PSJD Public Interest News Digest – April 6, 2018
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives 
Hello there, interested public! There’s a fair amount of news this week, including some major new developments in law-school public-interest funding at Yale, Harvard, and in Ontario.
It was Louisiana that really caught my eye this week, though. Look at the two crim-law related sections below to read about how the state legislature is looking to slash funding for indigent defense and a local judge is calling into question a method by which some public defender offices have been trying to create alternative funding streams, in partnership with district attorneys.
Until next week,
Sam
Law School Public Interest Funding
& Student Loans
- At Yale Law, a classmate of Hillary Clinton is working to create a Public Interest Fund, in Ms. Clinton’s name, that would allow for two recent Yale grads to obtain year-long fellowships–and ultimately to create additional legal clinics at the school.
- At Harvard Law, students continued their advocacy efforts with the University, aimed at convincing the school to “strengthen its support for graduates pursuing public interest and lower-paying work.”
- In Ontario, the provincial government allocated an additional $7.3m for community legal clinics and law student legal aid services throughout the provinces in 2018-2019.
- In Alberta, a lack of legal aid funding from the provincial government fueled ongoing speculation about a potential legal aid strike.
- In Texas, state lawmakers called for changes to the a state statute barring workers from renewing professional licenses if they are in default on their student loans.
- 29 State Attorneys General wrote a letter to select members of Congress expressing opposition to the PROSPER Act’s provisions that would shield student loan collection companies from regulation by individual states.
- One of the country’s largest student loan servicers “sued the Connecticut Banking Department, challenging the agency’s demands for confidential information about its student loan borrowers.” [full article behind paywall]
Hiring Trends
- In Pittsburgh, PA, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette chronicled the difficulties the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office has had with turnover over the last year.
Immigration
- “More than two dozen elite private law firms filed amicus briefs…backing Hawaii in its U.S. Supreme Court challenge to President Trump’s executive order barring people from several Muslim majority countries from entering the United States.”
- A federal district judge ruled that the Commerce Department International Trade Administration (ITA) must comply with FOIA requests for its records on alien ingress for the same fees as other records. (The ITA had been charging $13,000 per year to access its data.)
- In New Jersey, prominent attorneys argued for the State Supreme Court to “promulgate a rule on an expedited basis imposing a special fee of $100 per year on every lawyer in the state…[with t]he proceeds…dedicated to enlisting attorneys to defend New Jersey residents facing possible deportation.”
Emerging Service Models
- Slate.com published an excellent piece on medical-legal partnerships in the United States.
Access to Justice – Criminal
- In Idaho, the Idaho Statesman reported on how “[a] growing body of research on Idaho’s overworked and underfunded public defenders has led to consensus across the board — from defendants to politicians to the public defenders themselves — that the system needs to change.”
- In Louisiana, public defenders spoke out against House Bill 167, a state legislature proposal that would shut down efforts to identify and exonerate the wrongfully convicted, cut funding for death penalty defense, and restrict funds for appealing convictions. The defenders warn these changes could slow the administration of justice and possibly cost the state more, long-term, than the status quo.
Criminal Justice Reform
- In Canada, the federal government proposed legislation that would “scrap most preliminary inquires, abolish peremptory challenges and make it easier for accused people to be released on bail as part of sweeping legislation intended to speed up Canada’s snail-like criminal-justice system.”
- In New York, NY, the Legal Aid Society argued to an appeals court that the City made false claims to the court below in a lawsuit concerning transparency for disciplinary records in the NYPD.
- In DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, a judge raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest in a new cooperative endeavor agreement under which the District Attorney’s Office will pay the Public Defender’s Office a portion of money the DA collects from a pretrial diversion program. Meanwhile, the Public Defender moved to recuse the judge, alleging the court itself had a “personal interest” in the matter. All public-defender-represented cases have been suspended until the issue is resolved.