PSJD Public Interest News Digest – December 21, 2018
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello there, interested public! I hope you all have a chance to take a break from things in the near future, but in the meantime, some news. One big story is featured immediately below. For the other, check out the “Student Loans” section, where a new Senate bill aims to make it easier for debtholders to save for retirement via employer matching contributions, the DoE released new PSLF data, and a report from a new non-profit purports to expose misfeasance in the way the federal government has administered the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Editor’s Feature: “Law Schools are Bad for Democracy”
In a strongly-worded piece, Professor Samuel Moyn of Yale Law wrote an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggesting that legal education misdirects aspiring lawyers’ desire for social change into judicial activism and provides “social-justice work [that] harmonizes [] easily with elite credentialing for power and wealth.” Multiple responses followed, including this one from Dean Raymond of the University of Wisconsin Law School (printed as a letter-to-the-editor in the Chronicle), and this blog post from Prof. Lubet of Northwestern Law.
Immigration, Refugee, & Citizenship Issues
- The National Catholic Reporter profiled the logistical and procedural hurdles pro bono attorneys face while trying to represent individuals with pending asylum claims detained by federal authorities.
- Southern California Public Radio also focused on logistical hurdles for asylum seekers, reporting that “California’s high cost of living could push families out of the very places offering the most help.”
- In Denver, CO, the city “officially opened a fund in November for people who can’t afford legal representation in their immigration cases.”
Student Loans
- Senator Wyden introduced the Retirement Parity for Student Loans Act, which “would permit 401(k), 403(b) and SIMPLE retirement plans to make matching contributions to workers as if their student loan payments were salary reduction contributions.”
- The Department of Education released new Public Service Loan Forgiveness Data. Politico used this data to report that “[a]s of September 30, only 206 borrowers have had their student loans discharged under [PSLF]. More than 32,000 borrowers had their applications denied ‘due to not meeting program requirements’ and another 11,892 were denied for ‘missing information.'” MarketWatch reported further on the subject.
- Meanwhile, CNBC profiled one recently-rejected PSLF borrower who has launched a lawsuit against her loan servicer.
- The American Federation of Teachers and the Student Borrower Protection Center released Keeping the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a report that purposes to detail how “servicers have created roadblocks for borrowers at each step in the process of qualifying for PSLF”–and to provide a roadmap for holding the federal government and its contractors accountable for “irreparable harm to millions of borrowers.” The Washington Post reported further on the subject.
- Following a court order, the Department of Education prepared to erase $150 million worth of student debt under the “Borrower Defense to Repayment” rule, a move that “will benefit about 15,000 lenders and students who were taken advantage of by “for-profit” colleges.”
- In California, a state senator announced plans to introduce a bill “lift[ing] state income taxes on newly forgivable student loan debt.”
- In Pennsylvania, “a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit alleging widespread abuse by student loan servicer Navient Corp. can go forward.”
Access to Justice – Civil
- The ABA announced its approval for iQualify Lending as a financing method for client legal fees. Under iQualify’s system, “the attorney can provide the client with an application form that’s submitted to iQualify Lending offices, and within a matter of minutes, qualified lenders will submit bids to the client to help finance the legal fees…The result is that the client is now able to pay their legal fee in full, upfront, [and a]ll loans made to the clients are non-recourse to the attorney.” (See also ABA Formal Opinion 484: “A Lawyer’s Obligations When Clients Use Companies or Brokers to Finance the Lawyer’s Fee“.)
- Meanwhile, the ABA Journal expressed skepticism that novel financing structures can help: “[t]he access-to-justice gap doesn’t exist because of absence of loans (sic) or the lack of technology or the intractable billable hour. It exists–and continues to grow–because the cost of life in America has increased dramatically while wages for most Americans have been stagnant or even falling for decades.”
- In West Virginia, the newly-appointed Director of the state’s Access to Justice Commission discussed his vision for the commission with WVNews.com. (The state’s A2J commission recently came under the administration of the West Virginia University College of Law, as previously reported in the Digest.)
- In New Jersey, the State Senate passed legislation which would “direct the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs to fund a portion of the legal services provided to homeless veterans and veterans at risk of homelessness.”
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Indiana, the Public Defender Commission sought funding for a pilot project that “would pair public defenders [representing parents in Department of Child Services court cases] with social workers.”
- In Louisiana, a professor of political science published a thorough and thoughtful critique of Louisiana’s newly-revised system for funding indigent defense, created earlier this year after criticism of the old system (as discussed in prior digest editions).
Criminal Justice Reform
- In Canada, the National Magazine reported on how the “Jordan Rule” capping the duration of criminal trials is affecting the administration of justice: “[n]ow that [the] backlog of pre-Jordan cases has been larged cleared…Crown and defense lawyers alike report that trial times aren’t speeding up.” Instead, the Magazine reported “a trend…of courts holding defence counsel responsible for questionable delays that violate the Jordan limits…imposing an extra burden on the defence as an ‘escape hatch’ to evade Jordan stays.”
Pro Bono
- In South Carolina, the State Supreme Court “has created a new honor for attorneys who provide over 50 hours of pro bono legal service each year.”
Music Bonus
Permalink Comments off
