By: Steve Grumm

A Yale Law librarian has for the past several years compiled a list of the outgoing year’s ten most notable quotes.  Here’s the Detroit Free Press reporting on 2011’s best (and sometimes, worst) rhetorical flourishes:

Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, has released his sixth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year.

The original “Yale Book of Quotations” was published in 2006. Since then, Shapiro has released an annual list of the top 10 quotes that would be incorporated into the next edition. Shapiro picks quotes that are famous, important or revealing of the spirit of the times, not necessarily ones that are the most eloquent or admirable.

The list:

1. “We are the 99%.” — slogan of the Occupy movement.

2. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” — U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, speaking in Andover, Mass., in August.

3. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” — Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 15

 …

Click into the story for the rest of the quotes, including Herman Cain’s pronunciation of a central Asian nation, Charlie Sheen being high on life, and former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seeming inability to recognize…oh, those jokes were always too easy.

By: Steve Grumm

Much ink has been spilled in the past year about the quickly rising cost of legal education, and the return on investment that law grads receive from that education.  A latest installment in the ongoing conversation comes from the American Lawyer, in a piece entitled “ABA Regulations Don’t Cause Tuition Increases, Law Schools Do.”

In the piece, author Matt Leichter deconstructs what he perceives to be the core arguments arising from the most recent of New York Times reporter David Segal’s articles on the value of legal education.  Leichter begins:

In his latest New York Times piece on law schools’ problems, “For Law Schools, a Price to Play the A.B.A.’s Way,” David Segal places the responsibility for needless tuition increases on the American Bar Association’s (ABA) accreditation regime.

…

I think Segal is trying to make three claims here:

(1) The consent decree caused law school tuition to increase over the inflation rate.

(2) Tuition increases at the most well-regarded law schools are caused by U.S. News‘s rankings and the Federal Direct Student Loan Program.

(3) The ABA’s standards cause tuition increases in law schools that are not well regarded by U.S. News.

These are bold statements, particularly the third one, because if they are true, then criticism toward law schools ought to be redirected towards the ABA, and the solutions would probably not require significant modifications to the federal student loan system as it works with law schools.

…

By: Steve Grumm

City/municipal funding is often an important piece in the public interest funding pie.  In Philadelphia and Seattle, for instance, the municipal governments fund public defense programs.  Legal services organizations rely on city grants and other collaborative funding efforts to serve clients.  So it’s worth noting that, even as the recession has officially ended, the worst may lie ahead for city budgets.  The Washington Post explores looming budgetary woes for city governments:

The nation’s housing crisis is five years old, but for local governments across the country, the worst of the reckoning might only now be at hand.Because of the time it often takes for property assessments to reflect falling home values, the bust that began in 2007 has just begun to ravage tax revenues in communities from coast to coast. The problem is unlikely to subside soon.

…

State governments, which rely heavily on sales and income taxes, saw massive hits to their bottom lines early in the crisis as unemployment skyrocketed. But those revenues have begun, ever so slowly, to recover.

Meanwhile, many local governments weathered the early years of the financial crisis in part because the property tax revenues they rely upon so heavily held steady or actually increased as a result of assessments that still reflected inflated prices. Many municipalities are now being forced to recognize the collapse in home prices and the shrinking tax base that comes with it. At the same time, they are seeing state and federal aid dry up.

 

By: Steve Grumm

2011 was a great year for legal education, right?  Right?  [Crickets.]

In “The Year the Chickens Came Home to Roost,” the National Law Journal’s Karen Sloan offers her top 10 legal education stories.  Making the cut: schools fudging admisssions data, grads use their legal skills to sue their alma maters, Sen. Boxer takes the ABA to the mat, law school finals go to the dogs, etc., etc., etc.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy FridayHolidays, dear readers.  And if the religious holidays are not your bag, I wish you a wondrous Winter Solstice Season.  According to the Wikipedias, “The winter solstice occurs exactly when the axial tilt of a planet’s polar hemisphere is farthest away from the star that it orbits. Earth’s maximum axial tilt to our star, the Sun, during a solstice is 23° 26′.” If axial tilts don’t warm your heart and make you want to be in fellowship with humanity, I don’t know what will.  Regardless of what you celebrate or how you celebrate it, I wish you a joy-filled, relaxing holiday season.  In summary, here’s what we’ve got:

• NOLA’s defender office has made serious, post-Katrina progress;
• our buddy Tom Maligno is profiled for his remarkable public-interest work at Touro Law on Lawwng Eye-laaand.  (Don’t worry, the interview is translated out of their strange local dialect and into regular English.);
• just a few miles west, is public defender hiring on the horizon in New York?;
• Legal Aid of West Virginia looking at layoffs in wake of LSC $ cuts;
• as has happened elsewhere in the country, a Northeastern PA defender announces he’s triaging the kinds of new cases he can accept;
• controversy in MA about an apparent failure to screen indigent defendants for indigence;
• an MLP in East Tennessee;
• making the case for an indigent defense system, Minnesota-style;
• Quiz: what will cause a public defender’s office to burn through cash right quick?;
• NYC legal aid lawyers hop in the bus and bring justice to Brooklyn and the Bronx;
• from the Department of Bad Timing: public defender layoffs, prosecuting attorney raises, in Central Florida;
• Houston, TX finally has a public defense program, and its chief wants you to know how their first year went.

This week:

• The Jan./Feb. edition of Mother Jones looks at the remarkable, post-Katrina progress of the Office of the Public Defender in New Orleans, which has transformed from a beleaguered to an award-winning program.  Nevertheless the OPD, led by Derwyn Bunton (whom we interviewed here in early 2010), faces new funding challenges and is pitted against a district attorney’s office which brings cases in historically high volume.

• 12.22.11 – Tom Maligno, executive director of a unique (and quite robust) “Public Advocacy Center” at Touro Law School, drops some wisdom about why/how the PAC operates.  The center houses several independent public interest law offices, which gives Touro students direct access to employers and experiential learning opportunities.  On the ABA Center for Pro Bono’s blog, Maligno notes, “Through the William Randolph Hearst Public Advocacy Center (PAC) we give free space to advocacy organizations so they have working offices within the law school. What we get in return is a plan for them to involve our students in their work. We have a mandatory pro bono graduation requirement at Touro. One of the ways students can fulfill that requirement is by working within these agencies that are all housed within the law school.  We try to select various groups so the types of organization available for student volunteers run the gamut. We work with legal services programs, immigration groups, civil liberties organization, domestic violence advocates and much more.”

• 12.21.11 – public defender hiring on the horizon in New York?  Thomson Reuters reports: “State court administrators have requested millions of dollars in funding to help legal-aid offices in New York City come into compliance with a new law limiting the number of criminal cases a public defender can handle each year…. The law, proposed by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman in 2009, bars public-defender offices in the city from averaging more than 400 misdemeanor or 150 felony cases per attorney in any 12-month  period…. While the law creating the cap doesn’t take effect until April 1, 2014, the current state budget includes $6.8 million to allow the handful of public-defender offices in the city to hire new attorneys. The largest office, the Legal Aid Society of New York, has already hired 105 new lawyers, according to Attorney-in-Chief Steven Banks, but is still only about halfway toward its bid to meet the cap. Earlier this month, in a spending proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, state court officials requested an additional $6.4 million to come into compliance with the law.”

• 12.20.11 – following November’s LSC funding cuts Legal Aid of West Virginia is bracing for attorney layoffs.  From the Charleston Gazette: “Federal spending cuts will likely force the overburdened Legal Aid of West Virginia to lay off several lawyers in order to compensate for its annual budget woes.”  It’s not like LAWV is overly staffed right now: “Legal Aid has just 40 lawyers to handle cases in the state’s 55 counties, according to Legal Aid’s website, and demand for more lawyers is not getting any lighter.  In 2010 alone, demand for Legal Aid services increased 20 percent from the previous year.”

• 12.20.11 – resource shortages are compelling a Northeastern Pennsylvania public defender to refuse some new cases.  From an editorial in the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader: “Chief Public Defender Al Flora Jr. said his office will limit the number of new cases it takes beginning this week. Flora pinned the problem on a shortage of funding for a sufficiently large defense staff to handle the caseload, saying, ‘We are overwhelmed right now….’  By taking this action, Flora might finally force county and state officials to confront troubling shortfalls here in money and personnel devoted to the court system. He’s justifiably perturbed at being asked to provide competent counsel without being provided the resources to supply it.  Until the dust-up can be resolved, however, the most likely casualties are – again – the people with the least.”  Flora is basically limiting case intake to juvenile and some felony matters.  Here’s additional coverage from the Associated Press.
   
• 12.19.11 – in Massachusetts, trouble with the system to screen client eligibility for a public defender.  The AP reports: ‘Massachusetts has spent nearly $48 million on free legal services for the poor without verifying whether those making the claims are truly indigent, according to a new report released Monday by state Auditor Suzanne Bump.  The report looks at the Office of the Commissioner of Probation, the agency responsible for verifying that a person claiming to be poor meets the definition established by the Supreme Judicial Court to be eligible for free legal services.  Bump’s review of fiscal year 2010 records at 27 of the state’s 70 district courts found what she called ‘near total noncompliance with the indigency verification laws, rules, and regulations.’  None of the 27 courts performed any verification of documentation at an applicant’s initial screening.  In the sample of cases pulled from these courts, only 1.7 percent contained adequate documentation that court officials performed a required 60-day reassessment, and less than 1 percent had any evidence that a required six-month reassessment had been conducted.”  More coverage from the Boston Herald.

• 12.19.11 – a new medical-legal partnership (MLP) in East Tennessee.  WDEF reports: “It’s the first of its kind in the Chattanooga area.  Erlanger Health System announces a partnership with Legal Aid of East Tennessee.  The Erlanger Health Law Partnership aims to improve the health of low-income patients….  [The] Partnership will help low-income patients with legal problems that affect their health…issues like education, the Family Medical Leave Act, Powers of Attorney, Public Benefits and Housing.”

• 12.18.11 – a column by Minnesota judge Terrence E. Conkel emphasizes the importance of public defenders’ roles in the judicial system, and the importance of providing them with the resources they need to operate effectively.  Read the column in the Jordan Independent, a/k/a the New York Times of Scott County, Minnesota.

• 12.18.11 – what causes public defenders’ offices to burn through funding right quick?  Capital cases.  To wit, in Northampton County, PA the defender’s office saw its “budget ballooning nearly 400 percent from $150,000 to $600,700,” mainly on account of having to handle four death-penalty cases in the past year.  Read more in the Express-Times. 

• 12.16.11 – NYC legal services lawyers have justice, will travel.  From WNYC: “A large truck with the words ‘Access to Justice’ written on it has been making its way through low-income communities on the outskirts of Brooklyn and the Bronx this week. Its purpose is to bring the courts and free legal services to people who often don’t have access either because of language barriers, physical disabilities or other issues. It’s the first of its kind in the state.  Lawyers from the New York Legal Assistance Group or NYLAG operate the mobile center with the New York State Courts’ full cooperation. The so-called justice on wheels truck is expected to make stops in 30 different locations a month and serve 2,000 city residents a year.”

• 12.16.11 – worst of times, best of times: public defender layoffs, and prosecutor raises, in Florida.  The Orlando Sentinel reports:  “Orange-Osceola Public Defender Robert Wesley says a combination of economic factors has led his office to lay off 11 attorneys, meaning several long-time assistants will lose their jobs by year’s end….  Factors contributing to the layoffs include: lack of natural turnover with defense attorneys finding fewer jobs available with private firms; a decline in collections from clients of Wesley’s office – normally such collections account for 30 percent of funds for operations; a number of staffers who left and then returned under the Family Medical Leave Act; and an increase in health insurance costs.”  In a strange juxtaposition, the local prosecutor’s office announced raises: “…State Attorney Lawson Lamar, just announced raises for staffers in his office, which prosecutes state-level crimes in the circuit covering Orange and Osceola….  ‘[Increased collections have enabled me to provide salary increases for the remaining majority of our team members this year,’ Lamar wrote in a statement to employees. ‘This comes at a particularly important time of year since we all saw our take home pay shrink due to inflation [and] no cost of living increases since October 2006’.” 

• 12.15.11 – in Texas, Harris County (that’s Houston) Public Defender Alexander Bunin catches us up on his newly created office’s activity.  (Houston had been using an appointed counsel system for indigent defense all the way up until last year.)  Contributing a piece to the Houston Chronicle, Bunin reviews his office’s successes and reinforces the economic and moral cases for funding a stand-alone public defense agency. 

By: Steve Grumm

Radical left-wing commy pinko magazine Mother Jones looks in on indigent defense in the Big Easy.  Oddly enough, it was from Hurricane Katrina’s devastation that a renewed defender’s office emerged. 

“When the storm hit, it certainly did better than any lawsuit could have done to show the problem,” says Derwyn Bunton, the chief of the Orleans Public Defenders. Katrina demolished the city’s public defense system: The lawyers were funded by traffic fines, and there was no traffic anymore. Civil rights activists, lawyers, and the Justice Department stepped in, and by August 2007, a brand new OPD office was ready to do things differently.

The office culture has changed, too:

“Their vigorous client-centered representation is such a dramatic contrast to the previous meet-’em-and-plead-’em system of days past,” says Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights. In 2006, the center published a damning report on the city’s indigent defense; in 2009, it gave OPD its prestigious Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award, calling it “an inspiration.”

But the program still faces challenges, funding chief among them:

In order to keep up [with demand for services], OPD needs $12 million a year; in 2012, it will get only $9.5 million. The Justice Department grant has run out, and the cash-strapped state has cut its funding. New Orleans’ mayor has, for the first time ever, prioritized public defense in the budget, but that won’t cover the difference. After my visit, OPD cut nine lawyers and froze hiring. Bunton vows to continue to provide representation to anyone who needs it, though it’s unclear how his remaining staff will manage.

The PSLawNet Blog interviewed Mr. Bunton back in early 2010 about his career path and advice he would offer to law grads on public interest career paths.

I didn’t even know there was a law called “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act” — did you? I’m tempted to check the legislative history on this one to find out what the rationale was to change the name from “Animal Enterprise Protection Act” to Terrorism Act. Anywho, here’s what’s going down…

From Mother Jones:

In 2006, Congress quietly passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a sweeping new law that classified many forms of animal rights campaigning as terrorism. Now the law’s critics have taken to the courts to try to kill it. In a case filed last week, five activists argue that AETA violates their rights by criminalizing constitutionally protected actions.

AETA . . . prohibits anything done “for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise” or that “causes the loss of any real or personal property.” . . . The law also prohibits “economic damage” to an enterprise, which includes loss of profits and pressure put on any investors or other companies that do business with the animal enterprise. . . .

Faced with the possibility of terrorism charges for engaging in many forms of protest, a number of activists have decided to curb their activity. . . .

One federal judge has already endorsed the idea that the government’s use of AETA has been too broad. In 2009, four protesters in California were charged under the law for allegedly chalking a sidewalk, handing out fliers, and engaging in protests at the homes of researchers that use animals. Ronald M. Whyte, a federal judge in California, threw out the charges, finding that they were too vague and included constitutionally protected actions. . . .

AETA was passed specifically to cover a broader range of groups and activities than its predecessor, says Will Potter, a reporter who has covered the attempts to classify various forms of activism as terrorism in his blog and book Green Is the New Red. “They’re really trying to scare the hell out of people,” he says.

Note that there are a few rules of construction provisions, including that the law shall not be construed “to prohibit any expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) protected from legal prohibition by the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Read the rest of the article here.

I’m uncomfortable with the use of the word terrorism in connection with activism and the censorship implications of the law. What are your thoughts?

By: Steve Grumm

A sort of macabre way to start off our holiday-week blogging, but from the National Law Journal:

The number of death penalty sentences has dropped to the lowest point since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to a Dec. 15 report released by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Seventy-eight capital punishment verdicts were handed down this year compared to 112 last year, according to the DPIC’s Year End Death Penalty Report. Executions also decreased from 46 in 2010 to 43 in 2011.

“This is a long-term drop since the year 2000…and this year was a sharper drop,” said Richard Dieter, DPIC’s executive director and the report’s author, in an interview.

There were several factors that contributed to this year’s drop, according to the report. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn passed legislation to repeal the death penalty; Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber decided to order no more executions during his term; there was a drop in crime; and finally, public distrust of the system grew after Troy Davis of Georgia was executed despite strong doubts of his guilt were made known.

Here’s some additional coverage from the AP/Washington Post which notes that, on top of the number of death sentences being down, actual executions have decreased, too:

New death sentences in the United States have declined 75 percent from their peak since executions resumed in the 1970s, an anti-capital punishment group reports.

The Death Penalty Information Center said 78 people convicted of murder were sentenced to die so far in 2011, the first time in 35 years there have been fewer than 100 new death sentences.

The option of locking a convicted killer in prison for life without a chance of parole, as well as heightened awareness of the risks of executing the innocent, are driving the decrease, said Richard Dieter, the center’s executive director and author of the report.

In the peak year of 1996, 315 people received death sentences.

The nation also is seeing a sustained drop in executions. The 43 executions in 2011 were roughly half as many as in 2000. Ninety-eight prisoners were put to death in 1998, the busiest year for U.S. death chambers since executions resumed in 1977 following a halt imposed by the Supreme Court.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  From my perch here in Washington I’m looking at a freakishly warm December morning, a disappointingly cold cup of coffee, a newspaper headline about Newt Gingrich (what year is this?) and a stack of unwritten holiday cards (a phenomenon that recurs every year, Newt or no Newt).  This week’s Bulletin contains a little bit of everything.  Here’s what we’ve got: 

• a new Connecticut provider to serve DV and human trafficking victims;
• ACLU of Montana critical of state’s public defense program;
• speaking of, a class-action over Georgia’s long-criticized public defense system may settle;
• young lawyers in “The OC” lend aid to the county’s legal services program;
• more public defense funding woes, this time addressed by Missouri’s high court;
• an unexpected glut of federal employee retirements;
• too many strings attached to law student summer public interest funding?;
• “A call for prosecutorial accountability”;
• Expanding New York State’s appellate pro bono program;
• A veterans diversionary court program in Oklahoma;
• LSC funding cuts hit hard in Mississippi;
• A formerly deferred associate recounts a formative experience representing DV victims;
• more medical-legal partnerships needed in the Lone Star State?
• cash-strapped government law offices leveraging private bar resources.

Here are the summaries:

• 12.15.11 – a new nonprofit law office in Connecticut will serve a highly vulnerable population.  From the New Canaan Observer: The Rights, Advocacy and Empowerment (RAE) Law Group has been formed to “promote, enforce and advocate for the rights of victims and survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking and sexual exploitation. The group will serve clients in Fairfield, New Haven and Middlesex counties.”  RAE apparently takes referrals from other service providers and provides representation for a “modest fee.”

• 12.15.11 – indigent defense trouble in the Treasure State.  From TV station KXLH: “The ACLU of Montana asserts there are many problems with the state’s public defender system and it’s asking the Montana Legislature to do its part in ensuring the agency operates smoothly.  If you can’t afford an attorney one will be appointed for you, and it’s likely the public defender could also be managing about 200 other cases….  The report also states attorneys aren’t getting the feedback and training they need to be successful in the courtroom.”  A lack of funding is seen as the main culprit.  Here’s a link to the ACLU’s report, which is being published 5 years after the Montana moved from a county-by-county to a statewide system.  The news isn’t all bad, but funding still is lacking.

• 12.14.11 – a class action regarding Georgia’s embattled indigent defense system may be settling.  The AP reports (and this is the whole article so no need to click through): “The Southern Center for Human Rights says a potential settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit that claims the state of Georgia must provide attorneys to handle the appeals of dozens of convicted criminals.  The case had been scheduled for a hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter on Thursday. Kathryn Hamoudah of [SCHR], which brought the case, said Wednesday the settlement was not yet final and she did not know the details.  Plaintiffs want the state to make changes to make sure hundreds of indigent defendants have lawyers to represent them in their appeals. They claim cuts to the statewide public defender system has robbed them of their constitutional right to make their case.  The lawsuit was filed in 2009.”
   
• 12.14.11 – as a native Philadelphian I have little use for Orange County, CA.  From afar it seems so La-la Land-ish.  The OC did produce punk rock juggernaut Social Distortion, but otherwise it’s not my bag.  Nevertheless, here’s some good news about young lawyers pitching in to aid an overburdened legal services provider.  The Orange County Register reports that the Legal Aid Society of Orange County’s evictions unit is staring down LSC funding cuts and swelling caseloads.  The county bar’s young lawyers division heeded a call for help.  The YLD’s chair hoped “for maybe 10 volunteers [to handle pro bono eviction cases], but more than 40 responded to the call. Two weeks ago, about 35 went through training in wrongful-detainer law, and another session will be held in a few weeks. Then they’ll start taking cases.” 

• 12.14.11 – Show Me Oral Arguments!  A long-simmering controversy concerning the overburdened Missouri public defense program made it to the state’s high court.  Last year a defender refused new cases because the office’s caseload was overwhelming its ability to represent clients.  From the Springfield News-Leader: “The question is simple on its face: Does the Missouri Public Defender Commission have the authority to turn away defendants?  But the issue, taken up in oral arguments Tuesday in the state Supreme Court, splintered off into discussions ranging from constitutional rights to ethical burdens, from separation of powers to rule-making authority. No clear solution was offered.  The judges…also didn’t give an indication of how they are leaning. [E]ach stated conflicting concerns — forcing public defenders to represent clients regardless of caseload concerns or leaving the decision to local judges to find representation for poor defendants.”

• 12.12.11 – Uncle Sam is losing workers left and right to retirement.  From the Federal Times: “Retirement applications for the first 10 months of 2011 soared 24 percent from the same time last year, topping 92,000, according to statistics from the Office of Personnel Management….”  OPM Director John Berry told Congress last month…” that the rising retirement rate “…was likely caused by cash-strapped agencies offering buyouts and taking other steps to cut their workforces.”  What does this mean for aspiring civil servants?  The good news is obvious: open positions.  The bad news, of course, is the government-wide hiring freeze.  But the freeze has some cracks in it.  (That’s metaphor torture, for those scoring at home).  Agencies can still hire to fill “mission-critical” positions, so it’s not as though federal recruiting has stopped altogether.  This could bode well for law grads looking for a way in.

• 12.12.11 – is it becoming too burdensome for law students to get summer public interest funding from their schools?  From every law school dean’s fav periodical, U.S. News and World Report: “It’s fellowship application season for first and second year law students who want to work in public service law next summer. Many law schools offer…summer fellowships, which provide a stipend ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, to students who pursue service-oriented roles rather than positions at big firms…. Many law students and J.D.’s report that their public service internships were fulfilling…. But some say that the internship applications come with too many requirements, warning aspiring public servants to carefully consider whether to participate.  Many law schools…require students to do between 5 and 10 hours of volunteer work on campus, and some also insist that students volunteer at fundraising auctions. ”  Oh, the horror!  I’m okay with requiring someone to do 5 hours of service to qualify for funding.  If nothing else it may separate the truly public-interest oriented students from those who would rather be at a firm but wish to hedge their bets.

• 12.12.11 – “A Call for Prosecutorial Accountability” appears as an op-ed in the National Law Journal: “Last term, the Supreme Court…limited municipal civil liability for prosecutors in Connick [v. Thompson]. In justifying this holding in part by stating that prosecutors are ‘personally subject to an ethics regime designed to reinforce the profession’s standards,’ the Court pointed to the existence of the [ABA] and state grievance mechanisms that set ethical standards for prosecutors and discipline them when they break the rules.  [Yet] new research analyzing the policies and procedures for disciplining attorneys in each state…shows that prosecutors are rarely held accountable when misconduct occurs….  Inspired by the Connick decision, students from the Liman Prosecutorial Mis­con­duct Research Project at Yale Law School examined the basis of the reliance on current attorney-sanctioning mechanisms. The resulting investigation of the disciplinary procedures in various states found that the process and results are largely inadequate for investigating claims of misconduct and holding prosecutors accountable.”

• 12.12.11 – “One year after establishing an experimental pro bono civil appellate program to handle family law appeals for people who cannot afford counsel, the New York State Bar Association is expanding the initiative to several other areas of law,” according to the New York Law Journal.   “Two upstate nonprofit organizations, the Legal Project in Albany and the Rural Center of New York in Plattsburgh, are providing staff support. The program is supported by a grant from the New York Bar Foundation.  During the first year, volunteer attorneys handled six appeals before the 3rd Department, one of them precedent-setting.  According to the American Bar Association, the State Bar’s pro bono appellate project is one of only 10 such programs in the country.”

• 12.11.11 – The Oklahoman looks at a diversionary judicial program for veterans in the Oklahoma City area.  “Veterans who get into legal trouble in Oklahoma County can apply to the program. Those who qualify have to go before a board that includes prosecutors, public defenders, counselors and veterans advocates. If they are selected for the program, they sign a contract agreeing to participate.  If they fail the program, charges can be refiled. Part of the contract includes waiving the statute of limitations on their case. They are not required, however, to plead guilty to a judge.”  The county prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices joined forces to create/administer the program.

• 12.10.11 – the LSC cuts are hitting hard in Mississippi.  From the Clarion-Ledger: “[T]wo Legal Services programs in Mississippi that provide civil legal help for the poor will see federal funding reduced by more than $821,000 in 2012.  The cuts in funding for the Mississippi Center for Legal Services, which serves 43 counties in the central and southern part of the state, and the North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, which serves 39 counties in the northern part of the state, were the result of a 14.85 percent reduction nationally in federal spending for Legal Services programs…. About 600,000 poor people in Mississippi are eligible for services, and about 30 attorneys are available in Mississippi for Legal Services.  The number of Legal Services attorneys is about one per 20,000 low-income residents.”

• 12.9.11 – a formerly-deferred DLA Piper associate recounts the positive experience he had spending his deferral period with the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation’s domestic violence project.  After recounting two of his emotionally charged case experiences, he closes the piece: “Now, I am a second-year associate…working mainly in construction law. I am constantly aware of how much there is to learn about this area of law, and about practicing law, period. But learning the ropes in a court…with real live clients whose safety may be at stake, and in an often intense courtroom setting, forced me to understand how to respond swiftly and how to think outside of the box…. [T]hose experiences are easing my path from naïve, wide-eyed associate to useful lawyer…. I am very grateful to my firm and to AVLF for allowing me to start my practice with this experience. Serving as a Deferred Fellow turned out to be both incredibly useful and a great luxury: it gave me confidence, and it gave me the time and the support to learn skills I will always be able to use throughout my career.”

• 12.9.11 – more MLPs needed in the Lone-Star State?  From the Public News Service: “When a health problem persists despite medical treatment, the real issue could be a legal matter. There’s a growing national trend toward medical-legal partnerships (MLPs), which help people figure out whether they might benefit from lawyers in addition to doctors.  A weak economy and state budget cuts have been magnifying the need for such assistance, according to Priscilla Noriega, who directs an MLP in the Brownsville office of Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid.”

• December, 2011 – The December ABA Journal reports on how cash-strapped government law offices are leveraging private-bar resources to help stay afloat.  The Chicago Law Department is benefiting from the services of four local firms. And it turns out this isn’t a new trend.  “Since 2002, New York has saved approximately $84 million in legal fees” while benefiting from pro bono or “loaned associate” programs from law firms.  The article also looks at the L.A. City Attorney’s practice of recruiting law grads for six-month volunteer stints prosecuting misdemeanors, and the U.S. DOJ’s practice of recruiting unpaid Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys. (A few months ago I also wrote about the SAUSA trend.)

by Kristen Pavón

I don’t think so.

However, some students are frustrated by the “abundance of paperwork” and volunteer hours they have to put in to get their check. Some are even going so far as labeling the requirements an exploitation of student labor.

Apparently, some law schools require summer stipend recipients to do between 5 and 10 hours of volunteer work on campus and at fundraising events [to raise dinero for future stipends].

From U.S. News

Many law students and J.D.’s report that their public service internships were fulfilling, and schools’ websites celebrate students’ and alumni’s decisions to serve the public. But some say that the internship applications come with too many requirements, warning aspiring public servants to carefully consider whether to participate. . . .

A student at Cardozo, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says he didn’t mind the abundance of paperwork he had to fill out to apply for the public interest stipend he received last summer. But as an “already stressed out” 1L, he didn’t think he should have had to do office work for the school and cold call alumni. . . .

[Leslie] Thrope [director of Cardozo’s Center for Public Service Law] says the stipends help students develop legal skills and transform people’s lives, but Cardozo can’t afford to fund them without students volunteering at an annual auction that raises funds for the stipends. “[T]he requirements are right up front when a student chooses to participate,” Thrope says.

In my opinion, offering 10 hours of your time to help out the law school so that another public interest enthusiast can have an opportunity to do good work is not a biggie.

*As an aside, if you do have your heart set on doing public interest work during the summer and have yet to find the bankroll to do so, check out our Summer Funding Page. There are over 50 funding sources listed!

What do you think? Would you apply for a summer stipend with a few strings attached during your 1L year?