Each summer, NALP offers its annual FREE Apartment Exchange for law students.

The Apartment Exchange site is now live and ready for you to start your search for summer housing and/or find another law student to sublet your apartment during the summer months. Start the Housing Exchanges!

Note: This site will be available through May 15.

Not ready to start thinking about summer housing yet, still searching for your summer job?  Check out our tips on public interest résumé and cover letter writing.

This week: LSC on federal budget chopping block?; everything’s bigger in Texas, and hopefully that includes state funding of legal services; it does seem to include funding for innocence clinics at four Lone Star State law schools; get hitched to fund legal services in Idaho; mourning Sargent Shriver’s passing; state budgets in terrible shape; death penalty debate in Illinois could signify changes in other jurisdictions; NYC public interest and pro bono lawyers racing the clock to help Haitian immigrants; an expanded LRAP program at Boston College Law; commendable pro bono contributions from New York lawyers; an appeal for more pro bono from Pennsylvania’s top jurist; how do you prosecute a defendant who is deaf, mute, and unable to read or understand sign language?

• 1.20.11 – not exactly a surprise, but the Legal Services Corporation won’t be invited to a tea party anytime soon.  From the Associated Press: “A proposal unveiled by the Republican Study Committee, whose conservative members make up about three-fourths of the House GOP conference, called for bringing domestic agency budgets down to the 2006 levels in place when Republicans last controlled Congress. That’s about a $175 billion cut from current levels and roughly $90 billion more than the cuts promised by Republicans last fall … The study committee proposed eliminating several programs outright, including the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal help to people who can’t afford a lawyer….”  A Washington Post article does a good job of putting this spending proposal into context as debate over the federal budget promises to heat up in the coming weeks.

• 1.20.11 – an editorial in the San Antonio Express makes the case for preserving state funding for legal services.  The piece notes that in its last session the state government “provided some much needed one-time support in the form of a $20 million allocation in anticipation that the economy would get better and the IOLTA funding would go back to its former levels.”  But the financial circumstances for the legal services community have not markedly improved; they are in fact still “in crisis.”  Texas’s attorneys have contributed $700,000 via bar dues, and they have given generously of their time through pro bono efforts.  But the legislature must step up to the plate again by sustaining its funding.

• 1.19.11 – moving along to some better funding news out of Texas, the Dallas Morning News’s Trailblazers Blog notes that “…the $400,000 of funding allotted to the innocence clinics at the University of Texas, Texas Tech University, University of Houston and Texas Southern University law schools had not been slashed in the base House budget released late Tuesday night.”  The clinics have cleared 11 people who were wrongly convicted of crimes, and there is evidently more work to do in the Lone Star State.  We noted one of the more dramatic instances of a wrongful conviction’s undoing in our January 7 News Bulletin: a man who’d served 30 years in prison before being cleared by DNA evidence.

• 1.19.11 – Want to support legal services in Idaho?  Tie the knot.  In his annual “state of the judiciary” speech, the Gem State’s top jurist, Justice Daniel Eismann, lamented the fact that so many Idahoan families and children are unable to afford counsel in domestic relations and other cases.  The Spokesman Review reports that Justice Eismann proposed boosting the cost of marriage licenses by $20; this would yield about $280K per year which could fund civil legal services.

Keep reading . . .

A Symposium entitled Keeping the Needs of Students with Disabilities on the Agenda:  Current Issues in Special Education Advocacy is being presented by the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law and The Washington College of Law Disability Rights Law Clinic on February 25, 2011 at American University, Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C.

While the school house doors have technically been opened to students with disabilities, children, parents, advocates, teachers, and education officials face new challenges in this era of school reform and of difficult financial constraints that states and local school districts are experiencing. As schools and the systems that govern them, in the wake of a financial crisis and in an era of school reform, aim to improve the quality of public education in school districts across the nation, it is more important than ever that the needs of special education students remain on the agenda. Individual advocacy strategies and systemic reform efforts are adapting to take on these new challenges. This symposium provide a forum for academics and practitioners to discuss these and other issues related to special education advocacy in today’s times. Expert panelists from across the country will discuss current issues in this evolving field and Alexa Posny, Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the U.S. Department of Education, will provide a keynote address.

Admission to the symposium is free to the general public, but registration is required.  To learn more and register go here.

This week: we begin with an exciting announcement about…case management software(!), but then we move on to a profile of Chicago’s Cabrini Green Legal Aid; kudos for a Florida-based Equal Justice Works fellow; the ABA wants guaranteed counsel in civil contempt proceedings; profiles of Judy Clarke, the accomplished federal defender who will represent accused killer  Jared Loughner; a NOLA administrative battle has judges squaring off against the DA and public defender; thoughts from a deferred associate leaving Texas RioGrande Legal Aid; UNC law forges a new pro bono partnership; a statewide legal services hotline is launched in Oklahoma; Legal Aid of East Tennessee gets $125K in IOLTA revenue; free legal help for Staten Islanders facing debt collection cases; and office/staff constriction at Southern Arizona Legal Aid.

• 1.13.11 – looking for new case management software, legal services providers?  According to a press release, “Technology consulting firm Urban Insight today announced a donation of nearly $100,000 in free software to help nonprofit legal services organizations that serve millions of residents in 12 states … Urban Insight’s free and open source software, called Drupal for Legal Aid Websites, or DLAW, enables legal aid programs to affordably manage complex websites using only a web browser … DLAW is developed and maintained in the public interest by Urban Insight in collaboration with Legal Services National Technology Assistant Project (LSNTAP), Idaho Legal Aid Services (ILAS) and legal aid organizations from Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia. Original development of the software was funded through a Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative Grant.  More information about DLAW is available on a special website, www.legalaidtech.org, where legal aid organizations can also download the latest version of the software for free.”

• 1.12.11 – the Huffington Post has a nice, albeit brief, profile of Chicago-based Cabrini Green Legal Aid.  “The Cabrini Green Legal Aid (CGLA) has provided free legal services to Chicagoans since 1973 and represents residents in the city living below the poverty level.  From family and housing law to criminal defense, CGLA wants all residents to know their options.”

• 1.12.11 – hey, wait a minute.  More Huffington Post.  And, only a week after naming an Equal Justice Works fellow its “Greatest Person of the Day” (Anneliese Gryta – 1/4/11), Huffington Post did it again.  January 11’s Greatest Person of the Day was Equal Justice Works Fellow Peterson St. Philippe of Gulf Coast Legal Services in Tampa, FL.  “[A]s an Equal Justice Works Fellow working with Gulf Coast Legal Services, Peterson finds himself in a prime position to give back. For Haitian immigrants who arrived before the quake, he assists in filing for Temporary Protected Status–letting them stay and work here for up to 18 months.  But for survivors who fled to America after the quake, the legal options differ. Typically granted temporary visa status, these immigrants cannot legally work or drive a car, leaving them stranded in legal limbo. Many of these people have nothing to go back to in Haiti, where they have lost homes and family members.”  While both Gryta and St. Philippe are doing great work and undoubtedly deserve this kind of recognition, we at the PSLawNet Blog find it curious that two EJW fellows have been featured in consecutive weeks.  As it happens, we’re going to happy hour with a friend from EJW this evening.  We’ll get to the bottom of this.  We’ll likely also stick our friend with the bar bill, but let’s keep that between us.

• 1.12.10 – the ABA has filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case – Turner v. Rogers, to be argued on March 23 – asserting “that poor people should have the right to a lawyer in civil contempt proceedings carrying a threat of jail time … According to the brief (PDF), the ABA has concluded that low-income people should have a right to counsel in adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving sustenance, safety, health, or child custody determinations. The rationale underlying this position also supports a right to counsel in civil contempt cases where an indigent defendant faces possible jail time.”

• 1.10.11 – the New York Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune are among many news outlets that have written about the federal defender who will represent accused Tucson killer Jared Loughner.  Judy Clarke’s record of helping defendants in high-profile cases avoid the death penalty is remarkable.  From the Times piece, which refers to Clarke as a “master strategist”: “The capital-defense lawyer who will represent Jared L. Loughner in the shootings in Tucson, Judy Clarke, is a well-known public defender who gets life sentences in cases that often begin with emotional calls for the death penalty.  Ms. Clarke has helped a number of infamous defendants avoid death sentences, including Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Robert Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her toddlers.”  The Union-Tribune article focuses on Clarke’s low-key personality, work ethic, and her passion for making the justice system work fairly for those accused of crimes.  “Those who know her say she’s the most low-profile high-profile attorney in the country — she doesn’t chase after cases and she doesn’t do press conferences. All she does is work.”

• 1.10.11 – according to the New Orleans Times Picayune, a strange battle is playing out in New Orleans criminal courts regarding the system for assigning cases to judges.  “The DA’s office and public defenders want a system that allows them to better manage their offices by assigning cases to a judge the moment a person is arrested. This summer, the judges agreed to that change, but then three months later scrapped it, saying it wasn’t fairly distributing cases.”  And what’s a courtroom – or courthouse – drama without dueling experts?  The judges abandoned the new system after a report from the National Center for State Courts (which had been commissioned by the judges) found that the system created an imbalanced workload from judge to judge.  Not to be outdone, though, the DA and PD can point to a recent report from the New Orleans inspector general’s office which is critical of the NCSC report. The latest is that the judges are commissioning yet another study.  The “battle of the experts” may end up being a battle of attrition.  (Here, by the way, is a Times Picayune editorial siding with the DA and PD.)

• 1.10.11 – the TRLA Times, a newsletter run by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, features a post by an outgoing Sidley Austin deferred associate who spent a year in TRLA’s Austin office defending low-income clients who were facing eviction actions.  Vijay Desai ran a trial within his first month of work (lost, but learned a lot), and through the course of his year got a lot of litigation skills under his belt.  Here’s how he closed the piece: “Finally, I learned that legal aid attorneys and staff are among the most decent human beings I have ever met.  I do not know where it begins, but the greatest characteristic I can identify is their unshakable passion for helping the helpless.  Advice from one of my supervisors almost always begins with ‘It’s just not right!  They shouldn’t be allowed to do this.’  And I have never worked in an environment where my supervisors were so enthusiastic about stopping everything they were doing to answer my questions … I am still whole-heartedly committed to my career in IP law, but now I have a new commitment to continue housing pro bono work as well.  Sidley Austin is gaining more than an attorney – they are gaining an associate who knows that his strength lies less in his one year of knowledge and more in his friends at TRLA who will always be his mentors.”

• 1.9.11 – more news about law schools entering into pro bono partnerships with legal services providers in order to help the rising numbers of low-income clients who seek assistance.  Chapel Hill News reports that “[t]he Pittsboro Office of Legal Aid of North Carolina has partnered with the UNC School of Law to assist qualifying low-income Orange County residents seeking divorces.  Under the partnership, UNC law students who are committed to providing access to justice for people of modest means will represent clients under the supervision [of a clinical professor].”

• 1.8.11 – Legal services news from Oklahoma.  The Enid News & Eagle (great name! – why just get news when you can get it with an eagle!?) reports that “Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma has launched a statewide phone line to better serve low-income and elderly Oklahomans facing civil legal problems.”

• 1.8.11 – from the Daily Times in the Volunteer State, we learn that the “Tennessee Bar Foundation has awarded Legal Aid of East Tennessee a $129,467 grant from its IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts) program to be used to provide critical civil legal services to the abused, impoverished and elderly during 2011 … Even with this generous grant award, there are thousands more that need LAET’s help. It is estimated that more than 300,000 persons in the LAET service area are eligible for services, yet limited resources allow LAET to serve less than 5 percent of the legal needs of this population.”

• 1.8.11 – according to a report from the NYC-based CBS radio affiliate, Staten Island lawyers are teaming up to provide free legal help to the increased numbers of New Yorkers facing consumer debt collection actions.  “In 2009, more than 15,000 collection cases were filed, according to the [Richmond County Bar] Association, and only 1 percent of the defendants had legal representation.  [The bar] formed a civil legal advice and resource office to provide free legal aid.

• 1.7.11 – We end the digest, unfortunately, with some bad news out of the Arizona legal services community.  The Nogales International reports that budget strains have taken a toll on Southern Arizona Legal Aid, which last week shuttered its Santa Cruz County office and let two staffers go.  SALA is looking for free office space now, and the county attorney, who referred many cases to SALA, is supportive of a continued presence.  Like a lot of providers, the main culprit causing SALA’s budget woes is a huge falloff of IOLTA funding – 50% in this case.

PSLawNet is beginning a large-scale website redesign to ensure that we provide you with the best resource for job listings and reaching job seekers.

We need your input as employers to guarantee that PSLawNet makes the changes to the website’s design and job posting functionality that will best serve your needs. Further, we welcome your suggestions for new functions you would like to see available through PSLawNet.

Please go here to complete our short survey (should take you no more than 5-10 minutes).

Thank you for taking the time to complete our survey! Please feel free to contact us at pslawnet@nalp.org with any other feedback.

Are you a job seeker? PSLawNet needs your feedback as well.  Please go here to complete our short job seeker survey (should take you no more than 5-10 minutes).

Here’s a message from the folks organizing this year’s RebLaw gathering:

Come to the 17th Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference!
Yale Law School
February 18-20, 2011

Hello Rebel!  

You are invited to the 17th Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference, which will take place on the weekend of February 18-20, 2011.  Last year, we brought over 700 practitioners, law students, and community activists to New Haven to discuss progressive strategies for social change within and without the law, and we’re excited to do it again! We have posted descriptions of panels and workshops on our website and will continue to update with speakers and schedule information as it becomes available.  Please visit: http://www.yale.edu/reblaw/  to register, and for more information–PLEASE REGISTER BEFORE FEBRUARY FIRST IF YOU WOULD LIKE FREE HOUSING!

Questions?  contact rebellious.law.questions@gmail.com

PSLawNet is beginning a large-scale website redesign to ensure that we provide you with the most comprehensive and useful resource for law students and attorneys looking for public interest legal jobs .

We need your input to guarantee that PSLawNet makes the changes to the website’s design, job search functions, career  resources, and social media interfaces to ensure that we best serve you.  Please go here to complete our short survey (should take you no more than 5-10 minutes).

To thank you for your time, completion of the survey by individuals with PSLawNet job seeker accounts will give them the opportunity to enter a drawing for a gift card.

• First Prize Winner: $100 gift card
• Second Prize Winner: $50 gift card
• Third Prize Winner: $50 gift card

Thank you for taking the time to complete our survey! Please feel free to contact us at pslawnet@nalp.org with any other feedback.

This week: indigent defense budget wrangling between a county and state government; a new veterans clinic will operate out of a West Virginia Veterans Affairs building; Ithaca has gorges and a securities law clinic; it’s nice when a legal services lawyer is the GREATEST PERSON OF THE DAY; a 30-year prison ordeal ended for an innocent man following his exoneration in a Texas court (wow, if the PSLawNet Blog subtracted 30 years from his life he’d be writing this report in crayon and commuting to work on a Big Wheel); hail to the new LSC chief; a  new Top Ten Environmental Watch List from Vermont Law School; the “perfect storm” in legal services funding; the National Law Journal’s Pro Bono Awards; in California, you best not call yourself “legal aid” unless you’re really legal aid; mirroring a national trend, law-firm pro bono in Kansas City picked up during the recession; no honeymoon period for Texas’s new death-row appeals office; the remarkable story of a recovering drug addict who’s just become a California county’s chief prosecutor.

• 1.6.10 – according to the Poughkeepsie Journal, in a cost-saving move last year New York’s state government passed a bill that changed the nature of its relationship with Dutchess County for purposes of funding indigent defense services.  County officials are contending with a potential loss of revenue from the state unless the county moves away from an assigned-counsel system and toward a staffed public defense program.  This situation is but one illustration of the tension that will exist between state and county governments as they struggle with post-recession budget shortfalls.  Criminal justice is an area in which many state and municipal governments throughout the country have shared-cost arrangements, so it will be interesting to see how they maintain balances amidst fiscal pressures in the coming budget cycles.

• 1.5.10 – In West Virginia, the State Journal reports on a new veterans legal clinic that will station a lawyer at the VA building.  “The Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center has a new legal aid program for its veterans. Legal Aid of West Virginia, Equal Justice Works, AmeriCorps, The State Nursing Home, and the VA Hospital are all working together to offer free legal assistance to Veterans and their family members.”  Once per week, an Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps Legal Fellow will set up shop in the VA to meet with those in need.

• 1.4.10 – from the Ithaca Journal, we learn of a recession-era legal clinic operating at Cornell: “The Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School is available to provide legal services to investors in the Southern Tier and central and western New York who have suffered losses due to fraud or other improper conduct, the clinic announced.”

• 1.4.10 – the Huffington Post’s “Greatest Person of the Day” on Tuesday was Anneliese Gryta, a legal services lawyer doing community economic development work in Toledo (go Mudhens!).  Anneliese’s doing some terrific work as an Equal Justice Works Fellow.  Check out our earlier blog post to learn more about her efforts.

• 1.4.10 – NPR was one of several news outlets that covered the release of an innocent Texan man after 30 years of incarceration.  The story focused on the release of Cornelius Dupree, Jr., and went on to note that there’s something of a trend afoot in Dallas.  “For the past five years, Dallas has watched a parade of men, nearly all black, march out of the state prison system after wasting decades of their lives. Dupree, who served more time than any other Texas prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence, is the 21st from Dallas — that’s more than all but two states.  Barry Scheck and his staff at the Innocence Project have been behind many of these exonerations, including Dupree’s.”  It’s not necessarily that Dallas County juries get it wrong more than others, but Dallas happens to do a good job of storing DNA from old criminal cases.  So advocates for the wrongfully imprisoned have more evidence to work with.

Keep reading . . .

The ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association are calling for nominations for the 2011 Harrison Tweed Award.

The Harrison Tweed Award was created in 1956 to recognize the extraordinary achievements of state and local bar associations that develop or significantly expand projects or programs to increase access to civil legal services to poor persons or criminal defense services to indigents.

Please view award history, criteria, and submit nominations online.  Nomination forms and all supporting materials must be received by the close of business on Friday, April 1, 2011.

Are you a legal nonprofit involved in community education, community organization, legal advocacy, or the provision of direct legal assistance?  You may want to visit Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation’s website to find out more about their grants.

The Stanford Public Interest Law Foundation funds law-related projects which involve community education, community organization, legal advocacy, or the provision of direct legal assistance. Your organization may apply for funding in any amount, although we have traditionally provided grants between $2,500 and $10,000. We give priority to projects that integrate legal work with broad-based organizing strategies aimed at fundamental social change and directed toward one or more of the following objectives:

1. Representing groups traditionally underrepresented by the legal profession;
2. Altering the underlying causes of injustice, poverty, and disenfranchisement;
3. Creating a society free from racism, sexism, heterosexism, and economic exploitation and supporting the rights of disabled people, immigrants and refugees, lesbians and gay men, people of color, women, workers, youth and the elderly;
4. Promoting public health and environmental quality by working to change the root causes of environmental degradation.

We especially encourage and give greater weight to proposals with which Stanford Law School graduates are involved. Stanford Law School provides separate summer funding for students who wish to work in non-paying public interest or governmental summer jobs. Applicants are encouraged to accept Stanford Law students for summer internships. Additionally, we may ask some grantees whether they would like to visit Stanford Law School to make presentations about their work to students. Please note that such trips will not be mandatory and that all travel expenses will be covered.