by Kristen Pavón

Well, friends, my time has come. Today’s my last day as the PSLawNet fellow at NALP. I’m leaving the great District of Columbia to join the 2012 Teach For America Corps in my hometown — Miami, Florida!

It has been fun bringing you all public interest news, career advice, and other tidbits from around the public interest sphere, and getting to know many of you through NALP/PSLawNet events and via the Internets.

Here are a few of my favorite posts that I hope you’ve enjoyed:

• Staying the Game: Overcoming Job Search Fatigue
• Landing the Job: Keeping Track of Your Job Search
• Be Bold in Your Job Search & For Your Professional Development
• The Race to Incarcerate: A Country of Inmates
• Resume Rework: Tips to Impress in 15 Seconds or Less
• Landing the Job: Rock That Phone Interview!
• Check out PSLawNet’s Summer 2012 Reading List!

Good luck in law school and the job market. Make sure to connect with me via Linkedin! Finally, I leave you with this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSmKuVSocN8]

Bye now! 🙂

-Kristen

By: Steve Grumm

Equal Justice Works opened the early-bird registration for employers to participate in the 2012 conference & career fair.  Details here.

(Law student registration, FYI, opens on August 15.)

by Kristen Pavón

Summer is finally here! What better way to celebrate than by sipping Piña Coladas poolside reading?! For pleasure! Imagine that.

Photo courtesy of http://waterytart23.blogspot.com

Last year, after graduation and the bar exam, I went on a leisure-reading binge — I must’ve read 10 books in less than 6 months! I had forgotten how colorful the world of non-case law books could be!

Well, now we’ve got you covered. We’ve compiled a list of 35 fiction and non-fiction books for the public interest-minded crowd. You can check them out here.

Enjoy! Let us know what you think!

by Kristen Pavón

Where will you be working/interning/relaxing/studying this summer? In a big city maybe?

Well, PSLawNet has great tips on how to enjoy big cities on a tight budget here. We’ve got the inside scoop on Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and our newest addition…my beautiful hometown, Miami! Wepa!

So, if you haven’t checked out our Having Fun on the Cheap page, get to it! Now, now, now.

Many thanks to Daniela Gordon at the University of Miami School of Law for sending us these great suggestions!

On Wednesday, May 23 at 3:00 PM EDT, NALP is presenting “Summer Success: Getting the Most from Your Summer Public Interest Experience.”

During this free webinar, you’ll learn practical tips on how to develop professionally and personally while interning at a public interest office this summer. Also, you’ll get insider advice from public interest attorneys and community leaders.

Deb Ellis, the Assistant Dean of Public Service at NYU Law School, and Lindsay M. Harris, Tahirih Justice Center’s Equal Justice Works Fellow and Immigration Staff Attorney, will be leading the webinar.

Don’t delay, register today!

Register here:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/824680642

Educational debt has become a crippling burden for far too many, and especially for those who want to pursue careers in public service. Equal Justice Works provides in depth information on loan repayment assistance programs and relief programs like Income-Based Repayment and Public Service Loan Forgiveness to help everyone pursue the career of their dreams.

Plan Before You Borrow: What You Should Know About Educational Loans BEFORE You Go to Graduate School

Thursday, April 12, 2-3 p.m. EDT

Interested in government or public interest work after graduating? This webinar will help you plan ahead and make sure you can take full advantage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, the most significant law affecting public service in a generation.

The webinar will teach you about:

– Taking out the right kind of loans

– Consolidating or reconsolidating your previous student loans

– How the College Cost Reduction and Access Act can free you to pursue a public interest career

Register here.

Next Thursday, Equal Justice Works is hosting afree webinar on how to leverage LinkedIn in your job search.

Here are the deets!

 Link In to Further Your Job Search

Learn how to leverage LinkedIn as a powerful tool to enhance your public  persona and thus, your professional profile.  Use the tool proactively to connect with new people and identify opportunities.

April 12, 2012 at 12:00 pm – 1:15 pm EDT

Register: Click here!

*And after attending EJW’s webinar, join me (Kristen) at Destination Public Interest: How to Land Your Ideal Public Interest Career in D.C.!

NALP and the Washington Council of Lawyers (WCL) is hosting “Destination Public Interest: How to Land your Ideal Public Interest Career” on Thursday, April 12 at 6:30 pm at the Georgetown University Law Center.

The program will provide tips on how to refine your cover letter, improve your resume, enhance your interview skills, and maximize your professional networking.  The program will be followed by light refreshments, and an opportunity for networking.

Destination Public Interest is open to WCL Members, and non-members, lawyers, paralegals, and law students.  There is no cost to attend, but please RSVP to attend so that we will know how many to expect.

To register for the event, click here.

From Fox News Latino:

¡Sí Se Puede! -Yes, We Can– echoed throughout the halls at the U.S. Department of Labor.  The standing-room only crowd, their applause, and chants of a simple mantra born of the farm worker strikes fifty years ago electrified the main auditorium as it was renamed the César E. Chavez Hall of Honor.

The co-founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union and civil rights icon admitted that in his lifetime, he would likely not see a national union for these laborers.  And although this is one of the movement’s unfulfilled goals, the commemoration is at once an honor for Chávez’s work and should serve as an inspiration for the struggles ahead, such as more protections for field workers and comprehensive immigration reform which is stalled in Washington, says Paul Chávez, son of César and leader of the National Farm Workers Service Center. . .

Chávez’s teachings which mixed those of civil rights icons Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhihave inspired thousands to work to advance social justice and equality for all.  Still, members of the Chávez family acknowledge that this attention would have made the humble activist uncomfortable.  UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta reminded the audience that the best way to honor her colleague’s memory is by leading through his example of commitment and peaceful action.  “Leadership can be learned, not taught,” she said.

Photo Credit: ChicTraveler website

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  The Spring Equinox has…equinoxed, and with it come Washington DC’s cherry blossoms.  The annual explosion of cherry blossoms, tulips and other cheerful-looking flora has become one of my favorite observances in almost six years of DC residency.  This year marks the 100th anniversary of the planting of two cherry trees just off the tidal basin which sits between the National  Mall and Potomac River.  As for the public interest funding news… 

This week:

• private seed funding for a new diversionary program serving at-risk offenders in Philly;
• a group antagonistic towards LSC enters the appropriations debate;
• Florida’s family lawyers fork over $ to support legal services for children;
• indigent defense funding in Maine needs a boost;
• some judges in Houston aren’t referring cases to the newly created PDs office;
• fiscal woes for Pelican State public defense offices;
• LSC president talks about funding, using technology, and his career path while speaking in NY;
• the DC Bar Foundation awarding over $3 million in grants to local providers;
• the importance of boosting state funding for legal services in Florida;
• a new federal defender’s office in the W. District of Arkansas will open….whenever it gets funding;
• UVA law students volunteered about 10,000 hours over the recent winter break.

Here are the summaries:

• 3.22.12 – a public-private partnership including the Philadelphia DA’s office, the local defender’s office, and two charitable foundations has launched “The Choice is Yours,” a diversionary program that will offer education and other supports for at-risk offenders to help them avoid future criminal activity and offer opportunities to better their education and income prospects.  No tax dollars are used to fund the program.  The story notes that participants in a similar program in San Francisco have a recidivism rate of 10%, compared with a 54% recidivism rate for other offenders.  (Story from the Philadelphia Inquirer.) 

• 3.22.12 – the National Legal & Policy Center, a small-government-minded watchdog group which has long been critical of the Legal Services Corporation, has entered into the LSC appropriations fray with “What the Legal Services Corporation Doesn’t Want Congress to Know.” 

• 3.21.12 – the Florida Bar’s family section donated $75,000 to support legal aid for Children in the Sunshine State.  (Story from the Sunshine State News.) Between IOLTA revenue shortfalls and other funding cuts, Florida’s legal services programs have been among the hardest hit in the Great Recession’s aftermath.

• 3.20.12 – from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network: “The state commission that provides legal services to the poor may run out of money for court-appointed lawyers six weeks before the fiscal year ends June 30. The latest projected budget shortfall for the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services may delay payments to the lawyers who represent low-income clients.  The commission requested $1 million in the state’s supplemental budget, an amount that was reduced to $400,000 in the budget proposed by Gov. Paul LePage.”

• 3.20.12 – Houston launched a public defender’s office for the first time in 2011, but some local judges are still referring cases through the old appointed counsel system rather than using the defender.  Is this force of habit?  A form of protest at the decision to move away from the appointed counsel system?  Are politics involved?  It is alleged that the local Republican Party sent a letter to judges urging them not to use the defender’s office.  (Story from Fox 26.)

• 3.19.12 – in Louisiana, the Daily Iberian looks at fiscal woes of Pelican State public defenders’ offices.  

• 3.19.12 – while in Rochester, NY, Legal Services Corporation president Jim Sandman praised New York’s Chief Judge’s efforts to promote access to justice, looked at the state of legal services funding generally, highlighted the effective use of technology in serving clients, and talked about his motivation for leaving law-firm practice for the “best job in American law.”  (Story from the Daily Record.) 

• 3.19.12 – some good AtJ news on the local front.  The DC Bar Foundation is awarding over $3 million in grants to local service providers, according to the Blog of the Legal Times.  This amount is slightly up from last year’s awards.  The Bar Foundation administers funds appropriated by the DC city council, runs the District’s IOLTA funding program, and conducts other fundraising initiatives to raise money for the legal services community. 

• 3.19.12 – an editorial in the Lakeland Ledger urges Florida Gov. Rick Scott to include civil legal aid funding the in the forthcoming budget.  

• 3.18.12 – the go-ahead’s been given to open a new federal defender’s office that would operate in the Western District of Arkansas.  But this development has to wait for funding to materialize.  From the AP: “Available funding from the government will determine when the federal court system’s western Arkansas district can establish its own federal public defender office.  The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August approved a request from then-Chief Judge Jimm Larry Hendren that the Western District be allowed to open such an office.”  

• 3.17.12 – UVA Law students did some serious volunteering between semesters.  From the Daily Progress: “Students at the University of Virginia School of Law volunteered a record number of hours of pro bono work over winter recess. More than 200 students donated their time and legal services, logging about 10,000 hours in less than a month.”