By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers!  This week’s edition is fairly short, but includes a great deal of content related to legal services funding (or, rather, lack of).  Featured: the LSC’er-in-chief on the legal services resources crunch and the value of pro bono; the Pro Bono Institute’s Esther Lardent puts recently reported pro bono figures in context; MoJo looks at the House proposal to slash LSC funding; better job protections for law school clinicians?; the controversy surrounding cuts in state funding to New Jersey legal services programs; two Massachusetts legal services programs tie the knot.

• 7.14.11 – Legal Services Corporation president Jim Sandman did an interview with the Pro Bono Institute about the widening justice gap that results from more and more poor people seeking help from LSC grantees at a time when funding is so strained, and the “essential” part that pro bono plays in stopping the justice gap from further widening.  Quotable Sandman: “The biggest challenge facing legal services today is lack of funding.”  Pro bono, Sandman went on to note, is a “critical supplement” to the work that legal aid lawyers do, even if it cannot be a substitute for it.

• 7.12.11 – the Pro Bono Institute’s Esther Lardent reacts to AmLaw numbers showing a marked drop in Biglaw pro bono hours in 2010, taking issue with the “melodramatic headlines” used in reporting those numbers.  From her Nat’l. Law Journal piece: “The “doom and gloom” headlines overlook some important facts and figures….  Although it is true that major firms contributed significantly fewer hours of pro bono service in 2010 than in the previous two years, it must be noted that 2010’s law firm pro bono hours were still the third highest in history. That — after the worst recession in living memory and profound, destabilizing and continuing changes in virtually every aspect of the finances and operations of major law firms — is, in context, an accomplishment.”  Esther is right.  The pro bono number changes are largely a function of fluctuations in staffing and fee-paying business at law firms.  The real story about delivering legal services to poor people has to do w/ the threatened underfunding of Legal Services Corporation grantee organizations – which, importantly, need funding to help pro bono volunteers efficiently handle cases – as well as the continued slumping of non-LSC sources (chiefly IOLTA). 

• 7.12.11 – commy-pinko-tree-hugging-liberal outlet Mother Jones breaks down the House Appropriations Committee’s proposed 26% cut to LSC’s budget, noting that a cut couldn’t come at a worse time for legal services providers and their low-income clients.  The article highlights the fact that non-federal funding streams, including IOLTA and state appropriations, have already tapered off.  (To MoJo’s mention of Florida as a state that’s cut funding, we’d add NH, NJ, PA, and WI, among others.)  The article also hits on an important point that was tucked into the end of an LSC press release about the proposed cuts: while a record 63 million people qualified for legal services last year, LSC grantees have been forced to shed staff; 200 more lawyers could vanish from LSC programs by the end of 2011.
• And while we’re over on the left side of the political spectrum, the Daily Kos issues a rallying cry to preserve LSC funding.

• 7.11.11 – Better job protections for law school clinicians?  The ABA is pondering a step towards solidifying the employment relationships between nontraditional faculty and their schools, stopping just short of tenure.  From the National Law Journal: “The Standards Review Committee on July 10 voiced initial support for a proposal to require that schools at least provide full-time faculty members with a ‘program of presumptively renewable long-term contracts that are at least five years in duration after a probationary period reasonably similar to that for tenure-track faculty members’.”  Huzzah!  Clinicians have long felt like second-class citizens in the Ivory Tower.  And their role will arguably – hopefully, in my view – become more important as schools incorporate more experience-based learning programs into their curricula.

• 7.8.11 – in the Garden State, the Star-Ledger’s editorial board sounds a truculent note in opposing Gov. Chris Christie’s surprise $5 million legal services budget cut:  “[T]hanks to Gov. Chris Christie’s recent budget slashes on services for the poor, no matter how compelling your case is, you may be forced to argue it alone.  If you’re being beaten by your spouse, it may be much more difficult to get a divorce or restraining order. If you’re seeking custody of your kids or visitation rights, your case might be too time-consuming for a pro bono lawyer to take on. You may have no way to force a delinquent boyfriend to pay child support, or fight your unjustified eviction…. A loss of $5 million means Legal Services must cut at least 50 staffers and serve at least 5,500 fewer clients. This, at a time when so many more people have lost their jobs and fallen into poverty. Our democracy promises access to equal justice. But without the funding to back that up, it’s justice based on your bank account.”  UPDATE: the cuts are final, as the Senate failed to muster enough votes to legislatively override the budget plan (according to a 7.13.11 piece in Bloomberg Businessweek).

• 7.8.11 – Two Massachusetts legal services programs have merged.  A short blurb in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports:  Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts and Western Massachusetts Legal Services have combined to become Community Legal Aid, providing free legal help to low-income and elderly people in Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin and Berkshire Counties.  Legal Assistance Corp. of Central Massachusetts has traditionally operated in the central part of the state, with Western Massachusetts Legal Services operating in the state’s four western counties, the organizations reported in a news release. Together they will have more than 50 staff members and multiple locations.”   And here’s a similar blurb in the Worcester Business Journal.  (Community Legal Aid is not an LSC grantee, as neither of its two parent programs were.)