By Jamie Bence and Lauren Forbes

Howdy, folks! Every Thursday, the PSLawNet Blog posts a compilation of some of our favorite posts from the public interest blogosphere. Here’s what looks good this week:

• 6.24.2011– Equal Justice Works has some ideas for helping your child get through college debt free, with some planning.
• 6.27.2011– The Center for Probono Exchange has 30 ways state bar associations can support probono.
• 6.27.2011 – Heather Jarvis explains why friends don’t let friends borrow private loans, and their impact on public interest loan forgiveness.
• 6.27.2011 – Amnesty International explains the potential impact of California’s new bill to end the state’s death penalty (the ACLU has a similar post earlier last week).
• 6.28.2011 Heather Jarvis also features a piece on  Jonathan Glater.  A University of California, Irvine School of Law professor, Glater believes that lawmakers should help keep higher education within the financial reach of those students who seek it by reducing the need for private student loans.

By: Steve Grumm

Interested in project-based public interest fellowships, like those funded by Equal Justice Works and the Skadden Foundation?  NALP and the Washington Council of Lawyers are pleased to present “The Pathway to Postgraduate Public Interest Legal Fellowships” on Tuesday, July 14th, from 6:00-8:30pm here at the Washington, DC offices of Akin Gump.

But wait, there’s more!  The event will double as a happy hour, offering networking opportunities and a chance for public-interest minded law students in the nation’s capital to meet like-minded peers.

The formal portion of the program will be led by our distinguished panel, the members of which all have extensive experience with the fellowship proposal process:

• Lauren Dubin, Director for Public Interest and Government Careers, Georgetown University Law Center (Moderator)
• Patty Mullahy Fugere, Executive Director, Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless
• Jennifer Tschirch, Senior Program Manager for Fellowships, Equal Justice Works
• Kati Daffan, Staff Attorney, Federal Trade Commission (and former Skadden Fellow)

To register: go to www.wclawyers.org. 

Cant’ make it?  Don’t worry.  PSLawNet has dozens upon dozens of public interest fellowship listings, and a resource page for prospective applicants (including this tip sheet for project-based fellowship proposals).

By Jamie Bence

The Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia is excited to host a group night at the Verizon Center on July 29th, featuring discounted pricing to watch the Washington Mystics take on the Indiana Fever!

Tickets begin at only $10/seat and include an option for premium center court seating at only $25/ticket!  To purchase your tickets:

1. Click this link – Special Group Priced Mystics Tickets for Friday, 7/29 – 7pm
2. Enter the passcode – mystics
3. Login or create a Mystics account – allows us to e-mail you your tickets directly!
4. Choose your location & number of tickets
5. Complete the purchase and receive tickets via e-mail
6. ENJOY THE GAME!

If you’d prefer to order on the phone – our personal Mystics Agent, Neil Hofman, would be glad to work with you.  He can be reached at – (202) 527-7506 and be sure to reference the D.C. Public Defender’s Office to get the discount.

By: Steve Grumm (with big assists from Lauren Forbes and Jamie Bence)

Happy Friday, dear readers!  The bulletin was on vacation last week, so today we bring you two weeks of news.  Featured: legal services office closure threat in TN; an all-star panel tackles the civil justice gap; how could a MN state government shutdown impact indigent defense?; NY indigent defense programs will save some coin, courtesy of the state legislature; an access-to-justice conference today in Honolulu; SCOTUS says no right to counsel in civil contempt proceeding; wrongful convictions in IL have cost taxpayers millions; CA’s capital punishment program has done the same to Golden State taxpayers; also in CA, a new court diversionary program to benefit the homeless; the state high court acts to channel funding to legal services in Hawaii; NELP launches a new website for fair wage advocates; an innovative program in Oregon pairs law grads with public interest advocates to help the former build skills; a new medical-legal partnership in Arkansas; more funding woes in TN; after a state funding cut, local officials scramble to help fund Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in FL; in NC, Pisgah Legal Services loses some funding in political spat; a legal clinic in Mexico does some groundbreaking work toward promoting the rule of law; a great primer on the current state of Legal Services Corp. funding; the Missouri indigent defense crisis has victims.

• 6.24.11 – a potential legal services office closure in Tennessee.  The Cleveland Daily Bulletin reports that, due to funding pressures, Legal Aid of East Tennessee may close its Bradley County office. LAET is taking last-ditch measures to try to avoid a closure, but things don’t look great and they will make a decision sometime in 2011.  (And see below for more bad news for another Tennessee legal services program.)

• 6.22.11 – I had a chance to attend a terrific program called “Closing the Justice Gap,” hosted by the Center for American Progress.  I’m hoping to do a write-up on it later.  Suffice to say for now, though, the program panelists have all penned white papers on the access-to-justice crisis.  The papers, from different angles, look at the significant barriers facing poor people who try to access the justice system, and they propose solutions toward knocking down those barriers.  All four papers are worth a read:
•  Grounds for Objection by Joy Moses, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress;
• The Justice Gap by Alan Houseman, executive director at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) – and speaking of CLASP, scroll down to see a terrific update on Legal Services Corporation funding from CLASP’s Linda Perle;
• When Second Best is the Best We Can Do, by Prof. Peter Edelman of Georgetown Univ. Law Center;
• Access to Evidence, by a team of authors from Harvard Law School and Yale Law School.

• 6.22.11 – the Detroit Lakes Tribune (don’t be fooled, it’s in Minnesota) reports on the question of whether a Minnesota state government shutdown, which may take effect on July 1, could mean that the criminal justice system goes awry because public defenders are not allowed to work: “The Minnesota Board of Public Defense is concerned about the effects of government shutdown on Minnesota’s judicial system, and has asked a district judge to include the public defender system with other essential state functions.  [According to an official w/ the BPD,] a shutdown on July 1 could mean that people accused of minor offenses will have to sit in jail for three days because there’s no judge to let them out. Or worse, that people accused of serious crimes will go free, either for lack of a public defender or failure by the state to meet its requirement for a timely trial.”  The piece also highlights how badly the recession has impacted the state’s defenders.  Three years ago the BPD had 421 attorneys; now it t has 347.

• 6.22.11 – the NewsLI website (from Lawwnng Eye-land, NY) reports that the state legislature passed a fee waiver that should benefit public defense programs, and the counties that fund them: New York State Senate today gave final legislative passage to legislation, sponsored by Senator Charles J. Fuschillo, Jr. (R-Merrick), to help counties save money in providing public defense services to individuals who cannot afford an attorney.  The legislation (S5474) would exempt legal aid societies from having to pay a fee to search DMV records in public defense cases. This exemption would provide savings to the counties who fund the services provided by legal aid societies.”

• 6.20.11 – um, my invitation to the access-to-justice conference taking place today in Honolulu must have been lost in the mail.  The Pacific Business News notes that the Hawaii Access to Justice Conference will “deep-dive into the major issues affecting access to civil legal services in Hawaii for underserved populations.  Among the most pressing issues to be tackled at this year’s conference is the search for more funding sources for legal services providers that cater to these groups — organizations such as Legal Aid Society of Hawaii , the Hawaii Justice Foundation and the Mediation Center of the Pacific — which were hit hard in the economic downturn when government funding for their programs was slashed.”  The Aloha State’s AtJ Commission was created in 2008.  Here’s a link to their most recent report, from 2010.  And see a few stories down for some good funding news for Hawaii legal services providers…

• 6.20.11 – the National Law Journal reports on a potential setback for Civil Gideon advocates.  In an opinion issued in the matter of Turner v. Rogers this week, SCOTUS came down against extending the right to counsel to a defendant in a civil contempt proceeding.  From NLJ (article may be pw-protected): “On the question of right to counsel [a decision having been reached on other grounds], [Justice] Breyer wrote that there was little precedent to guide the Court. For example, in a 1967 case, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause requires states to pay for counsel in a civil ‘juvenile delinquency’ proceeding, but that case was similar to a criminal prosecution. Breyer wrote that three reasons argue against providing counsel to child-support defendants like Turner: the proceedings are ‘sufficiently straightforward’ that a lawyer isn’t necessary; the custodial parent often doesn’t have a lawyer and could be disadvantaged; and other procedural safeguards could given the defendant sufficient due process.”  The specific facts of this case are nuanced and very important to the decision.  The Turner v. Rogers decision is available in full on the SCOTUS website.

• 6.20.11 – a different National Law Journal piece reports on a study out of Chicago finding the cost to the public of wrongful convictions in Illinois over the past two decades to have topped $200 million:  “Wrongful convictions don’t just harm those who spend time in jail for crimes they didn’t commit and their families. They also come at a hefty cost to the public, according to a study by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law and the Better Government Association, a Chicago-based good-government group.
  The study concluded that wrongful convictions for violent crimes in Illinois have cost taxpayers more than $214 million since 1989. Those wrongful convictions also resulted in people later proven innocent spending more than 900 years in prison…. Researchers calculated the financial toll by tallying the cost of incarceration, compensation to those wrongfully convicted and civil litigation costs. Settlement payments represented the largest portion of the bill, at nearly $160 million. Another $31.6 million was spent to hire private attorneys to defend the government against civil suits, while jail and prison costs totaled $18.5 million. State compensation payments came to $8.2 million.”  Here’s a link to the report on the Better Government Association’s website.

• 6.20.11 – as noted above, putting the wrong people in jail costs Illinois taxpayers a lot of money.  According to a Los Angeles Times article, maintaining California’s capital punishment system is also a bit pricey: “Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty’s costs.  The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year…. The authors outline three options for voters to end the current reality of spiraling costs and infrequent executions: fully preserve capital punishment with about $85 million more in funding for courts and lawyers each year; reduce the number of death penalty-eligible crimes for an annual savings of $55 million; or abolish capital punishment and save taxpayers about $1 billion every five or six years.”

• 6.18.11 -also in California, the Marin Independent Journal reports on a new, diversionary program to help the homeless deal with minor legal infractions outside of court:  “The Marin Community Court, a collaboration among Legal Aid of Marin, the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin County and the Marin County Superior Court, has held three sessions [since its launch in April].”  One of the program’s driving motivations is helping the homeless and those struggling with housing to avoid the spiral of accumulating legal fines and penalties that begins when they can not afford to resolve a problem at the outset.  The Community Court program includes one-on-one counseling sessions between a participant and an attorney, and then a “hearing” which often results in sentencing that focuses on treatment and support services rather than sanctions.  (A note to the law student readers who are interested in postgraduate fellowship proposals:  If I were in your shoes I would give serious thought to proposals that help poor people more efficiently navigate the justice system, like either diversionary programs or courthouse resource centers for pro se litigants.  There are a lot of people these days who can’t afford a lawyer, and there are a lot of courthouse officials looking for ways to keep the wheels of justice turning smoothly by helping these people navigate the system as efficiently, and as cheaply, as possible.)

• 6.17.11 – TheHonolulu Star Advertiser reports that Hawaiian legal services providers are due to benefit from class-action residual funds: “A rule adopted by the Hawaii Supreme Court helps clear the way for money left over from class-action lawsuits to be given to nonprofit groups that provide legal services to the poor. The rule takes effect July 1 and provides guidance on how to distribute money from lawsuits after the plaintiffs, attorney fees and expenses have been paid. Those residual funds include money for plaintiffs who cannot be located or who don’t file claims….  The groups that would qualify for the money under the high court rule include the Legal Aid Society of Hawaii, the University of Hawaii Elder Law Program, Voluntary Legal Services Hawaii and the Domestic Violence Action Center.”

• 6.17.11 – the National Employment Law Project has launched a  new website – Raise the Minimum Wage – focused on, well, raising the minimum wage.  It’s an easy-to-navigate site with a broad array of resources, news items, and data for fair wage advocates or those who wish to learn more about the cause.

• 6.17.2011- The ABA Journal reports that a new program in Oregon for recently graduated lawyers is receiving overwhelming response. Announced last month, the Practical Skills through Public Service Program pairs Oregon law school graduates with public interest attorneys, in hopes of giving young practitioners the opportunity to learn by doing. The Oregonian reports that this program is part of a larger effort in the state to prepare new law grads for solo practice, in light of diminishing offers from law firms.

• 6.17.2011- A new medical-legal partnership in Arkansas aims to improve access to healthcare and education for at-risk children in the state. Walmart and Legal Aid of Arkansas have teamed up to provide legal assistance to children and families staying at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital, providing holistic advice and guidance to help children and families get back on track. KTHV notes: “Direct access to legal services will help many families address obstacles to good health and continuing recovery. Attorneys can help families who need utility service recovery for the child’s home care, assistance negotiating with a landlord over the environment of an apartment or even special educational testing.”

• 6.16.2011- Just four attorneys will remain to assist clients at Northeast Tennessee Legal Aid after the end of this month. Federal budget cuts coupled with dwindling grants and donations have caused the office to lay off one third of its attorneys, including an associate director, according to TriCities News.

• 6.15.2011- The Jacksonville Daily Record calls the new ethics commission now in place for the city government “a promise kept.” In a unanimous vote after several months of heated debate, the city council voted to reinstate an ethics code and ultimately create an independent Office of Ethics, Compliance and Oversight. In the same session, the council considered a bill to impose a $50 court fee to benefit Jacksonville Legal Aid, a measure supported by Fourth Circuit Judge Donald Moran and intended to help offset decreased funding from the Florida Bar Foundation and the state legislature. “The funds from the court fee would be used to provide free legal services for the disadvantaged through JALA, including services to domestic violence victims, the mentally ill or disabled, the un-deremployed or unemployed, residents facing landlord/tenant issues or homelessness, foreclosure-related educational, mediation and defense programs, and the elderly.” The council will vote on the measure during its June 28^th meeting.

• 6.15.11 Sadly, in North Carolina, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners voted to discontinue county funding for nonprofit Pisgah Legal Services at the request of Chairman Mike Edney. PLS provides free civil legal aid to help low-income people avoid homelessness, escape domestic violence, access health care and meet other basic needs.  At the meeting, Edney, an attorney, said PLS “does provide some benefit to our community,” particularly in the area of domestic violence, but wanted to withdraw the $16,745 in county funding for 2011-12 partly because PLS sometimes “oversteps its bounds,” such as getting attorney’s fees out of landlords.

• 6.14.11 – the Los Angeles Times profiles the work of a novel legal clinic in Mexico City, through which law students have achieved groundbreaking results for their clients in a justice system which has a tenuous relationship with the rule of law: “The clinic is part of a Mexico City university called the Center for Economic Research and Teaching, or CIDE. The center’s legal studies program combines law school training with hands-on public interest advocacy, a novel field in a nation where many attorneys are poorly trained and their best weapon is often a bribe…. Students, guided by [Professor Javier] Angulo and another staff lawyer, work on the cases for free. Many of them probe uncharted terrain and have yielded legal precedents or led to new laws, such as one easing the penalty for abortions.  As Mexico works to cultivate a fully functioning democracy, the 6-year-old clinic is an effort to modernize a system long viewed as a factory of injustice.”

• 6.14.11 CLASP’s Legal Services Corporation update reiterates the uncertainty and disconcerting impact that the proposed cuts would have. LSC has asked Congress to appropriate $516.5 million for FY 2012.  President Obama’s budget request sought $450 million for LSC.  However, during the April 5, 2011, hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) on the FY 2012 LSC budget, there was again discussion of returning LSC funding to the FY 2008 level — all in the name of deficit reduction.  CLASP is working to increase the LSC funding level in the Senate and is hopeful that the Senate will adopt a funding level close to the President’s request of $450 million.   given the slow pace of events to date, and the need for Congress to act to raise the debt ceiling before August 2, there is unlikely to be a conclusive action on LSC’s FY 2012 funding before September.

• 6.14.11 In Missouri, Jared Blacksher is caught in the middle of a public defender debate.  Last year, Blacksher, 22, reached a plea deal with prosecutors that would have put him in a drug treatment program.  In July 2010, Blacksher was booked into the Christian County Jail on charges of burglary and forgery. He and prosecutors reached a plea agreement that would have given him 120 days in a drug treatment program in the Missouri Department of Corrections, which would have ended in January. However, he never got a chance to enter the program — his was one of the first cases the Missouri Supreme Court put on hold in 2010 during debate over the Missouri public defender system, putting him in jail. Assistant Prosecutor Ben Miller said Blacksher’s case is an unfortunate one that could have been prevented had he been able to take advantage of a plea agreement last year.

By Lauren Forbes

Happy Thursday! It is time for the weekly roundup of some of our favorite posts from the public interest blogosphere. With no further ado…

• 6.9.11 SCOTUS to Rule on Right to Counsel in Collateral Proceedings. Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog includes a piece on the Supreme Court agreeing to hear a case that will test how firm the distinction between  a right to counsel at the first level of direct appeal and the right to counsel at collateral post-conviction proceedings.
  
• 6.8.11 The Povery Law Blog discusses Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Robert A. Moffitt, and John Karl Scholz’s NBER Working Paper, An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Anti-Poverty Programs in the United States.  In  which direction does the  U.S. benefit system tilt?
  
• 6.6.11 DC budget and safety net programs cut, but not eliminated. Some of the hardest-hit social safety net programs, TANF,  homeless services, and Interim Disability Assistance (IDA) were restored or preserved.
• 6.6.11 Heather Jarvis tells us five ways IBR beats ICR.  Important bottom line: monthly payments are typically higher under income-contingent repayment than under income-based repayment.
• 6.6.11 Technola’s timely post about igniting your community referenced  last week’s Legal Services NTAP (National Technology Assistance Project) post.  Ideas include TED, CommonCraft, and others.
• 6.3.11 Partnering to aid our nation’s veterans, a piece in the Equal Justice Works Blog. Public Counsel has partnered with the Southern California Salvation Army to help provide legal services to hundreds of homeless veterans and their families in the Los Angeles area. The blog also highlight’s The Salvation Army‘s piece on how legal help is often the missing piece in a veteran’s recovery.

By: Steve Grumm

The National Law Journal reports on a nice bit of news for my peeps in Penn’s Toll Public Interset Center – cash money!

The University of Pennsylvania Law School has a generous alumnus in construction mogul Robert Toll.

Toll and his wife, Jane Toll, donated $10 million to the law school in 2006 to bolster its public-interest initiatives. On Monday, the school announced that the couple has pledged an additional $2.5 million to expand those programs and finance loan forgiveness for graduates who take public-interest law jobs.

By Lauren Forbes and Jamie Bence

University of Ottawa law school graduate Gavin Smith will bike across the continent beginning Saturday on a trek to Oceanside, Oregon to raise money for a group that fights for environmental causes in court.   Smith’s trek will raise money for Ecojustice, an organization that provides free legal services for environmental groups.

“It seemed like a great opportunity not only to spend my summer doing something I am really excited about, but also do it as a fundraiser for an organization that I am pretty excited about,” said Gavin Smith.

…

“Having studied law, that’s where my interests lie and I’m pretty passionate about environmental issues,” he said.

After biking across Ontario and eight American states, he will meet his family at his grandmother’s home on the Pacific coast.  Then he’ll begin a position with Ecojustice in Vancouver.  His family has guaranteed him a ride up there, so hopefully they won’t let him down…

By: Steve Grumm

The Center for American Progress, including our friend and PSLawNet Blog contributor Joy Moses, is hosting a program called “Closing the Justice Gap – Bridging the Divide Between People Who Need Legal Services and Those Who Have Access to Them” at 1pm on June 22.  Some background info from CAP (and click the foregoing link for registration info):

There’s a huge gap today between the legal needs of low-income people and the capacity of the civil legal assistance system to meet those needs. Less than 20 percent of poor Americans’ legal needs are being met, requiring unrepresented litigants to navigate complex and often unfriendly court systems. There’s also severe inequality among states in legal aid funding.

Our country’s “pro se crisis” comes at a time when the need for civil legal assistance—to help people facing foreclosures, evictions, wrongful terminations, child custody, and other challenges—has never been higher.

Please join us at this special program co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy and Center for American Progress for a conversation with law scholars and legal aid experts about how we can overcome the access-to-justice gap at a time of rising need—and how policymakers should decide where to most effectively direct scarce resources.

By Lauren Forbes and Steve Grumm

Howdy, folks! Every Thursday, the PSLawNet Blog will post a compilation of some of our fave posts from the public interest blogosphere.  Here’s the first edition:

• Depaul Law Career Services posted some alternative career jobs it came across from the past week.
• The Pro Bono Institute’s “PBEye” blog (clever!) carries word of a June 7 webinar called, “The Evolving Law Firm Business Model and Its Impact on Pro Bono.”
• Michael Pratt, Chair of the ABA’s Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service chimed in with some reflections on the recent Equal Justice Conference.  Here’s Pratt’s post on the ABA Center for Pro Bono’s blog.
• Happy 50th Birthday to Amnesty International!
• Phew (for now at least), as the housing crisis in DC is averted.  Check out Washington’s Legal Clinic blog for the story.
• On the Equal Justice Works Blog, our statistically inclined buddy Bill Penn provides a valuable primer for aspiring poverty law advocates: how to define ‘poverty.’

By: Steve Grumm

Our neighbors at the Pro Bono Institute are putting on a webinar that focuses on a timely question: as law firm business models evolve in the recession’s wake, how will pro bono programs be affected?  This issue greatly interests me because I used to work at a pro bono clearinghouse in the World’s Most Glorious City.  And here at NALP, many of our law-firm members focus on attorney professional development.  The intersection

The Intersection of Pro Bono and Professional Development

between professional development and pro bono will likely be a very busy place in the coming years.  Increasingly, firms wish to provide hands-on, practical training opportunities for junior associates.  One obvious way to do this is through pro bono; by handling pro bono cases, even junior associates can develop case management/strategy skills, gain courtroom experience, and learn how to build trusting relationships with clients – all opportunities that may not be available to them immediately via fee-paying practice.  So I look forward to focusing more on this issue in the coming months.  And I’m looking forward to the PBI webinar next week. Here’s some detail about the webinar:

Coming up on June 7 at 12:30 p.m. EDT is the webinar, “The Evolving Law Firm Business Model and Its Impact on Pro Bono,” which will examine the changes faced by large law firms and the effect they will have on pro bono. 

Large law firms are changing the way they do business, including major shifts in attorney headcount, recruitment, and compensation; new approaches to professional and skill development and advancement; and shifts in billing arrangements and relationships with corporate clients. More profound changes are likely to come. This timely webinar will review these and other developments and reflect on what the changing economic landscape may mean for pro bono supporters at law firms, legal departments, and public interest organizations. This webinar is the first in the Pro Bono Institute’s Best of the 2011 Seminar/Forum Series.

Speakers include our friends Jim Jones, senior vice president and chief legal officer, Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, chairman, The Hildebrandt Institute (whom we’ve spoken with before, here); and Ron Flagg, chair, Pro Bono and Public Interest Law Committee, Sidley Austin LLP*.