By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  This week’s bulletin comes to you from Chicago, where I’m attending the National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s annual conference.  Before the public interest and access to justice news, here are two interesting legal-education developments:

• 12.4.12 – another law school creates a hang-your-shingle incubator – Shincubator? Well, perhaps not – for recent grads: “The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is the latest to announce plans for a solo incubator. The school will spend approximately $1.2 million to create a suite of offices in its library for rental at low prices to recent graduates launching their own practices.  Solo incubators are widely seen as a way for schools to help graduates establish practices at a time when law firm hiring has slowed. Around 10 such programs have been created at schools including the City University of New York School of Law; Thomas Jefferson School of Law; Chicago-Kent College of Law; the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law; the University of Maryland School of Law; and Pace Law School.”  (Full story from the National Law Journal.)
• 12.3.12 – news of a “proposal backed by all three Arizona law schools to allow 3Ls to sit for the bar during the February before they graduate, rather than making them wait until after graduation. The Arizona Supreme Court is slated to consider the proposal on December 5. If the court approves, Arizona would be the only state that allows students to take the bar exam midway through their final school year.”  (Full story from the National Law Journal.)

The week in public interest and access-to-justice – short version:

• pushing for higher prosecutor and defender salaries in FL;
• pro bono can pay;
• Legal Services of Eastern Missouri wrestles with high caseloads;
• King County (Seattle) public defense controversy;
• the long-running Missouri public defense controversy continues;
• a report from NY’s access-to-justice task force;
• the importance of legal aid for tenants facing eviction;
• how do Presidential Management Fellows feel about the PMF program?;
• a labor-law win for a law school clinic;
• NLADA launches new legal aid research site;
• Chicago Music Bonus!

The summaries:

• 12.7.12 – “Representatives of state attorneys and public defenders began making a renewed case Thursday for increasing salaries, saying low pay causes many attorneys to leave for private law firms after only a few years. Bill Eddins, state attorney for the 1st Judicial Circuit of Florida (which includes Escambia and Santa Rosa counties) and  president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, told a Senate panel that high turnover is reducing the number of experienced prosecutors.”  (Story from NorthEscambia.com.  And here’s more from the Florida Times-Union.)

• 12.6.12 – a Purpose Prize for the retired lawyer who did pro bono foreclosure defense work and sniffed out the “robo-signing” practice (which led to tens of millions of funding dollars for the legal services community): “[In] April 2008, Cox joined Pine Tree Legal Assistance and began representing consumers fighting foreclosures. In 2009, while representing Nicolle Bradbury, Cox discovered that a GMAC Mortgage official was signing thousands of foreclosure affidavits in 23 states, though he had not verified their accuracy. Cox won the case but the impact was more widespread. His findings helped spur 49 of 50 state attorneys general to sue the five biggest mortgage servicers for fraudulent foreclosure practices, leading to a $25 billion settlement.”  (Story from the ABA Journal.)

• 12.5.12 – from the Missourian: “Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) has experienced budget cuts, followed by the loss of grant funding, yet continues to assist an increasing number of clients.”

• 12.5.12 – “The leaders of King County’s four public defense agencies today sent a letter to Metropolitan King County Council President Larry Gossett and Councilmember Kathy Lambert, who heads the council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee, to voice opposition to a county plan that would dissolve the independent agencies and make public defenders county employees.  Last week, David Chapman, who heads the King County Office of Public Defense, announced that nearly 400 employees of the four agencies — The Defender Association, Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons, Associated Counsel for the Accused and Northwest Defenders Association — could potentially become King County employees by July 1. Chapman’s office assigns cases to the four firms, dividing the nearly $40 million per year the county spends on public defense.  The proposal for the county to hire the public defenders stems from a lawsuit filed in 2006 against the county by Kevin Dolan, a public defender at the Associated Council for the Accused. Dolan said he filed the lawsuit on behalf of employees of the four defender groups who sought enrollment in the county’s retirement system. Since the 1960s, King County has contracted public defense services from the non-profit firms.”  (Full blog post from the Seattle Times.)

• 12.4.12 – from the News-Tribune: “The Missouri public defender system says it is easing off its caseload limits that have led to disagreements over whether they have the time and resources to represent some criminal defendants.  Public defender director Cat Kelly said Tuesday she has instructed local public defender offices to treat the caseload limits with more flexibility. The move has the approval of the Public Defender Commission.”   The Fulton Sun reports that “Missouri public defenders have decided to resume taking indigent cases after Missouri prosecutors last Wednesday threatened to sue the Missouri Public Defender System…. Cathy R. Kelly, director of the Office of State Public Defender, said the decision to resume taking indigent cases came before the lawsuit was threatened by prosecutors last Wednesday.”

• 12.3.12 – “Calling the unmet need for civil legal services among indigent New Yorkers a “continuing crisis,” a new report says increased state funding and greater collaboration is needed between law schools, legal aid providers and law firms.  At best, 20 percent of the demand for civil legal services is being met, leaving more than 2.3 million New Yorkers without representation each year, according to the report, released Friday by the Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services.”  (Full article from Thomson Reuters.  And here’s the task force’s report.)

• 11.30.12 – an op-ed on the importance of  tenants in eviction court having access to legal services: “Millions of Americans face eviction every year. But legal aid to the poor, steadily starved since the Reagan years, has been decimated during the recession. The result? In many housing courts around the country, 90 percent of landlords are represented by attorneys and 90 percent of tenants are not. This imbalance of power is as unfair as the solution is clear.”  (Full piece in the New York Times.)

• 11.30.12 – Presidential Management Fellows are happy with their first days on the job but believe agency supervisors and program coordinators could provide better guidance and mentoring, according to a new study.  Overall job satisfaction among the class of 2011 fellows who participated in a study conducted by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service scored 72.7 points out of 100 points. The study, which included the views of 274 new fellows gathered from November 2011 to December 2011, found that PMFs like and respect their bosses, have realistic expectations of the program and are committed to public service. In particular, fellows who thought their first job assignment matched their skill level and took into account their developmental needs tended to rate the overall program more positively. The class of 2011 includes 420 fellows who work on various assignments in different agencies for two years.”  (Full article on the Government Executive website.)

• 11.27.12 – a labor law win for a law-school clinic. “Eighteen current and former employees of a Long Beach hotel have reached a $130,000 settlement over the denial of meal and rest breaks required by California law, attorneys for the workers announced Tuesday.  The settlement with HEI Hotels and Resorts arose from claims filed with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement by employees of the Hilton Long Beach and Executive Meeting Center, which has been owned and managed by HEI since 2005…. The 18 current and former employees were represented by the UC Irvine School of Law-Immigrant Rights Clinic and Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center.” (Story from the San Jose Mercury-News.)

• NLADA has launched the Civil Legal Aid Research site to “make existing research easily accessible and understandable to busy administrators and lawyers within civil legal aid programs. Therefore, NLADA has created this blog-database that captures the information about successful evidence-based practices and the results of research and posts those findings in an easily accessible web-based format.  In order to support state justice systems and civil legal aid programs in increasing their efficiency and effectiveness, NLADA will share existing and newly determined evidence-based practices with other programs to match their service delivery to those evidence-based practices that have shown most promise to maximize fair and justice results for clients. State justice systems and programs will then be able to focus their resources more effectively and support qualitative, in addition to the already widely done quantitative, assessment of outcomes to further test and tweak these practices.

• Music!  Chicago has me thinking about the electric blues and that has me thinking about Muddy Waters.

Spread the word!  The final deadline on our 2012 Public Interest Employment Market Snapshot Survey is tomorrow, on December 7, 2012. U.S.-based nonprofit and government law offices should participate in this unique survey effort to assess the status of the current public interest legal employment market. Here’s more info and a link to the online survey:

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) is conducting a brief, anonymous survey of U.S.-based nonprofit and government public-interest law offices about 1) recent law student and attorney hiring and 2) hiring expectations for the immediate future. We will use the data to produce a report about what the public interest employment market looks like now and how it may change in the near future.

NALP will release the report in January 2013. The report will be made freely available online. The report will NOT identify any responding organizations by name. We hope the report will benefit the public interest legal community as well as law students and attorneys who are on public interest career paths.  Please participate in the short survey by clicking here.  The (new) survey deadline is Friday, 12/7/12.  If you have questions please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s director of public service initiatives, at sgrumm@nalp.org or 202.296.0057.

North Carolina Central University School of Law’s Success and Careers blog recently featured a guest post from Tara Rethore on leveraging social media to manage your law career. If her name sounds familiar, it’s may be because Rethore did a well-received presentation at this year’s Equal Justice Works Conference called “Social Media Tools for Public Interest Law Professionals“. If you missed it, no worries – check out a sampling of her tips on how to use social media as an effective job searching tool:

Everyone looks for a job – at least once – and it can be frustrating! Lately, new tools and technology have changed the look and feel of job search. Nevertheless, whether you have searched in this century or the last one, the fundamentals of job search remain the same:

• Tell a compelling story – résumé and positioning statements are just the start
• Fit with the organization’s culture – if it isn’t right, it isn’t right!
• Interact with and engage with others – real people take decisions, not technology

That said, social media offers new – and potentially, very powerful – tools for managing your law career. It’s also an opportunity for employers to learn more about you, perhaps in ways you never intended. For some, that means rethinking how you use social media. For others, it means rethinking how you manage your career.

How? Be strategic. Be smart.

Be Strategic:

There are many online tools to support your job search. Some are akin to job boards – essentially, online classified ads that let you search for specific opportunities (e.g. Monster, Indeed.com, CareerBuilder). Other tools emphasize interactive or social connections (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+); these can also be incredibly useful for job search – but only if you use them strategically:

• Choose what you use – Which site is best for your preferred career?
• Know why you are using it – What’s your objective? How will you leverage this tool?
• Stay on message – What do your profile and interactions say about your qualifications?

…

Be Smart:

In any job search, be proactive rather than waiting for jobs to come to you. That requires connecting with real people. During a job search, how and why you connect also matters. With social media, your choices become far more visible to prospective employers. It also creates opportunities to show your interest and highlight your expertise. Five steps to connect with others effectively, particularly on LinkedIn:

Be mindful of the image you present above the fold (Click ‘Profile’ to edit or view)

• Ensure your tag line, the information in the grey box, and summary reflect your positioning statement
• Update your status at least weekly – be professional and target your audience
• Worry less about chronology – be truthful, but your LinkedIn profile must be more than an online resume
• Adjust sections to highlight your most important attributes – for your next job

To read the full article, visit NCCU Law’s Success and Careers blog.

The American Constitution Society (ACS) and the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) have partnered up to help match public defenders with qualified law students, providing an efficient way for offices to increase their chances of finding an ideal candidate.

ACS is using its national student network to collect a roster of law students who are committed to indigent defense and seeking internships at Public Defender offices across the country. NLADA is inviting any office or agency looking for interns to fill out a form with basic information about their office or program. The matching tool will then send offices information on applicants that meet the specified criteria.

Public defender offices do not have to commit to accepting any applicants they receive through the PD intern Matching Program, and offered internships can be paid, unpaid, or offered for academic credit. Students can fill out this form to be included in the applicant pool.

From the Government Executive news website:

Presidential Management Fellows are happy with their first days on the job but believe agency supervisors and program coordinators could provide better guidance and mentoring, according to a new study.

Overall job satisfaction among the class of 2011 fellows who participated in a study conducted by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service scored 72.7 points out of 100 points. The study, which included the views of 274 new fellows gathered from November 2011 to December 2011, found that PMFs like and respect their bosses, have realistic expectations of the program and are committed to public service. In particular, fellows who thought their first job assignment matched their skill level and took into account their developmental needs tended to rate the overall program more positively. The class of 2011 includes 420 fellows who work on various assignments in different agencies for two years.

PPS found some red flags, however, among those positive first reviews. Forty-three percent of respondents didn’t think their supervisors fully understood how the fellowship program works, while 40 percent said they didn’t receive enough early guidance from agency program coordinators. Fellows also gave the Office of Personnel Management low marks for orientation because they said the agency didn’t provide it early enough in the program.

“Although considerable time and effort goes into recruiting, hiring and training more than 400 fellows a year, the evidence suggests that many federal agencies and managers are not fulfilling some of the important needs of PMF participants during the first months of the two-year program,” the study said. “Unless remedied, these lapses could undermine the purpose of the PMF program and discourage participants from continuing careers in federal service.”

You can learn more about the PMF program here.

By: Steve Grumm

It’s serious business when things go from canine to equine.  Over the last few years a handful of law schools have brought in therapy dogs during finals period.  Stressed-out students are able to book appointments to chill out w/ the pets, which are thought to have a calming effect on the future lawyers, whose minds are ravaged by the finer points of the rule against perpetuities and reverse nonmutual collateral estoppel.  (I may have made up that second one.)  But the Arkansans have outdone themselves.  From Arkansas Business Online:

The Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has a unique plan to reduce students’ stress: therapy dogs and a therapy horse named Porsche.

The school is hosting the animals during reading week, which begins Wednesday, and finals, which stretch from Dec. 10-19. Test-takers can spend their appointments for “petting and hugging” with one of several different dogs in one of the law library’s large study rooms. The horse will be available across the street in McArthur Park.

We’ve just posted several attorney listings from the Illinois attorney general’s office – in both her Chicago and Springfield branch offices.  Go to PSJD to check them all out (login required), but here’s one teaser:

Assistant Attorney General – Environmental Crime

The Environmental Crimes Bureau is seeking candidates for the position of Assistant Attorney General. Responsibilities include the investigation and prosecution of environmental crimes in state court. Interested candidates must be able to work closely with local, state, and federal environmental agencies, as well as local and state police. Specific duties include: conducting all aspects of criminal prosecution, including case management, legal research, drafting and arguing motions, preparing witnesses for testimony before the grand jury and all phases of the criminal trial process to include jury selection, opening statements, witness preparation, witness examination, cross-examination, and closing arguments.

…

View the full listing on PSJD.

Please spread the word.  We’ve extended the deadline on our 2012 Public Interest Employment Market Snapshot Survey.  The new response deadline is Friday, 12/7.  U.S.-based nonprofit and government law offices should participate in this unique survey effort.  Here’s more info and a link to the online survey:

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) is conducting a brief, anonymous survey of U.S.-based nonprofit and government public-interest law offices about 1) recent law student and attorney hiring and 2) hiring expectations for the immediate future. We will use the data to produce a report about what the public interest employment market looks like now and how it may change in the near future.

NALP will release the report in January 2013. The report will be made freely available online. The report will NOT identify any responding organizations by name. We hope the report will benefit the public interest legal community as well as law students and attorneys who are on public interest career paths.  Please participate in the short survey by clicking here.  The (new) survey deadline is Friday, 12/7/12.  If you have questions please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s director of public service initiatives, at sgrumm@nalp.org or 202.296.0057.

Interested in Con Law? Interested in helping high-school students to learn about Con Law and civics principles?  Here’s a great summer 2013 opportunity.

Street Law, Inc. is an international leader in programs that teach non-lawyers about law, democracy and human rights.  Founded in 1972 at Georgetown University Law Center, Street Law has helped more than 100 law schools (70 in the U.S. and 30 more around the world) develop and implement programs in which law students teach practical law in schools, communities and correctional settings.  Street Law has also worked with democratizing countries throughout the world.  Information about the organization’s programs and materials are available online at www.streetlaw.org.

There are several components to the Summer Law Student in Residence Program for 2013.  There will be sufficient work for one law student in the summer of 2013.

US Supreme Court Summer Institute

Street Law, in cooperation with the Supreme Court Historical Society, conducts two six day institutes in late June about the Court and its cases for high school government, civics and law teachers.  Sessions are held at Georgetown Law Center and at the Supreme Court of the United States.  Our law student assists in the development of the materials for the institute, participates in all sessions, helps teach one session, and assists with the institute follow-up.  A justice participates in each of the two institutes. Street Law staff and participants are also in Court for the announcement of the final cases of the term. (www.streetlaw.org/scipage.html)

Legal Updates to Street Law Web Sites

Street Law has produced a high school curriculum (Street Law: A Course in Practical Law) which is the most popular practical law book used in high schools today. We will be providing a legal update to the web materials that complement the 8^th edition of the text (2010 edition).

In addition, Street Law has developed a popular web site for high school teachers and students who want to learn about Supreme Court decisions mandated in state history and social studies standards.  Our summer law student in residence will assist in expanding and updating this web resource, www.landmarkcases.org.

Our law student will assist with research, writing and editing tasks.

…

View the full job listing on PSJD (login required).

Interested in climbing the government career ladder?  From the FCW website, here are insights from a group of distinguished management and public policy professionals who interact with government workforces.  Empasis is placed on career mobility (but not serial job-jumping so that it looks like you can’t stay anywhere too long), developing leadership skills, and viewing a career as a lifelong learning opportunity.

This is geared toward folks in government but the advice is great for anybody looking to develop leadership skills.