crimes.” Meanwhile, Lincoln county’s District Attorney claims “public defenders in the region…are fabricating the crisis to get more funding.“

Music Bonus!

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! A terse but consequential digest includes a significant development in student loans, as the Justice Department took steps to curb state efforts to protect loan forgiveness. The Chief Justice of Iowa also had remarkably strong words for the state legislature on the state of access to justice in his state.

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• “The U.S. Justice Department has filed papers arguing Massachusetts’ attorney general cannot pursue claims under state law that one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers undermined a federal debt forgiveness program.“

Access to Justice – Civil

• A pilot clinic for pro bono legal advice on Prince Edward Island extended its services into 2018. This is the second such extension of the pilot.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In his annual address to the Iowa General Assembly on the Condition of the Judiciary, the Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court warned that declining funding for courts is “beginning to tear at the very fabric of our operation and mission…Iowans are losing access to justice.“
• The State Bar of Texas published a report in which “[c]urrent and former attorneys with the State Counsel for Offenders (SCFO), which represents indigent inmates accused of committing crimes inside Texas prisons, claim higher-ups at SCFO have ordered them to change legal strategy, for example prohibiting them from filing motions to assist mentally ill clients and even forcing them to withdraw from certain cases…after their bosses consulted with the Texas Board of Criminal Justice,…[which] controls SCFO’s purse strings and all other Texas Department of Criminal Justice [TDCJ] operations [including Texas prisons themselves].”
• In the opinion section of a local paper, Washington state legislator Derek Young announced his intention to focus on achieving full funding for criminal defense during the upcoming legislative session in Olympia, WA.
• A 2015 challenge to Indiana’s public defender system, alleging it violates the rights of indigent defendants to an adequate defense, is likely to proceed to the state Supreme Court after an appeals court last month upheld a decision below to dismiss the lawsuit.
•  After the state’s attorney’s office issued a bulletin suggesting hundreds of pedestrian tickets had been issued in error in recent years, local lawmakers in Jacksonville, FL called for police to stop issuing pedestrian tickets.

Music Bonus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpeisHYbKdE

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Welcome to 2018. In a roundup of stories from the end of last year, the main news items involve continued discussion of the student debt crisis (both in DC and within state governments) and the impact of recent policy changes at the Department of Justice on post-Ferguson federal reforms of court fines.

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) voiced his support for strengthening Public Service Loan Forgiveness, in opposition to proposals currently being discussed by other members of the House Republican Caucus.
• Washington State’s Attorney General called for legislation to give college borrowers greater safeguards against deceptive loan practices in a report on student indebtedness in his state.
• Democratic legislators in Wisconsin criticized a Republican proposal to provide student loan relief to attorneys who take public defender cases in sparsely-populated counties (mentioned in an earlier edition of this digest), arguing the strategy would create favor some areas of the state at the expense of others.
• The American Association of Law Schools’ new president expressed concern about proposals to eliminate Public Service Loan Forgiveness and cap graduate borrowing.

Access to Justice – Civil

• Idaho Legal Aid Services announced plans to hire a lobbyist to seek state funding in the face of a possible loss of federal support.
• The Baltimore, MD City District Court expanded its self-help aid for tenants in housing cases, as Maryland Legal Aid secured a $90,000 grant to expand its “Lawyer in the Library” program in Baltimore.
• Judge Workman of the West Virginia Supreme Court defended her institution’s access to justice record against recent criticism from a former Court administrative director, mentioning (among other measures) a new court rule directing half of all excess residual funds in class-action suits to Legal Aid.
• TVO.org discussed challenges francophones face exercising their rights to court proceedings in French in Ontario Province.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• Salon.com profiled Attorney General Sessions’ policies ending the practice of using nonbinding guidance to create policy at the Department of Justice–a procedural decision that has effected a reversal of federal positions created in the aftermath of the Ferguson protests to discourage local municipalities from financing government operations with court fines levied on poor defendants.
• The Lansing State Journal laid out the potential impact of Michigan’s attempts at indigent defense reform–with counties submitting plans which, if fully funded, would create an $87 million budget for public defense in the state, narrowing the gap between spending on prosecution and spending on defense from roughly $108 million to roughly $26 million.
• In Washington State, local reporting identified rising indigent defense costs as another consequence of the opioid epidemic.

Music Bonus!

Tiny Desk Concerts are often excellent.