By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.   It’s been a light news week, and I’m traveling.  So you’re spared from my typical musings, ramblings and editorializing.  Here’s the access-to-justice and public interest news in very short:

• defense lawyers association backs NM measure to convert public defense program to independent state agency;
• Honoring lawyer pro bono/public interest contributions in NY;
• from UT, a look at the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake;
• new U.S. poverty data;
• in CA, Riverside County’s public defender blasts budget decisions that amount to “amputations”, not just cuts;
• the rotten state of IOLTA funding in FL
• back in CA, a unique new clinic at UC  Davis Law;
• Michigan’s state house considers creating a commission to promote public defender standards;
• public defender reality TV in NY;
• public defender caseload standards to take effect in MO.

The news in less short:

• 9.14.12 – “Criminal defense lawyers are helping to finance a campaign for a ballot proposal to make the New Mexico Public Defender Department an independent state agency.A campaign finance report shows the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers contributed $10,000 last month to a newly formed political committee that’s promoting voter approval of the proposed constitutional amendment.  (Here’s the short AP story.)

• 9.12.12 – the New York Law Journal honors its “Lawyers Who Lead by Example”: We asked the legal community to nominate their colleagues who demonstrate a sustained commitment to improving the lives of poor or nearly poor New Yorkers. We received about 70 nominations, all of them worthy.  Our 14 honorees for 2012 are truly part of the solution, demonstrating the highest level of commitment to their profession and their communities, tapping their training, business acumen, creativity and humanity to solve legal problems for those in need.  This year the Law Journal expanded the range of categories. Our 2012 honorees include one law firm; eight private attorneys; an in-house lawyer; three public interest attorneys who reached beyond the borders of their programs to bring attention and resources to the cause, and a law school clinic.”

• 9.12.12 – a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune looks at the Legal Aid Society’s nine decades of work on behalf of low-income Utahans.

• 9.12.12 – The U.S. Census Bureau released 2011 poverty data this week (press release).  The poverty rate remained essentially unchanged between 2010 and 2011.  Here’s a little more from the Census Bureau.

• 9.11.12 – Riverside County’s new budget is balanced, but hardly fair, in the view of the public defender: “Public Defender Gary Windom protested what he characterized as a draconian cut to his office, which earlier this summer laid off three people. Lawyers in the office represent people accused of crimes who cannot afford their own attorneys.  ‘These cuts are not cuts, they are amputations,’ Windom said. Windom said he was particularly concerned about a $1.5 million reduction for a unit that represents people who face the death penalty, if found guilty. He said that unit handles 20 death penalty cases a year and the cut would cripple the program by gutting 50 percent of its revenue.  Windom also objected to an additional $1 million cut to the public defender’s office budget overall.  And he questioned a projection that a new $50 fee charged to the accused when county lawyers are assigned to them would generate $1 million for the office.” (Article from the Californian.)

• 9.11.12 – the rotten state of legal services funding in Florida.  “[Florida Bar Foundation Executive Director Jane Curran] said that the Foundation’s revenues, generated by short-term interest on trust accounts, shrank from $44 million in 2007, before the recession, to $5.58 million last fiscal year, which ended June 30. ‘Our funding cuts alone … will result in the layoff of 120 legal aid lawyers,’ Curran said.”  (Story from the Daytona Beach News-Journal.)

• 9.11.12 – at UC Davis Law, a clinic focused on the state high court.  “The only course of its kind in the country, the California Supreme Court clinic is designed to train select students in the art of researching and writing briefs for the state’s highest court.  Some law schools in California and other states have similar programs that focus on the U.S. Supreme Court, but none is devoted to a state high court.
  [T]he students will provide pro bono representation to individuals and organizations in both criminal and civil matters pending before court. The class will enter a case either as co-counsel to a party or as an amicus curiae…”  (Article in the Sacramento Bee.) 

• 9.10.12 – a short article on Michigan Public Radio’s website: “Michigan’s public defender system is consistently rated one of the worst in the country. But this week, the House Judiciary Committee will consider creating a commission to establish standards for indigent defense.”

• 9.10.12 – public defender reality TV. “The special, Criminal Defense: And Justice for All, was scheduled to air in two half-hour episodes beginning Tuesday [9/11] at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on the National Geographic Channel. Filmed over a span of three weeks, the shows offer a day-in-the-life look at several lawyers as they defend their clients.  The show’s executive producer…says most television programs focusing on criminal justice are based on the police or prosecution point of view. ‘The idea of having access to the work of public defenders is something that has almost never been shown before to the public,’ he tells the ABA Journal in an interview.  Law-and-order policies get lots of public debate, he points out. Now viewers will get ‘an opportunity to see how the policies that are talked about in the abstract and in the public square affect individual people’s lives’.”  The two episodes were filmed as a pilot and have the potential to become a series.”  (Full story from the ABA Journal.) 

• 9.7.12 – in Missouri, a new public-defender caseload standard to take effect on 10/1: “Boone County public defenders might have to decline immediate representation for some clients under a formula set to take effect Oct. 1 that will cap their monthly caseload.”  (Story from the Columbia Tribune.)