PSJD Public Interest News Digest – March 31, 2023
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Hello, interested public! Lots of big news stories again this week. While some legal aid organizations are moving to capitalize on AI-powered tools, regulators in Italy have temporarily banned OpenAI’s ChatGPT based on an “absence of any legal basis that justifies [its] massive collection and storage of personal data to ‘train’ the chatbot[.]” Meanwhile, the United States and Canada revealed a major revision to their joint asylum policies that advocates warn will make asylum seeking more dangerous–and asylum officers called the Biden administration’s recent changes to the asylum process its “contrary to the moral fabric of our nation.” In South Carolina, the NAACP sued the state’s Attorney General in an attempt to defend its limited legal advice program from regulations aimed at the unauthorized practice of law.
As always, these stories and more are in the links below.
Take care of one another,
Sam
Editor’s Choice(s)
Dueling Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence
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Law360 published an article examining how “with access to e-discovery technology used by the biggest law firms and corporations, including the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, legal aid organizations can review documents faster, keep track of information more efficiently, handle higher case volumes, take on more complex cases and be better prepared to take cases to court.”
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Meanwhile in the US and Europe, “civil society groups have urged in a coordinated pushback against [OpenAI’s GPT and ChatGPT]’s rapid proliferation [that a]uthorities in the U.S. and Europe should act quickly to protect people against threats posed by OpenAI’s GPT and ChatGPT artificial intelligence models[;] the U.S.’s Center for AI and Digital Policy (CAIDP) filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, calling on the agency to ‘halt further commercial deployment of GPT by OpenAI’ until safeguards have been put in place to stop ChatGPT from deceiving people and perpetuating biases.” (formal complaint available from the organization’s website)
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Relatedly, in Waterloo ON, “a University of Waterloo expert in ethics, law and technology [says c]ourts are not equipped to detect the fake video and audio evidence that will contaminate the justice system thanks to advances in artificial technology[.]”
Student Loans & Student Debt
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Also in Washington DC, the National Director of the NAACP’s Youth & College Division joined “a delegation of student loan borrowers from Howard University united with student debt cancellation advocates to support the fight against attempts to restrict [education as a key to financial freedom], stating ‘[t]he NAACP will continue to do everything in our power to ensure the economic mobility of the 40+ million Americans depending on the survival of this Student Debt Cancellation program.’”
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Again also in Washington DC, “[n]early half a million people have been approved for federal student loan forgiveness under a one-time waiver program geared toward borrowers working in public service jobs.”
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In Connecticut, “lawmakers are considering legislation that would give a student debt reimbursement of up to $20,000.”
Immigration & Refugee Issues
Non-Profit & Government Management & Hiring
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In Washington DC, the Partnership for Public Service “released its first batch of rankings stemming from its annual analysis of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, revealing that even some of the best performing agencies struggled with federal employee morale in 2022.”
Access to Justice – Civil & Economic
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In Denver CO, the University of Denver’s Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System published a report on unbundled legal services.
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Also in New York NY, “[t]he Adams administration had difficulty answering questions about the city’s struggling Right to Counsel program during a City Council oversight hearing[.]”
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In Los Angeles CA, the “City Council unanimously approved a motion…instructing its Department of Housing to create recommendations for the establishment of a right to counsel ordinance and program for tenants facing eviction in the city.”
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In Harris County TX, county government “will soon launch a program to provide free legal counseling to residents facing eviction.”
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In Maine, the Senior Associate Justice of the state’s Supreme Judicial Court argued that, “[c]ivil legal services are at the very heart of the goal of justice for all. We must invest in both our public defense system and our civil legal aid infrastructure. Without access to legal counsel in both kinds of cases, those who can’t afford a lawyer are at an unfair disadvantage as they attempt to navigate the legal landscape.”
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Relatedly, the Portland Press Herald’s Editorial Board argued that “[while l]egislators are struggling to fix an indigent criminal defense program that they've allowed to fall apart[, work f]illing the gaps in aid for civil complaints, however, is much easier. A bill before the Legislature, L.D. 564, is asking for $11.2 million over the next two years, to be distributed through the Civil Legal Defense Fund, which supports the work of providers of civil legal services in Maine…these organizations provide crucial legal aid to tens of thousands of Mainers in every county every year.”
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Relatedly, the Editorial Board of the Bangor Daily News argued that while “Maine’s chronic shortage of attorneys for low-income criminal defendants has rightly gotten a lot of attention[,] Maine also faces a critical shortage of lawyers to represent low-income Mainers in civil cases, such as those involving evictions, protection from abuse and discrimination…Additional state support for civil legal aid would be a good investment.”
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Access to Justice – Criminal
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In Kentucky, the “governor vetoed a bill that would have merged Louisville's Public Defender's Office with Kentucky's Department of Public Advocacy.”
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In Mercer County OH, “[a] criminal defense attorney with about a decade of local legal experience has been named Mercer County's first public defender.”
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In Pennsylvania, the chief defender for the Defender Association of Philadelphia argued that despite the “proposed [] investment of $10 million to bolster public defense in Pennsylvania…[t]he disparity between what Pennsylvania’s defenders need and what we may receive — even with this investment — is cavernous.”
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In Georgia, the deputy director of the Southern Center for Human Rights argued in an op-ed that “[u]nderstaffing and underfunding continue to plague the important work of Georgia’s public defenders…As we recognize Gideon and the creation of our statewide public defender system, we must also recognize that a system without full investment will harm our public defenders, the many people the state decides to prosecute and the communities that will continue to shoulder bloated jail budgets.”