By: Steve Grumm

Some good funding news for a change.  According to Thomson-Reuters:

Nonprofit groups that provide free civil legal services to low-income people in New York have received twice the state funding they were awarded last year, state court administrators said.

At the request of Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, state lawmakers this year doubled to $25 million total funding for the programs, court administrators announced on Tuesday. The programs have lost millions of dollars in federal and local funding over the last few years.

Judge Lippman has of late been getting a lot of press regarding the new rule which will require 50 hours of pro bono before one can be licensed to practice in New York.  (Here is our super intern Maria Hibbard’s take on that.)  But for a much longer stretch he’s been working tirelessly to support access to justice – and he’s backing it up with funding.  This is great news for legal services providers – and perhaps also for law grads who may see more employment opportunities as a result of this cash infusion.

By: Steve Grumm

No time to comment but here’s some in-depth reporting on LSC’s historical funding struggles from Remapping Debate.

By: Maria Hibbard

The National Law Journal has released a special report highlighting innovation in the law school classroom—law students and professors looking at the law in new ways, developing practical applications and real-world solutions. Among the programs highlighted:

• Even if mandatory pro bono doesn’t take effect in New York or elsewhere, students at Arizona State will still get valuable practical experience at a low cost to clients—through the creation of a non-profit law firm inside the Arizona State law school, set to run by 2013. The firm would allow recent grads of ASU to rotate through practice areas for a set amount of time.
• Some lawyers may still prefer to research using textbooks and registers, but students in a class at Georgetown University Law Center are making apps that provide practical advice—via smartphone applications—for avoiding copyright infringement, finding out if you have citizenship status, and figuring out the laws concerning same-sex marriage and civil unions.
• Students at University of Pennsylvania Law School are making documentaries and exploring a new method of legal advocacy—in a legal world run by reading and writing, this visual type of advocacy may possibly be a welcome change.
• Two professors—Neil Siegel of Duke Law and Robert D. Cooter of UC Berkeley School of Law—have collaborated to develop the theory of “collective action federalism,” a novel way of interpreting Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to prove the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Since I’m still recovering from my 4-hour constitutional law final debating this very topic, I was happy to read about their innovation—potentially, their ideas might lead to decisions in Congress.
• Luke Bierman, associate dean for experiential education at Northeastern University, writes about an alliance of educators focused on building the modern law school: “This group of legal educators is committed to educating students to hit the ground running, with experience helping clients, collaborating with colleagues, resolving disputes, facing adversaries, drafting documents and interacting with judges, so that these lawyers are ready to solve legal challenges right away.”

In a day where law schools are frequently criticized for teaching methods and structures that are ineffective and out-of-date, it’s encouraging to read about new methods of research and teaching that will hopefully better equip future lawyers. What about your law school? What could you do?

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  And happy June.  June is the sunniest month, at least for those of us living on the Earth’s northern half.  Speaking of where we are, I am in motion – aboard an Amtrak train and destined for my hometown of Philly.  I’m in Maryland now.  This state’s beauty is sadly unheralded.  To cross the bridges spanning the Chesapeake Bay tributaries just after sunrise is to observe a wonderful bit of scenery.  And the City of Baltimore is like Philly’s cool little brother, except with crabs.  There has to be a better way to phrase that.

Shortly I’ll be at the Philadelphia Bar Association, where I’ll have the pleasure of speaking with a group of law students about maximizing their summer public interest experiences.  Later I’ll join my childhood friends Billy and Sean – neighborhood riff-raff like myself – to watch the Glorious Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Franchise reel in the Marlins of Miami.  (If you think it’s bad that we call a grown man by his yesteryear nickname of Billy, imagine how bad it is for our friend Stinky.  He’s a medical doctor these days.  He really wishes we’d call him Duane.)

As you know I focus mainly on access-to-justice developments in this newsletter.  I feel strongly, though, that the AtJ community must itself monitor happenings in the law-firm world, especially those affecting the “business of law.”  So I commend to you this incisive AmLaw article by Professor Bill Henderson.  He uses this week’s demise of the storied law firm Dewey & Leboeuf to explore how large law firms must quickly rework their business models lest they risk running themselves into the ground.  (You may be required to register to read the piece; a trial registration should be free.)  Also, every Friday NALP’s executive director Jim Leipold produces a terrific legal industry digest that you may access here.

On to our news:         

This week:

• Upside: the U.S. has a strong civil justice system. Downside: poor people don’t get to use it
• The New York State Bar’s incoming president is a legal aid leader
• Student loan debt is a real big problem
• Maine’s got some King-size indigent defense funding problems
• More debate around the 50-hour pro bono requirement for admission to practice in New York
• A veteran PA children’s rights advocate moves into retirement
• Merck’s in-house team has launched a pro bono project to serve vets in need
• The Northern District of Alabama is finally going to host some federal defenders
• A great new report out of Illinois about the economic benefits generated by civil legal aid

The summaries:

• 6.1.12 – an ABA Journal piece covers one of the central access-to-justice dilemmas in the U.S.: “Two recent studies provide news good and bad for the U.S. legal system. The good: The United States’ civil legal system is one of the best in the world, according to the results of the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index 2011.  And the bad? According to this same study, millions of Americans can’t use this fine system because they can’t afford it. They have legal rights—to child support, Medicare benefits or protection against an improper home foreclosure—but they find these rights meaningless because they can’t enforce them….  A plethora of government and volunteer programs provide free legal aid, but they are overstretched…. To make matters worse, the system for providing free legal services is a mess. There is “an enormous diversity of programs and provision models with very little coordination at either the state or the national level,” according to Access Across America, a 2011 report (PDF) authored by Rebecca L. Sandefur and Aaron C. Smyth and funded in large part by the American Bar Foundation.”

• 5.31.12 – a legal aid leader takes the helm of the New York State Bar.  “Seymour W. James, Jr. of Brooklyn, a 38-year veteran of The Legal Aid Society of New York, assumes office on June 1 as the 115th president of the New York State Bar Association….  James is the attorney-in-charge of the criminal practice for The Legal Aid Society, which provides criminal and civil legal services for low-income individuals in New York City.  The theme for his presidency is “making a difference” with an emphasis on access to justice.”  (Story from realMedia.)

• 5.30-31.12 – the PBS Newshour aired a two-part report on the increasing crisis of skyrocketing educational debt-loads being carried by higher-ed grads, including law students.  Indeed, part two contained a lot of content about the plight of law grads.
  • Here’s part one: “The State of Student Loans: More Debts, More Defaults, More Problems”
  • Here’s part two: “Student Loan Debt: To Pay or Not to Pay”

• 5.30.12 – “Maine’s Commission on Indigent Legal Services, which provides lawyers for criminal defendants who can’t afford their own, gets inadequate funding every year. Its budget for this fiscal year recently bottomed out, and it will not be sufficient to pay lawyers for the month of June. They will be paid at the start of the new fiscal year in July, but dwindling funds are an ongoing problem.”  Thanks for the (bad) news, Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

• 5.30.11 – debate continues around the new 50-hour pro bono requirement for admission to practice law in New York.  In the New York Times, David Udell of the National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law defends the initiative as one that is not overly burdensome on law students and that could have great outcomes for students and clients.  (I believe that the devil remains in the details – e.g. will work satisfying the definition of “pro bono” for a law school’s internal program count toward the requirement if that work does not meet New York’s definition? – but I generally agree with David.  More importantly: what do you think? The Times writes: “We invite readers to respond to this letter for the Sunday Dialogue. We plan to publish responses and Mr. Udell’s rejoinder in the Sunday Review. E-mail: letters@nytimes.com.”
  • And here, from Bloomberg, is a nice summary of the key considerations driving the debate.

• 5.29.12 – we bid “Happy Trails” to a veteran, Pennsylvania-based children’s advocate.  From the Philadelphia Inquirer:  “Shelly Yanoff, a longtime champion of children’s causes, will step down this fall from her role as head of the nonprofit Public Citizens for Children and Youth, the organization’s board of directors announced yesterday.”  The Inquirer did a Q&A with Yanoff which captured her thoughts on what her job had taught her: “That people can respond to the needs of kids. That there are many different ways to get to a good result and that nothing ever stays done. You have to keep at it.”

• 5.29.11 – when pharmaceutical giant Merck began supporting veterans support group Community of Hope, Merck’s in-house lawyers “…realized that they could provide services through their substantial pro bono program that would be as helpful if not moreso than the checks their company was writing to support Community of Hope. Thus was born the Hope for Veterans Program.”  Read about it in the Huffington Post.

• 5.28.12 – some federal court news: the Northern District of Alabama finally has some full-time federal defenders.  From Al.com: “North Alabama’s first crew of federal public defenders, working out of Birmingham and Huntsville, in August will begin defending indigent clients charged with crimes…. The district is one of only four federal court districts out of 94 nationwide that don’t [presently] have some form of federal public defender’s office.”

• 5.24.12 – this may even cause my friend Bob Glaves to forget about the misery of the Chicago Cubs for a bit.  The Chicago Bar Foundation was one of a few stakeholders involved in producing “Legal Aid in Illinois: Selected Social and Economic Benefits.”  This report does a wonderful job of exposing the concrete, financial benefits that inure to Illinois’s population at large because of the work that legal aid organizations do to keep families in their homes, stop domestic abuse, secure government benefits, and obtain child support for clients.  This is the so-called “business case” for legal aid, and this report makes a strong one.  Here’s the report and an accompanying press release.

Finally, this being graduation season, I leave you with the transcript of this commencement speech by Professor Lawrence Lessig.  In it, he emphasizes that if lawyers are stewards for the rule of law and for meaningful access to justice, then we must not make it a priority to serve moneyed interests at the expense of society at large – particularly our society’s most vulnerable members.  I think 90% of commencement speeches are hot air – bromides strung together lazily so as to offend no one and congratulate everyone.  This one resonates with me, though.  Happy June.  Enjoy the sun

By: Steve Grumm

The Chicago Bar Foundation and a group of other stakeholders have released a report they commissioned to look at the economic benefits that the work of the Illinois civil legal aid community brings to the larger society.  The study, performed by the Social IMPACT Research Center of the Heartland Alliance, looks like it was a pretty rigorous affair.  And it concludes that, considering work done in preventing homelessness and domestic violence, as well as securing federal benefits and monetary awards to which low-income clients are entitled, the benefits of civil legal aid to larger society are tangible indeed.

Here’s a link to press release, and here’s one to the full report, Legal Aid in Illinois: Selected Social and Economic Benefits.

Here’s are some key points from the report’s executive summary:

The Chicago Bar Foundation, the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, the Illinois Bar Foundation, the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois, and the Polk Bros. Foundation commissioned this study to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about the tangible economic benefits of legal aid. This study quantifies some of the benefits to clients and other Illinoisans from cases closed by seven legal aid providers that are part of the larger network of 38 legal aid providers funded by The Chicago Bar Foundation and the Lawyers Trust Fund. It uses data from civil law cases in which clients resided in Illinois. These include cases in which a provider communicated with a third party, prepared legal documents, or helped a client represent himself or herself; negotiated a settlement with a third party; represented a client in an administrative agency process or court proceeding; and provided other services beyond legal advice. Data from 8,134 cases were used in the study. The average client helped by one of these cases belonged to a household of three people and reported annual household income of $14,075, meaning that his or her household was well below the federal poverty level.

The study quantifies four economic benefits from cases closed in 2010 by the seven legal aid providers:

• Legal aid providers won $49.4 million in monetary awards for clients. Examples of monetary awards are child support and alimony, public benefits like Social Security and unemployment insurance, and relief from illegal charges by a landlord or payment to a predatory lender;
• Legal aid providers won $11.9 million in benefits wholly or partially paid for by the federal government. It is estimated that these awards were associated with $9.3 million in demand for goods and services, $5.4 million in household income, and 172 non‐legal‐aid jobs across Illinois.
• By preventing or obtaining more time in foreclosures or evictions, obtaining, protecting, or increasing rental subsidies, and assisting clients with other housing issues, legal aid providers avoided $1.9 million in costs to homeless shelters.
• By obtaining protective orders, divorces, child custody, and legal recognition for noncitizens experiencing abuse, legal aid providers avoided $9.4 million in costs of domestic violence to individuals.

The economic benefits of legal aid in Illinois are likely to be greater than those estimated in this study. The study uses data from only seven of 38 legal aid providers funded by The Chicago Bar Foundation and the Lawyers Trust Fund. Additionally, civil law cases other than those involving monetary awards and federal benefits, homelessness, and domestic violence may have outcomes with economic benefits for legal aid clients and other Illinoisans: by overcoming expulsion of a student from school, legal aid may enable the student to obtain a high school diploma, increasing his or her lifetime earnings; by restoring a client’s drivers license or recovering a repossessed vehicle, legal aid may enable the client to access employment far from home, meeting an employer’s need for labor and contributing to the local economy. Because this study estimates economic benefits of legal aid in only four easy‐to‐monetize areas, it represents an incomplete estimate of the economic benefits of legal aid in Illinois. While a complete inventory of the economic benefits from legal aid is beyond the scope of this study, the estimates it presents can help inform policymakers and other stakeholders as they make decisions about the future of legal aid. 

By: Maria Hibbard

Before I came to law school, I thought the right to be protected from double jeopardy, or being tried for the same crime twice, was one of the guaranteed rights of the American judicial system. If I’ve learned anything throughout my first year of law school, however, it’s that the answer to the question of whether anything is guaranteed is “possibly” or “maybe.”

Although the right to be protected from double jeopardy is preserved in the Fifth Amendment, as Andrew Cohen noted this weekend in The Atlantic, this right has frequently been eroded by precedent and the very nature of our judicial system. When the Supreme Court decided Blueford v. Arkansas last week, the right against double jeopardy became even more subject to parsing. In the original trial, Blueford was charged with capital murder, first-degree murder, manslaughter, and negligent homicide for the death of a one-year old child. When the jury returned from deliberation, the foreperson stated that although they had voted unanimously to acquit the murder charges, they were deadlocked on manslaughter and did not vote on negligent homicide.  Although the judge sent the jury back to deliberate more on the lesser charges, a mistrial was declared.

The Supreme Court had to decide whether the foreperson’s announcement of the jury’s votes to acquit were sufficient to invoke double jeopardy protection on the murder charges. The Court agreed with the state, however, saying that protection was not valid because the jury could have re-evaluated their acquittal when they were sent back to deliberate further on the lesser charges. Chief Justice Roberts writes, “It was therefore possible for Blueford’s jury to revisit the offenses of capital and first-degree murder, notwithstand­ing its earlier votes. And because of that possibility, the foreperson’s report prior to the end of deliberations lacked the finality necessary to amount to an acquittal on those offenses…” In his analysis, Cohen criticizes the majority’s use of a hypothetical (not unlike the “what if” Socratic questions of my law school professors), noting the irony in the fact that although Blueford had heard the jury acquit him of the murder charges in open court, in his new trial (still yet to come) another jury could possibly still find him guilty.

What does this case mean for public defenders and appellate advocates? There’s no double jeopardy protection in a mistrial, even if the jury’s vote to acquit is stated in court. Although the Fifth Amendment seems to guarantee double jeopardy protection for every defendant, the only thing that seems to be sure is that it “depends on the circumstances.”

From the New York Times’ Opinion Pages:

In “Rethinking Pro Bono” (Op-Ed, May 14), Ben Trachtenberg casts Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s new legal public service requirement as bad policy, saying students and graduates can’t afford it, can’t do it and shouldn’t be asked to do it since better ideas abound. Starting in 2013, candidates for admission to the New York State Bar must complete 50 hours of public service.

Contrary to Mr. Trachtenberg’s argument, 50 hours of pro bono work will not mire law students and graduates in poverty. Moreover, volunteers can make a difference while gaining skills, confidence and links to jobs. . . .

The pro bono requirement may have hidden virtues. Over time, schools, firms and the courts may guide more resources toward public service, helping to improve its quality. The first opportunity to do pro bono can also make the second easier, instilling in many a commitment for life.

Alternative approaches may also have merit, but credit the chief judge for acting in urgent times to make this good idea a reality.

Read the rest here and respond to this letter for NYT’s Sunday Dialogue.

By: Maria Hibbard

Since it’s intern season here in Washington, D.C., many bright-eyed and bushy tailed students with hopes of potentially working for the federal government are streaming into the city.  I may or may not be one of them!  My name is Maria Hibbard, and I’m the resident PSLawNet Intern and Publications Coordinator for the summer. I’m a rising second year law student at Case Western Reserve University. Since I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and am now in Cleveland for law school, D.C.’s vast system of public transportation and plethora of free summer activities (see the Having Fun on the Cheap page!) definitely has a big-city allure for me as well. I’ll be blogging throughout the summer here while avoiding the D.C. heat in the air conditioned office, of course.

Until recently, the path to employment at a federal agency or department has been a mystical jumble of various opportunities only found through a great degree of research: volunteer internships, compensated internships, fellowships, short-term and long-term programs. Hopefully, this jumble will soon become clearer–when President Obama’s Executive Order 13562 takes effect on July 10, 2012, current students and recent graduates will have three clear paths to federal employment via The Pathways Program. To break it down, everyone loves a list:

• Some aspiring federal employees may have heard of the Student Career Experience program (SCEP) and the Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP); both of these programs are being replaced by the all-encompassing Internship Program. While the program is still administered primarily by the hiring agency, students can possibly earn conversion into a permanent position after the completion of 640 hours of work experience.
• The Recent Grads program is a new opportunity for recent graduates within two years of obtaining any degree. Like the internship program, it is administered individually by the federal agencies, but the one year program provides structured mentorship opportunities, 40 hours of formal training, and the creation of an individual development plan. After 1 year, the graduates of the program can be eligible for conversion to permanent employment at the selected agency.

Starting in July, agencies will have to provide information about both of these programs, their specific opportunities, and application procedures on www.usajobs.gov/studentsandgrads/.

• Finally, the Presidential Management Program, while obviously not new, has been reworked to provide for a more seamless application process and administration (especially after last year’s acceptance snafu). This prestigious program, for professionals of all disciplines, places fellows at the center of federal policy making, provides at least 80 hours of formal training, and encourages the development of a performance plan.

We’ll remind you in July to start looking for opportunities on the reworked federal website; hopefully, the Pathways Program will lead more aspiring students and recent grads down the yellow-brick-“pathway” to federal employment.

By: Steve Grumm

I’m typically reticent to single out individuals’ professional bad acts as object lessons.  Even good people sometimes do bad things.  But in this case the individual is a very public figure and the bad act offers such a valuable lesson for law students and junior attorneys about personal integrity and accurate record-keeping. 

There is a all kinds of news coverage about the fact that the erstwhile Republican leader in the New Hampshire house, who also just graduated from the U. of New Hampshire School of Law, resigned his office and admitted that he falsified his reporting of final-semester internship.  From the Boston Globe: 

Representative D.J. Bettencourt announced Sunday he was resigning from the Legislature immediately while admitting he had misrepresented legal work he performed for another legislator while attending the University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Matters came to a head over the weekend after Representative Brandon Giuda, Republican of Chichester, called on the 28-year-old Bettencourt to resign, accusing him of fabricating law school records indicating he completed a semesterlong legal internship at Giuda’s office despite working there for only one hour.

…

Giuda said Monday he agreed last winter to let Bettencourt work for him in his one-person home office for a legal internship to meet his requirement to graduate from law school. Bettencourt agreed to work every Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. for the semester but ended up working only one hour in total, Giuda said.

Giuda said that after he saw that Bettencourt had participated in the law school’s May 19 commencement in cap and gown, he obtained the internship records and learned that Bettencourt had submitted to the university 11 weeks of reports — with details such as court hearings, meetings, and talks with clients that had never happened — giving him the credits he needed to graduate.

‘‘When I saw those, I got a pit in my stomach,’’ Giuda said. ‘‘This wasn’t just cheating. This was premeditated at the same time he’s standing at the podium castigating other people on ethics.’’

[More coverage from the Nashua Telegraph.]

This appears to be an egregious act: simply making up an internship experience on paper that never existed in real life.  The more dangerous kinds of temptations for legal professionals come in trying to keep up with record-keeping requirements.  If there is a lawyer alive who has not, at some point in their careers, struggled to keep up with time records, I’ve not met him.  But, accurate record-keeping and reporting – whether it’s hours worked, time billed, CLE hours, etc. – are central to law students’ and lawyers’ professional obligations.  This is why, lawyer jokes notwithstanding, dishonesty and theft offenses can not just tarnish a professional record, but can end careers.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  Earlier this week I participated in a one-day conference focused on the role of New York State’s 15 law schools in addressing the civil justice gap.  Much discussion centered on the recent announcement by NY Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman that 50 hours of pro bono service will be required for admission to practice law in New York.  Most of this blog’s readers will have been aware of how much buzz this announcement has generated.  Ink has been spilled.  Articles and opinion pieces have run in legal and mainstream media.  The old debate about making volunteer service mandatory has been revived. 

Letting alone the “mandatory v. voluntary” policy debate, I think this requirement will prove fairly easy to satisfy.  Pro bono performed in law school satisfies the requirement.  Fifty hours of pro bono over three years is just less than 17 hours per year.  Frankly, that’s easy for any law student.  That said, there are two noteworthy considerations:

1. There will be some burden on law schools (both inside and outside of NY State) to make sure worthwhile pro bono opportunities exist for their students.  Two of the law school deans who attended this week’s program made the point over and over that pro bono also has to mesh with law school’s larger mission of training tomorrow’s lawyers.  So pro bono programs should be efficiently administered, and should offer skill-development chances for students.
2. The pro bono work itself must effectively serve client communities.  And public interest law offices should not be overly burdened in offering pro bono opportunities for students.              

But given that so many schools already have some infrastructure in place for student pro bono, I think the 50-hour requirement will not be too much of a burden on students, schools, or the public interest community.

This week:

• more on NY State’s 50-hour pro bono requirement;
• $300K in grant funding divided among NV legal services providers (and my thoughts on the Las Vegas bachelor party);
• mandatory pro bono in the Caymans;
• addressing legal needs long after Hurricane Irene struck NC;
• fewer death sentences in Ohio, tracking a national trend;
• tracking wrongful convictions nationally;
• for reasons of efficiency and expediency, an early intervention court program for nonviolent offenders in one county courthouse;
• the justice gap, and legal services funding shortages, in Cleveland;
• a 2012 law grad on why he’s chosen a career in indigent defense (hint: it’s not the money);
• a special master appointed in the PA lawsuit over an underfunded indigent defense program;
• one Maryland prosecutor, under the weight of an overwhelming caseload, is pushing hard for $ to hire new attorneys.

The summaries:

• 5.24.12 – more on the recent announcement in NY State about requiring 50 pro bono hours from all bar license applicants.  While the larger policy debate about mandatory vs. voluntary pro bono will continue both in the context of this announcement and more broadly, New York’s top jurist is moving into the implementation stage: “Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman yesterday announced the creation of an advisory committee that will make recommendations on how to implement a new pro bono service requirement set to become a prerequisite in 2013 for admission to the New York bar.”  (Story from Corporate Counsel.)  And here’s more coverage from the New York Law Journal and the Lower Hudson Blog. 

• 5.23.12 – in Nevada, the state bar is divvying up about $300K in grant money among legal services providers.  (Story from KLAS in Las Vegas.)  As a personal aside, I have never told you about the bachelor party I attended in Las Vegas last year.  There are many good reasons for this.  Suffice to say I am still angry with the erstwhile bachelor for deciding that, at 35 years of age, we’d be able to contend with Las Vegas’s many attractions and excitements.  We were not.  The Vegas bachelor/ette party is a young person’s game.  What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas if “soul-crushing physical exhaustion” can be said to happen in Vegas.  Rather, soul-crushing physical exhaustion flies home on the plane with you and stays in your place for a week.  Never again.

• 5.22.12 – more mandatory pro bono, this time with a tropical-tax-shelter theme.  “All practicing attorneys in the Cayman Islands would be forced to work a certain number of hours for free or pay an annual fee of $2,500, according to a draft of the Legal Aid and Pro Bono Legal Services Bill, 2012.  The draft bill was made public by the attorney general’s office
last week.  According to a summary of the proposal, every attorney-at-law in the Islands to whom a practicing certificate has been issued “shall render pro bono legal services to persons in accordance with this legislation”, or face discipline under the territory’s Legal Practitioners Law.”  (Story from the Cay Compass.)

• 5.21.12 – legal woes caused by a natural disaster can exist long after the disaster itself has dissipated: “A Raleigh law firm is working with Legal Aid of North Carolina to find what problems people still have from Hurricane Irene.  [Irene struck North Carolina in August, 2011.]   The Daily Reflector of Greenville reported that Womble Carlyle and Legal Aid are asking individuals who may be struggling with recovery problems from last August’s storm to call a toll-free hotline. Such issues could include insurance claims, construction scams and mortgage-related problems.”  (Story from the Associated Press.)  

• 5.21.12 – a trend in Ohio which basically tracks national developments: far fewer death sentences as lawmakers, prosecutors, and court officials contend with the high cost of administering capital punishment programs along with changing sentiment about the death penalty’s effectiveness and propriety.  (Here’s the article from the Columbus Dispatch.)  And here’s some related follow-up…   

• 5.21.12 – ….of course one of the long-running criticisms of capital punishment stems from the risk of executing an innocent person.  Here’s an AP report on wrongful convictions: “More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.  There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.  The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.” 

• 5.20.12 – “One of the initiatives that Bibb County commissioners are considering for next year’s spending plan is a $600,000 request designed to expedite the legal process in local courts.  The request, made jointly by the Bibb County District Attorney’s Office and the Macon Circuit Public Defender’s Office, would allow each office to hire two additional attorneys as part of an Early Intervention Program. The program, officials say, would reduce the number of cases in the court system by allowing for a quicker disposition of nonviolent crimes.”  (Full story in the Macon Telegraph, a newspaper with an oddly Tolkienesque tagline: “Middle Georgia’s News Source.”)
   
• 5.20.12 – in Cleveland, the local bar president and board president of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland make it clear just how much the organization’s funding situation has worsened, and explains how vital a service legal aid is in preserving justice.  (Op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.)   

• 5.20.12 – more Cleveland!  Jeffrey Stein, a 2012 NYU Law grad, explains his decision to pursue a career in indigent defense in the pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  “It’s hiring season for public defender offices, which means it’s also the time when law students pursuing jobs in indigent defense enjoy the privilege of justifying their chosen career to skeptical — and, inevitably, disappointed — relatives (“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather make $160,000 as a first-year associate at a firm?”), friends (“But what if you know they’re guilty?”) and professors (“Ah, that’s . . . great.”).  Like the populations we serve, we who devote our professional lives to defending poor people are not a monolithic group. But, to answer your questions, here are some of the reasons I have chosen to commit my life to public defense….”  

• 5.19.12 – in the Pennsylvania lawsuit about alleged underfunding of indigent defense, a special master has been appointed to help sort things through.  (Story from the Citizens Voice of Luzerne County.) 

• 5.18.12 – in Charles County Maryland, the state’s attorney is pressing hard for funding to hire new attorneys.  “…[P]rosecutors are so overworked that they soon will have to pick and choose which cases to pursue in court, State’s Attorney Anthony B. Covington warned the Charles County commissioners Tuesday.  He asked the commissioners to give his office a $989,000 budget increase, or 41 percent, which would include enough to hire five new prosecutors in fiscal 2013, which begins July 1. Over three years, his office will require a $1.7 million increase, enough to hire a total of eight new attorneys and at least one researcher, he said. (Story from Southern Maryland News Online.)