By: Steve Grumm

In a Post article/interview, LSC President Jim Sandman laid out four goals for LSC’s immediate future as it confronts likely cuts in its congressional appropriation.  The goals:

1. Create an independent body to make fiscal operations more efficient;
2. Focus on getting services to hard-to-reach communities;
3. Prove legal aid is different;
4. Seek alternative revenue sources.

All of these make sense in light of the sure-to-be-difficult appropriations battle which lies ahead, as well as the current climate in which so many people and families who are eligible for legal assistance can not access legal services due to resource shortages.  It’s noteworthy that another LSC initiative (which did not make it into this Post piece) involves a re-invigoration of efforts to marshal pro bono resources.  I’m hopeful that this conversation will not be confined to getting private lawyers (and law students) to handle more pro bono cases, but will also include broader discussion of the private bar’s role as a steward of the justice system at a time when more and more Americans are disconnected from courts and other legal channels. 

As to goal #3 above – proving that legal aid is different: what Mr. Sandman is getting at is that in the funding battle on Capitol Hill, LSC will need to make itself stand apart from other federal programs that face funding cuts:

“We need to make our case that legal aid is important and is a critical component of access to justice,” Sandman said. “We need to distinguish ourselves from other programs subject to cuts. Why are we different? Every program is getting reduced. In an environment like that, the burden is on us to explain why … access to justice is different from other types of programs funded by the government because it has to do with who we are as a country. Hard times test values. And they’re not all the same. The first line of the Constitution mentions establishing justice as a core purpose of the national government. The framers mentioned establishing justice before providing for the common defense or ensuring domestic tranquility.”

by Kristen Pavón

Here’s a healthy dose of weird news to end your workweek.

Restaurants in Wisconsin are prohibited from selling margarine as a replacement to butter, and other strange laws.

Southern Alabama offering offenders two choices: jail and pay or go to church ever Sunday for a year.

Woman sued Nutella for false advertising — she was led to believe the chocolatey goodness was nutritious.

Second-degree misdemeanors for your fantasy football league?

Have a fun and safe weekend!

By: Steve Grumm

We’re a few days late to the party on this, but FYI, from the Minnesota Judicial Branch’s website:

The Minnesota Client Access, Barriers and Solutions Study (“MN-CABS Study”) was a joint project of the Minnesota State Bar Association, the Bremer Foundation, the Minnesota Legal Services Coalition and the Legal Services Advisory Committee.  The purpose of the MN-CABS Study was to identify specific groups of legal services-eligible clients around Minnesota, the barriers they face to obtaining legal services, and strategies for overcoming those barriers.  

This study was the first of its kind in Minnesota and in the country. Its innovative methodology – using direct surveys and focus groups of eligible clients, much of it conducted by staff from legal services and pro bono programs that have been trained by University of Minnesota researchers – provides a model of client-centered analysis that goes well beyond generic needs assessments.

The study was released on September 13, 2011 and is available at the following link:  Final MN-CABS Report

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  Thanks for reading our weekly attempt to track goings-on in the business of public interest law – particularly developments that affect funding and employment – as well as news from the legal education world that impacts the way we train tomorrow’s public interest advocates.  If you are  also interested in keeping up with similar developments in the larger legal industry, check out NALP’s Industry News Weekly Digest.  Published every Friday morning, the digest is authored by NALP executive director Jim Leipold, one of the industry’s closest watchers, and a darned fine dresser (read: my boss). 

This week: some funding for a new Northeastern Law pro bono program; nonprofits bracing for impact from looming federal budget cuts; the University of Maryland’s law school also gets pro bono dollars; the 20^th century saw the dawn and significant evolution in public interest law practice; a new Chicago-area legal helpline for undocumented immigrants is fielding calls from across the nation; a California public defender seeks to undo county budget cuts (we suspect he’s not alone in this endeavor); from tragedy emerges a creative means to support a public defense program; the Dallas D.A.’s family violence unit faces a budgetary axe; and, significant changes to both the Massachusetts and Missouri public defense systems.

• 9.22.11 – good news for Northeastern Law students and Beantown micro-entrepreneuers.   According to the Boston Business Journal the law school “has been awarded a $500,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Commerce to set up a center at the school that will provide free legal services to local low-income or under-served entrepreneurs, the school said on Thursday.  The new center will focus on several emerging industries in Massachusetts including clean energy; green technologies; science and health technologies; and small and ethnically diverse businesses, according to Northeastern.”  One of the particularly nice things about these kinds of pro bono programs is that law students who participate will be able to develop transactional skills, which is not the norm with most pro bono opportunities.

• 9.21.11 – noting that the Legal Services Corporation’s congressional appropriation is on the chopping block, the Nonprofit Quarterly offers some broader perspective on how other nonprofit sectors which rely on federal dollars may fare in the FY12 budget process.  The picture’s not pretty.

• 9.20.11 – more good news on the law school pro bono funding front.  The National Law Journal reports that the University of Maryland’s law school received a $1 million grant from the Moser Family Philanthropic Fund to “establish the Moser Ethics in Action Endowment, which will fund projects and courses centered on ethics, pro bono and professionalism.”

• 9.19.11 – Chip Mellor of the libertarian Institute for Justice pens a Forbes.com piece looking at “Public Interest Law, Then and Now.”  In the early 20^th century both the NAACP and the ACLU “realized that without an effective and persistent courtroom presence, they would not be able to secure the rights and goals they sought. In the coming decades, their programs evolved and other organizations on both the left and the right launched their own public interest law efforts. As a result, the role of the courts and the nature of legal advocacy were transformed.”  As time passed, “public interest law came to involve more than just litigation. The tactics incorporated media relations and mobilization of the public. And it involved appearing in court representing a client and advocating a cause for the purpose of achieving larger social and legal goals.”

• 9.19.11 – from the Huffington Post: “The nation’s first 24-hour hotline for undocumented immigrants seeking information about deportation went live in Chicago Monday….  Created by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR), the Deportation Family Support Hotline is run by volunteers. During the monthlong trial, 67 volunteers responded to 173 calls from across the country seeking advice about deportation law, the Chicago Tribune reports.”  We’re not sure, but it doesn’t appear that law students are engaged as hotline volunteers.  This seems like a great opportunity for student pro bono work, however.

• 9.19.11 – in California, Riverside County’s public defender is asking county officials to reconsider budget cuts put into place earlier this year.  From the Southwest Riverside News Network: “Riverside County Public Defender Gary Windom is expected to ask the Board of Supervisors Tuesday for $1.4 million to cover a gap in his office’s budget that, if not closed, will result in layoffs.”

• 9.19.11 – here’s a creative way to support a public defender program.  According to the Arizona Daily Star the widow of an attorney who was killed earlier this year has donated his wardrobe to the “Yuma Public Defender’s Office so destitute defendants can increase their chances of having a fair trial” by looking presentable during courtroom proceedings.

• 9.19.11 – some dark clouds looming over the Family Violence Unit in the Dallas D.A.’s office.  According to KERA, the unit “could take a hit when County Commissioners approve a new budget tomorrow. KERA’s BJ Austin says state grant money is running out, and the county can’t pick up the cost….  Officials with the District Attorney say the loss of [the unit’s three positions] will make prosecution of domestic violence cases much slower.”

• 9.17.11 – Significant changes in the Massachusetts indigent defense system are moving forward.  The Taunton Daily Gazette reports: “Leaders of the state’s public defender system will soon detail a plan to hire more staff attorneys to represent the poor and contract less of that work to about 3,000 private lawyers across Massachusetts.  The cost of defending low-income people came under the spotlight on Beacon Hill this year when Gov. Deval Patrick proposed hiring about 1,000 new state attorneys and ending the use of private attorneys altogether…..  Patrick ultimately signed a state budget that makes less ambitious reforms. It requires at least 25 percent of cases with indigent defendants to be handled by state attorneys by next July, up from about 10 percent now.  [An official with the state’s public defense administration] said the plan will likely require hiring 346 new full-time employees, including attorneys, support staff, social workers and investigators.”

• 9.16.11 – change is also afoot in the Show-me State’s indigent defense system.  From the Columbia Missourian:  “The Missouri State Public Defender Office has changed the way it contracts with and oversees private attorneys to reduce the wait time for indigent defendants who need an attorney and increase the monitoring of private attorneys who take cases…. It’s been 22 years since the public defender system had enough lawyers to handle the number of cases it received. The gap between capacity and caseload grew through the ’90s and “escalated dramatically” from 2000 to 2009,” according to Missouri Public Defender System director Cat Kelly.

by Kristen Pavón

The Institute for Justice President and Forbes contributor Chip Mellor wrote a great piece about public interest law’s beginnings and the changes it has gone through over the last century.

In his article, Mellor notes that with the filing of the NAACP’s first amicus brief in 1914, the era of public interest law began. He mentions that early public interest advocacy “arose around a particular conflict and not as part of a sustained, multifaceted litigation campaign,” but then says that that changed when the NAACP launched a campaign with the goal of ending racial segregation in the 1930s.

After that, public interest law was not just litigation. It was litigation-plus. It involved media relations and public mobilization for larger social and legal goals.

Very, very interesting article — I had no idea about the history of public interest law! It’s a quick read, check it out here.

by Kristen Pavón

An article in The Miami Herald reports that South Florida public school enrollment dropped this year due to a rise in charter school popularity.

Broward and Miami-Dade counties has experienced a loss of more than 4,000 students to the 109 charter schools in the area. Charter schools in Miami-Dade saw an increase of 6,341 students from last year, totaling 41,488 students this year.

With capacity and quality issues at the helm of the nation’s education policy debate, charter schools have an opportunity to fill necessary gaps in the education system. However, what does the proliferation of these privately run schools mean for the public school system?

Read the whole story here.

Will this charter school competition spur drastic changes in public schools? Will school boards attempt to work cooperatively with charter schools? Are there other areas experiencing the same situation? What do you think?

By Kristen Pavón

D.C. attorney Marie-Therese Connolly received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship for her exceptional work as Appleseed’s Life Long Justice Initiative founder and director.

The MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest independent foundations, supports national and international people and institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

Connolly’s Life Long Justice Initiative with Appleseed, a nonprofit network of public interest justice centers in the U.S. and Mexico, will focus on “creating an integrated national advocacy effort to prevent, detect, and intervene in the mistreatment of the elderly and secure reauthorization of key federal legislation.”

The MacArthur Foundation fellow has devoted her career to fighting elder abuse. She has served as the Department of Justice’s Elder Justice and Nursing Home Initiative director, where she developed legal theories and litigation strategies to prosecute elder abuse and neglect cases.

Connolly is a leading voice in the elder rights arena and with the MacArthur Foundation’s five-year award, she will be able to continue her meritorious efforts.

Learn more about Life Long Justice here.

By Andrea Nehorayoff

People are just sick over our foreclosure crisis. No really, foreclosures are literally making people sick. A study based on new research relating health problems to foreclosures states that the two are directly correlated.

According to two university researchers, “an increase of 100 foreclosures corresponded to a 7.2% rise in emergency room visits and hospitalizations for hypertension, and an 8.1% increase for diabetes, among people aged 20 to 49,” based on statistics since 2005 in Arizona, Florida, New Jersey, and California. These high-foreclosure areas are also faced with large populations of unemployed, underemployed and uninsured. People are driving themselves sick and they need help!

These numbers are flat-out scary. One solution to this problem is to help people find ways to avoid financial duress and keep their homes. Legal aid is a viable option for people facing foreclosure.

A Staten Island resident was able to receive a loan modification and stop her from losing her home altogether with the help of Staten Island Legal Services. Solutions like this one can help relieve the stress-related ailments—- respiratory problems, pneumonia, chest pain, shortness of breath and suicidal thoughts– associated with financial hardships, but by no means is a permanent one. We need to fix this problem. The research might only cover four states, but the statistics could be just as bad, or even worse, in other states.

What are your ideas about how attorneys can help alleviate the stress that foreclosures create?

Andrea, a newbie PSLawNet Blog contributor, is a Project Assistant at NALP. She is a senior at The George Washington University pursuing a degree in Political Science. Prior to joining NALP, Andrea’s political interests had her working for a variety of New York State political campaigns, including Governor Paterson’s reelection campaign, Kathleen Rice for NYS Attorney General, candidates for state senate, congressmen for reelection and the New York State Democratic Committee. She can be reached at anehorayoff@nalp.org.

By Kristen Pavón

Murrow Award-winning legal analyst and commentator Andrew Cohen wrote an interesting op-ed for The Atlantic that gets to the heart of the controversial death penalty topic and cautions that we are close to a turning point on capital punishment.

In the modern era of capital punishment — since the Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg v. Georgia — three main camps have emerged. First, there are those who are for the death penalty all the way; the ones who lament the time and money it takes from trial to execution. Then, there are those who are against capital punishment all the way; the ones who believe that the state should never be in the business of killing its own citizens. And between the two solitudes, there is a vast middle; those who believe that there is a place for the death penalty, but only if it can be administered fairly and accurately, free from the sort of arbitrary and capricious decision-making that pushed the justices to do away with it in the first place in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia.

Cohen also chronicles our push-pull-tug relationship with capital punishment over the last few decades and tackles questions like “How fair does his [Duane Edward Buck] legal treatment really need to be?”

Last week, when Duane Buck’s case was on America’s docket, the most-asked questions (of me, anyway) were (to paraphrase): Why should I care about the procedural technicalities of this guy’s sentencing case when his guilt is not in doubt? Since he’s guilty of murder, how fair does his legal treatment really need to be? People of all political stripes asked the same questions. For them, Buck’s guilt evidently vitiated any need for an honest evaluation of the manner in which he was sentenced to death. Texas in 2000 conceded that Buck’s trial was impermissibly unfair? The other men similarly situated got their new trials? Who cares. The guy did it. He is getting more justice than he gave to his victims.

That last part is true. Of course, defendants like Duane Buck get more justice than their victims. That’s the whole point of our criminal justice system — and of the rule of law. That’s why we outlaw lynching, why angry mobs can’t storm jailhouses, and why we have judges. It’s why we have a Constitution. In America, we aim to give the guilty more justice than they deserve. We do so because of how that reflects upon us, not upon how it reflects upon the guilty. And when we fail to do so it says more about us than it does about the condemned. Although Let’s look just at Texas, again, for a moment.

It’s definitely a must-read piece. Check it out here.

By Kristen Pavón

In the midst of an access-to-justice crisis (as a result of the country’s economic situation, funding cuts at every turn and sky-high poverty rates), it’s easy to forget about the needs of organizations trying to do good work in their communities when thousands of low-income individuals are in dire need of effective representation.

However, many new or small non-profits, especially in this climate, do not have the resources to obtain effective legal representation and advice. Florida Legal Services, Inc. (FLS) recognized this need and is coordinating a statewide initiative to bring non-profits and transactional attorneys together for pro bono legal clinics.

On Oct. 6 at Florida Coastal School of Law, representatives of local nonprofit organizations will have the opportunity to meet one-to-one with attorneys from the Florida Bar Business Law Section who can provide legal guidance and direction for their organizations.

With sound legal advice, non-profits will be able to continuing serving their communities and providing essential services.

If you’re a Florida non-profit organization and are interested in setting up an appointment with an attorney, contact FLS Pro Bono Director Sheila Meehan at sheila@floridalegal.org.

For more information about the program, click here.

What do you think about this project? Would you be interested in setting up a similar project?