The Iraqi Assistance Program, an effort by law students to help Iraqis seek refugee status, has grown immensely. This week, The National Law Journal reported that the program began in 2008 with 100 Yale Law students and now has student chapters at nine law schools and three more on the way.

The growth of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Program reflects both the commitment of law students to pro bono work and the overwhelming need of thousands of displaced Iraqis to secure refugee status, said recent Yale law graduate and project executive director Becca Heller.

The project — which Heller projected could expand to as many as 20 chapters by 2012 — appears to be the only organization in the United States devoted to assisting Iraqis seeking to resettle in other countries.

The idea came about when Heller spent the summer after her 1L year in Tel Aviv. She learned about the problems facing Iraqi refugees, many of them stuck in limbo in Jordan and Syria, where they lack legal status. She traveled to Amman, Jordan, and met with six refugees.

“All were in heartbreakingly tragic situations,” she said. “They didn’t really understand the refugee process. I was sort of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and thought, ‘Law students can help with this.’ ”

Back at Yale, Heller joined forces with fellow law student Jonathan Finer, who was working to resettle some Iraqi interpreters he had met while embedded with the U.S. military as a reporter for the Washington Post.

They discovered myriad hurdles facing refugees — including a lack of understanding about the process; the numerous interviews they must complete; and the massive amounts of paperwork they must submit. Many refugees suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the prospect of repeated interviews — in which they must discuss why they are persecuted or unsafe in Iraq — can be difficult and painful, Heller said.

The project has secured the declassification through the Freedom of Information Act of more than 5,000 pages of government documents pertaining to refugee processing. Heller finds that these refugees are fighting so hard for their own survival and recognizes  that the United States has “special obligation” to take in Iraqi refugees displaced from the war.

When Alexander (“Sash”) Lewis receives his J.D. from Rutgers School of Law–Newark on May 27, 2011, he will have already completed four notable internships in the area of international law. For his fourth position, which he is currently undertaking in Madagascar, Lewis has been awarded an Arthur C. Helton Fellowship from the American Society of International Law (ASIL).

Lewis is one of nine student and young professional winners selected from more than 50 applicants from Africa, Asia, Europe and Eurasia, Oceania, and North and South America. The Arthur C. Helton Fellowship Program recognizes the legacy of Arthur C. Helton, an ASIL member who died in the August 19, 2003 bombing of the UN mission in Baghdad.

…

As a student at Rutgers School of Law–Newark, Lewis has demonstrated an avid interest in public interest law and the ability to do high-quality international humanitarian legal work. A Marsha Wenk Fellow in Public Interest Law and the recipient of a Rutgers Public Interest Law Foundation grant, he has worked in the Constitutional Litigation Clinic and interned at the ACLU–NJ.

Our hats off to Sash! Congrats on the ASIL Fellowship!

This week, Chris Parosa, an eight-year Lane County deputy district attorney allowed Eugene, Oregon’s Register-Guard to pull back the curtain on the many offstage duties that also make up a typical week for a deputy district attorney.

He allowed a reporter to watch or query him about the job’s less-recognized tasks — some mundane, some horrifying — to show what Lane County’s 32 prosecutors do.  It is clear that the role of prosecutor extends far beyond what the public understands from Law and Order.

One surprising duty, perhaps, is deciding not to prosecute people…“We have to be sure we’ve got proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Parosa says. “I have to verify that there’s credible evidence for every charge.”

Even when there is, he says, “I have to ask myself: Is this a case that’s worth pursuing? Is this something the community wants me to be prosecuting, given our limited resources?”

Parosa and other prosecutors also handle volumes of cases at parole violation hearings.  While several defense attorneys are here on behalf of their clients, Parosa is the sole prosecutor in the room, and most of these cases are not his own.  As the judge calls each defendant, Parosa pulls the corresponding file from a cart of files, carefully studying it before providing his recommendation.

One of the worst parts of his job, the deputy D.A. says, is telling victims of alleged crimes that his office will not be filing charges for lack of sufficient proof.  “I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had where I have to tell them, ‘I believe he did this, but I can’t prove it.’ ”

There’s also the matter of plea bargains. Parosa finds, “You can have the sword in your hand, but you can also show some mercy.” He confesses that he was the beneficiary of mercy, for when he was 18, he was busted for using a fake ID to buy alcohol while he was a student at the University of Oregon.  

Bill Warnisher, now one of his colleagues, was the prosecutor in that case.  “In his wisdom, he saw that I was a young kid who made a bad choice, and he deferred adjudication,” Parosa says. While his case was on hold, he successfully completed a diversion program. The charge was dropped and his record expunged.

“I’m thankful for the opportunity I had, and I often reflect on that when deciding what to do in my cases,” Parosa says. “It’s not our job to make everyone who comes through this office a criminal. … I love what I do because I get to come in every day and do the right thing.”

The Washington Post reports on the swelling case backlog at the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, which hears appeals from vets who are denied benefits by the Veterans Administration: “The caseload at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims has doubled in recent years, with the court deciding more than 600 cases per judge each year — far more than other federal appellate courts. Judges are working nights and weekends but say they still have difficulty keeping pace.”

This week: changes to Ohio’s patchwork indigent defense system?; a medical-legal partnership in the City of Fountains (and now you know Kansas City’s nickname – you’re welcome); praise from law firm associates on the value of law school clinical and externships programs, according to new NALP report; legal services funding bills making headway in Texas legislature; “future of legal education” conference gives props to proposal that would teach law students to teach pro-se litigants; $200K in HHS domestic violence victim assistance grant leads to legal services partnership in Michigan; is Birmingham, Alabama’s money better spent on public defenders or appointed counsel?; Colorado Legal Services takes a $170K hit after federal budget compromise; make that figure $300K in Virginia; are law school clinics vehicles for advancing liberal causes?; law school scholarship opportunities for would-be Garden State prosecutors; Quinnipiac (we love that name!) law students run/walk to benefit injured U.S. servicemembers – kudos!; a libertarian proposal to create an indigent defense voucher system; tumult among the leadership of the Peach State’s indigent defense program.

• 4.21.11 – could Ohio see a change in its indigent defense system, with the state easing some of the funding and administrative burdens resting on county shoulders?  An article from the Elyria, Ohio-based Chronicle-Telegram (a/k/a the New York Times of Northern Ohio) sheds light on how a state legislative proposal could impact Lorain County’s appointed-counsel system (and, we would presume, other counties’ systems as well): “County officials have been reviewing whether creating a public defender’s office would save the county money over the approximately $1.8 million spent annually to pay court-appointed attorneys. Under the current system, the state reimburses the county around 30 percent of its annual expenditures for court-appointed lawyers. [County Commissioner Lori] Kokoski said under the proposal being reviewed in Columbus the reimbursement number would jump to 50 percent next year and climb by 10 percent each year until the state was fully funding a county public defender’s office.  She also said that the Office of the Ohio Public Defender would take over operating the county’s public defender’s office — if one exists — under the proposed change to state law.”  

• 4.20.11 – as we’ve noted before on the Blog, an exciting new Medical Legal Partnership has sprung up in Kansas City between Legal Aid of Western Missouri and Saint Luke’s hospital.  Health Leaders Media has a nice write-up: “Legal Aid began its first medical-legal partnership in Kansas City in 2007, but the Saint Luke’s partnership is the first to use legal staff working full-time at a medical site. Amber Cutler, an attorney with Legal Aid, said that has been critical to the success of the four-month-old project.   ‘On site is best, not only because we are more accessible to the patients, but because we are more visible,’ Cutler says…’It’s a critical component.’ … The Saint Luke’s medical-legal partnership is based on the I-HELP model. I stands for income and insurance issues; H is for housing issues; E is for ensuring patient safety in domestic situations; L is for legal status; and P is for power of attorney and guardianship.”  BONUS EASTER SEASON TRIVIA: St. Luke, known primarily as a Gospel writer, was very likely trained as a physician.

• 4.19.11 – law firm associates think law school clinics and externships were just gangbusters in preparing them for the practice of law.  As we noted on the blog earlier this week, a new NALP report indicates that present-day associates benefitted from participating in clinics and externships during their student days.  The report compares the various experiential opportunities to determine their effects on lawyer preparedness.  While only 30 percent of the associates reported participating in at least one legal clinic, almost two in three of these folks (63%) found the experience “very useful,” the highest value on a scale of 1-to-4.   Similarly, 36% of the associates said they took part in an externship or field placement, and 60% of them rated the experience “very useful.”  Pro bono programs and legal skills classes earned lower ratings from associates.  Here’s a link to the report, the 2010 Survey of Law School Experiential Learning Opportunities and Benefits.  And here’s some National Law Journal coverage of the report.

• 4.18.11 – the Texas Lawyer runs a detailed piece on two companion bills winding through the Texas legislature that would generate funding for legal services:  “Senate Bill 726 and House Bill 2174 would create new court costs and document filing fees to help fund indigent civil legal aid, indigent criminal defense and the implementation of electronic filing in all state courts.”  We checked up on the bills on 4/21 via the Texas legislature’s website.  They’re both reported has having passed in committee votes.  Faithful PSLawNet Blog readers will have seen coverage of these bills in past News Bulletins.  One of the most interesting dimensions is the bipartisan support to improve funding for the beleaguered legal services community.  Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht has been a champion for increased funding, and he’s a solid conservative.  Also, Rep. Will Hartnett, the sponsor of HB 2174, is a Republican who noted in the Texas Lawyer piece that legal services is not typically a Republican cause.

• 4.18.11 – at the intersection of technology, legal aid, and legal education sits a project proposal to have law students create self-help software for people who have legal problems but may not be able to afford an attorney.  The proposal, “Apps for Justice: Learning Law by Creating Software,” won accolades at the “Future Ed” conference, a recent gathering of stakeholders in the legal education world that explored ways to improve the way tomorrow’s lawyers are trained.  The National Law Journal covered both the conference and the “Apps for Justice” proposal, which is designed to help law students learn legal principles and processes as they create self-help software for pro se clients.  The “Apps for Justice” project proposal contemplates a grant from the Legal Services Corporation to fund pilots at 5 law schools.  (Here is a press release about Apps for Justice being honored at Future Ed.)

• 4.18.11 – A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant will help domestic violence victims with civil legal needs.  The Times Herald of Port Huron, Michigan reports: “Lakeshore Legal Aid and Safe Horizons, both based in Port Huron, are working together on an Access to Justice project, paid for with a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Safe Horizons was awarded the grant last fall to develop a program to help survivors overcome obstacles that often prevent them from getting help with civil matters. The effort includes hiring an advocate to help with navigating the legal system; hiring an advocate to help survivors access child care while dealing with court matters; hiring someone to train area lawyers willing to take on pro-bono cases; and contracting with Lakeshore Legal Aid to take on complex cases.”

• 4.18.11 -a question of how to allocate indigent defense resources in Alabama.  From the Birmingham News:  “Birmingham municipal judges paid private lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars [$300K in 2009-10] to represent poor defendants, while the nonprofit agency that serves as the city’s longtime public defender claimed it could handle the full caseload and went unpaid for months.”  The presiding judge at Birmingham Municipal Court has defended the increased payments to appointed counsel, even as the court has had to dip in to general funds because the dedicated fund for indigent defense services was depleted.

• 4.18.11 – the federal budget compromise earlier this month means depleted funding for LSC grantee Colorado Legal Services, to the tune of $170,000.  From Law Week Colorado: Colorado Legal Services will lose $170,000 over the next seven months as a result of the congressional budget compromise, the Colorado Bar Association said today…. ‘This loss will have a serious impact on the program’s ability to meet the most essential legal needs of low-income, elderly, and disabled Coloradans,’ the bar association said in a statement.  Law Week publishes the full Colorado Bar Association statement here.

• 4.17.11 – the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on how LSC budget cuts will affect grantee programs in Old Dominion:  Virginia’s legal aid chapters, which provide free legal representation to Virginia’s poor and working poor, were told this week by their federal funding source that they must immediately implement a 4 percent cut….The 4 percent cut [which LSC will have to absorb] will be passed along to the corporation’s 136 grantees, which resulted in a nearly $300,000 loss for Virginia.

• 4.17.11 – the right-of-center Washington Times runs a review about a book criticizing legal education in the U.S. as being, well, elite and leftist.  According to the review of Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and Overlawyered America, law school clinics in particular are vehicles to make social change: “The advent of law school ‘clinics’ brought both foundation funding and pedagogical cover for ‘social justice’ projects. In reality, the professed goals of training lawyers and serving indigent clients often were eclipsed by the quest for ‘test cases’ and ‘social change.’ Poor people, it turned out, wanted legal services (divorce, traffic violations, misdemeanor defense) that had “little to do with changing society.” The clinics preferred to turn away such matters in favor of ‘high profile cases,’ so that the lawyers could ‘save thousands instead of a few.’ And in numerous cases, the ‘public interest’ remedies pursued by law clinics brought results harmful to the communities they professed to serve.”  Yikes!  While the PSLawNet Blog supports changes in the legal education model that would lead to skill-based training, we’re not sure that’s a fair characterization of clinical education writ broadly.  Political ideology aside, we think most clinics handle everyday cases involving evictions, public benefits terminations, domestic violence prevention, and other matters that directly impact clients’ health and economic security. 

• 4.17.11 – the New Jersey Star-Ledger reports on three law school scholarship opportunities for Garden State residents who are aspiring prosecutors.  The scholarships are sponsored by the state’s County Prosecutors Association, and the application deadline is June 23, 2011.  Click through to the article for more detail, but here are some basics:
• To be eligible for the Oscar W. Rittenhouse Memorial Scholarship, an applicant must be accepted for admission to a law school and must have an interest in becoming a prosecutor.
• The Harris Y. Cotton Memorial Scholarship is also for applicants accepted for admission to law school who want to be prosecutors with an emphasis on domestic violence or hate crime prosecutions.
• Applicants for the Andrew K. Ruotolo Jr. Memorial Scholarship must be accepted to law school or graduate school and exhibit an interest, and commitment to, enhancing the rights and well-being of children through child advocacy programs.

• 4.17.11 – Running for our men and women in uniform.  As we noted in the PSLawNet Blog earlier this week, four student groups at Quinnipiac’s law school sponsored a 5K run/walk to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, which builds awareness and raises funds for severely injured servicemembers.  (Here’s the original story from the Quad News.)

• 4.15.11 – an indigent defense voucher system?  A blog post on the Right on Crime website looks at a conservative solution to the indigent defense resources crisis as articulated in a paper published last year by the Cato Institute.  From the blog post: “Late last year, The Cato Institute published an intriguing paper on indigent defense reform. It is an attempt to apply limited government principles to an exceptionally difficult criminal justice problem….  [T]he Cato paper suggests replacing the inefficient indigent defense system with a voucher system. Indigent defendants can be provided with vouchers — and perhaps a list of options – and they can select whomever they prefer. It is a market-based solution that emphasizes personal liberty and minimizes the role of government.”

• 4.15.11 – according to the Daily Journal, there are big changes affecting the embattled Georgia Public Defender Standards Council (which is the statewide indigent defense service): “…Georgia lawmakers voted to replace the [Council’s] current 15-member board with nine new appointees tapped by the governor, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. The measure, which must be signed by Gov. Nathan Deal, also gives the [Council’s] director more power over whom the system hires.”  The Council has been in the legislative doghouse for some time, particularly among conservative lawmakers.  As noted by the Daily Journal one departing board member complained that “the measure only marginalizes the council, turning it into a mere advisory board while putting more power in the hands of the director, ex-prosecutor Travis Sakrison, who is the third leader of the group in the past six months.”  Indeed, he referred to the move as a “pig in a poke,” which we suspect constitutes fightin’ words in the Peach State.

The County Prosecutors Association is offering four scholarships to law school students who want careers as prosecutors and police officers hoping to attend college to advance their law enforcement careers.  Three of the scholarships are for applicants who are accepted to law school.

The scholarships, each amounting to a one-year grant of $2,500, will be paid directly to recipients who will be selected by the County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey Scholarship Foundation’s board of trustees, according to Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan.

To be eligible for the Oscar W. Rittenhouse Memorial Scholarship, an applicant must be accepted for admission to a law school and must have an interest in becoming a prosecutor.

The Harris Y. Cotton Memorial Scholarship is also for applicants accepted for admission to law school who want to be prosecutors with an emphasis on domestic violence or hate crime prosecutions.

Applicants for the Andrew K. Ruotolo Jr. Memorial Scholarship must be accepted to law school or graduate school and exhibit an interest, and commitment to, enhancing the rights and well-being of children through child advocacy programs.

Tomorrows Lawyers Need More Than The Book-Learnin.

In recent years, there has been much debate about the traditional legal education model’s effectiveness in preparing new lawyers for the practice of law.  Well, in reality, various stakeholders in the legal industry have been debating this for years.  New life was breathed into the conversation by the 2007 release of the Carnegie Foundation’s report, Educating Lawyers: Preparing for the Profession of Law.  Among the report’s major recommendations was an increased emphasis on experiential learning in law school curricula.

Fuel was added to the fire when the bottom dropped out of the legal employment market in 2008.  Suddenly, in a hyper-competitive job market,  everyone was talking about whether law schools could produce more practice-ready practitioners by bolstering experiential learning programs.  The PSLawNet Blog has been very interested in this discussion because so many experiential learning programs have public service dimensions to them, e.g. clinicals, externships, pro bono programs, etc.  So we’re pleased to note that our colleagues at NALP have released a report based on our 2010 Survey of Law School Experiential Learning Opportunities and Benefits.  The survey was distributed to law firm associates, with various experience levels, at firms around the country, and garnered over 900 responses.  (It’s noteworthy that we didn’t survey public interest lawyers, and subsequent research that we conduct may target this group.  In any event the report’s findings speak to what kind of experiential learning programs associates value most as having made them better practitioners.)

The report indicates that experiential learning opportunities, such as clinics and externships, are growing in popularity, as more recent law school graduates reported higher rates of participation than earlier graduates. And, whether required or optional, most of the simulated learning opportunities law schools offer are instrumental in preparing new associates for the demands of the practice of law reports the National Law Journal of the NALP research.

The report compares the various experiential opportunities to determine their effects on lawyer preparedness.  While only 30 percent of the associates reported participating in at least one legal clinic, almost two in three of these folks (63%) found the experience “very useful,” the highest value on a scale of 1-to-4.   Similarly, 36% of the associates said they took part in an externship or field placement, and 60% of them rated the experience “very useful.”

Seventy percent of the associates took at least one legal skills class during law school,  but only about 36 percent found the courses to “very useful.”

The ABA Journal also released an article about the research, making pro bono participation its lead.  NALP’s research revealed that 42% of the associates participated in pro bono work during law school; most spent less than 40 hours on the volunteer work.  And interestingly, only 17 percent of those who spent time on pro bono found it to be “very useful.”  (Contrast that against the clinic and extern stats.)

One thing to note about law students’  pro bono participation is that pro bono work categorically is often quite varied.  In parsing out students’ pro bono experiences instead of examining them in the aggregate, one might reach more specific conclusions about how well pro bono work affects preparedness to practice law.  For instance, some pro bono work is done through the auspices of a rigorous law school program with considerable oversight and supervision.  This experience would be closer to an externship or clinic experience, we think.  A lot of pro bono, though, it not nearly as well structured, and this may account for its relatively thin “usefulness” numbers.

Check out the report for yourself and share your thoughts in the Comments section.

This week’s Bulletin, cats and kittens, is shorter than normal.  But it’s packed with legal services funding news, including: how LSC $ cuts will affect New York programs; Equal Justice Works’s CEO David Stern talks public interest careers; a look at the fiscal challenges confronting Western Massachusetts Legal Services; coverage of the FY2011 federal budget agreement which pared down LSC funding by about 4%; a law school/legal services partnership provides pro bono services to those who serve in uniform; Wisconsin may cut all state funding for civil legal services. 

• 4.14.11 – a New York Law Journal piece looks at the impact the Legal Services Corporation funding cuts will have on Empire State legal services providers.  (Note: the LSC funding cuts are covered in item 4 below.)  From the NYLJ: “Even though a $15.8 million funding cut for the Legal Services Corp. included in a federal budget agreement is smaller than legal aid advocates had feared, the reduced funds will be acutely felt by New York groups already struggling with state funding cuts…. New York City-based Legal Services NYC will suffer the biggest cut in LSC funding, losing $701,411. That will probably mean having to let go of six or seven lawyers or paralegals, according to Raun J. Rasmussen, the chief of litigation and advocacy for the 220-lawyer group.”  The piece goes on to detail how cuts will affect other LSC grantees in New York.

• 4.12.11 – our friend David Stern of Equal Justice Works is profiled in the Washingtonian’s “Capitol Comment” blog.  David explains how his career path took him to Equal Justice Works’s helm, and offers a criticism of legal education’s emphasis on cold, analytical thinking: “Unfortunately, yes, law school strips [the desire to practice in public interest] away in many respects. It tries to teach lawyers to think in sterile, analytical ways without a lot of heart. There’s also a lot of competition in law schools for those coveted six-figure-salary jobs, and so people are malleable, they’re generally young, and all of these activities—the sterile thinking, the going after the coveted job, the very large educational debt—often strips away those public-service aspirations. Our job is to keep those embers burning.”  Bonus trivia: quite aside from being one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for the value of public interest work, David’s a pretty solid softball player.  Good glove, surprising power, and he can pitch.

• 4.12.11 – the Business Journal of Western Massachusetts looks at the fiscal challenges confronting Western Massachusetts Legal Services – “its current budget of $2.5 million is roughly half of what it was just a few years ago” – and the organization’s recent fundraising efforts.

• 4.12.11 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports on the federal budget compromise’s impact on Legal Services Corporation funding (which we also blogged about earlier this week).  From the BLT: “The bipartisan deal on the federal budget includes a $15.8 million midyear cut for the Legal Services Corp., according to new details released on Tuesday. The cut is smaller than the $70 million that House Republicans proposed to take in February from the Legal Services Corp., which is the nation’s largest funding source for civil legal aid to the poor. Still, program officials had hoped to avoid any cut because demand for legal aid has increased during the economic downturn. Legal Services Corp. received $420 million from Congress last year, so the cut represents a 3.8% reduction in its full-year budget. But because the federal government’s fiscal year began Oct. 1, officials will need to find the money with more than half the year already passed.”  Also, here’s LSC’s press release about the funding cut.

• 4.11.11 – the Jacksonville Daily Record looks at a terrific pro bono project that serves Army reservists with legal needs.  In particular, volunteer law students and attorney help reservists, who can be called up to active duty on very short notice, with “the creation of advance directive documents: Durable Power of Attorney, Health Care Surrogate Designation, Designation of Preneed Guardian, a Living Will and a Simple Will.”  The model for this program, set up by Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Florida Coastal School of Law, is simple and easily replicable.  The “legal teams” consisted of a volunteer attorney and a law student, and they worked off of laptops that had the necessary form templates loaded on to them.

• 4.11.11 – a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog notes that Wisconsin legal services providers face sharp cuts in state funding: “Among the big losers in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget are groups who provide legal services to the indigent in civil cases — all $2.6 million that used to help finance such representation would be cut.”

The good folks at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association put out a short piece this morning explaining how LSC’s FY2011 funding was affected by the shutdown-averting agreement on the Hill last week.  All in all, it could have been a lot worse for LSC; they’ll see a cut of less than 4% between FY2010 and FY2011 funding levels.  From NLADA:

The House and Senate leadership have agreed on an overall spending package for FY 2011 that includes cuts in LSC basic field funding of $15 million plus an additional recision of .2%, bringing the total cut to basic field funding to $15.81 million.  The final FY 2011 overall appropriation for LSC is $404.19 million.  The final appropriation for basic field programs is $378.19 million.  This amounts to a basic field cut of 3.77% for FY 2011.H.R. 1473, the FY 2011 appropriations bill, was released late last night.  The measure contains $38 billion of spending cuts, more than half of which hit programs in education, labor and health.  The LSC cut is significantly less than other cuts in the Justice Department and other functions within LSC appropriations subcommittee. 

The bill is expected to be taken up in both the House and Senate by the end of this week.  The current Continuing Resolution expires Friday, April 15.

LSC also issued a press release today, including a quote from its board chair:

“Every dollar provided for civil legal assistance helps low-income individuals gain access to our justice system. We are grateful that funding cuts will not be as deep as initially proposed, and we look forward to working with the Congress on Fiscal Year 2012 funding to provide even greater access to justice for the growing number of low-income Americans in need of civil legal assistance,” LSC Board Chairman John G. Levi said.

Assuming that Congress finalizes this compromise and avoids a (ridiculously unneccessary and useless-for-spending-reduction-purposes, but we digress) shutdown, the real battle for LSC will begin when lawmakers get to the FY2012 budget.  A House appropriations subcommittee held an LSC funding hearing last week; we aggregated some hearing coverage in item 3 of last week’s Public Interest Law News Bulletin.

This week: pay for PA capital punishment counsel is peanuts; Sin City D.A. gambles on refusal to make budget cuts; a wrap-up of LSC funding news from Capitol Hill; speaking of, Idaho Legal Aid Services has a lot riding on a federal government shutdown; a great new transactional clinic at Wisconsin Law; update on state funding of legal services and indigent defense in Minnesota; legal services funding woes along the Iowa/Illinois state line; and legal services funding within the Texas state lines.

• 4.7.11 – Keystone State capital punishment news from the Philadelphia Inquirer: “The amount of public funding paid to Philadelphia court-appointed criminal-defense lawyers is so low that it violates the constitutional rights of indigent people facing the death penalty.  So argues a petition filed Wednesday by a group of Philadelphia court-appointed death-penalty lawyers who told a city judge that the commonwealth should pay them adequately or stop seeking capital punishment…. The gap between the fee schedule and reality has led some Philadelphia criminal-defense lawyers to refuse to accept capital-case appointments.”

• 4.7.11 – from the Las Vegas Sun: “The Clark County District Attorney is refusing to comply with a request from county managers to prepare 9 percent budget cuts for the department.  In a memo to county commissioners and staff dated last week, District Attorney David Roger informed county officials that his department has fewer attorneys than the Public Defenders Office, his staff is overworked and he made big cuts in previous years.”  It’s become a battle of statistics between D.A. Roger and county officials.  The county has cited statistics showing that both the D.A.’s budget and prosecutor compensation has grown recently, but the D.A. disputes that.

• 4.6.11 – there has been a good deal of recent news about how budget wrangling on Capitol Hill will affect the Legal Services Corporation.  There are two main uncertainties now.  The first deals with what will happen to LSC’s budget in the very near term as Congress and the president try to reach a funding agreement for the rest of the current fiscal cycle (FY 2011), or face a shutdown.  The second uncertainty deals with LSC funding for FY 2012, the fiscal cycle that is due to begin this October.  There was an appropriations hearing on the Hill this week about LSC’s FY 2012 funding.  Let’s look at news about current funding, then FY 2012 funding:
  • FY 2011 LSC Funding news:
    • 4.4.11 – a current and former LSC board member, who are now law school deans, submitted an op-ed in a Boston Globe blog sharply critical of possible LSC cuts: “Today as the House…calls for cutting $70 million from [LSC funding], many of the 900 [grantee organization field offices] will need to close — 370 staff attorneys will be let go and 162,000 fewer people will be served — just as the recession pushes the highest number of Americans into poverty in 51 years. Such cuts abandon some of the most vulnerable people in our nation.
    • Late last week the Blog of the Legal Times noted that this current week is “crunch time” for LSC funding: “The next week will likely determine whether the Legal Services Corp. is forced to make sharp midyear cuts in its budget, as lawmakers and Obama administration officials attempt to finish negotiations for federal spending through Sept. 30…. As part of a broad Republican plan to trim federal spending, the House in February approved a $70 million midyear cut to the Legal Services Corp., the nation’s largest funding source for civil legal aid to the poor. The proposal failed in the Senate, but a cut could still be part of any compromise.”
    • in late March the LSC board chairman and a former chairman co-authored an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed explaining what’s at stake for legal services providers and their clients if cuts go through: “For the last 36 years, Congress has appropriated funds for civil legal assistance, and the current level is $394.4 million. Now, in the middle of a fiscal year, the House has targeted LSC for a $70 million cut in these funds…. The timing could not be worse. The work of legal aid attorneys has become ever more important since the 2008 recession and the significant rise in poverty across the land. Fifty-seven million Americans qualify for civil legal assistance…”
  • FY 2012 LSC Funding news:
    • 4.5.11 – the Blog of the Legal Times covered a House hearing on LSC’s FY 2012 budget: “The chairman of a House appropriations subcommittee said today that private-sector lawyers aren’t doing enough to help the nation’s poor with legal problems, warning that they might need to make up for expected cuts in federal funding.  U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) is a longtime supporter of funding for civil legal aid, but he said [LSC] still faces proposed cuts from the House’s new Republican majority. LSC and its local partners should turn to resources from large law firms, state bar dues and law schools.”  LSC president James Sandman and board member Robert Grey Jr. both noted that legal services providers already do leverage not only pro bono contributions from law-firm attorneys, but also financial resources.  On the issue of pro bono substituting for, rather than supplementing, legal services attorneys, the PSLawNet Blog is reminded of this recent op-ed from the Pro Bono Institute’s president, which argues that pro bono work can not be efficiently delivered without a well funded legal services infrastructure to guide that work.  (The PSLawNet Blog attended the hearing and we’ll put a larger blog post together in a couple of days.) 

• 4.6.11 – good news and bad news for Idaho Legal Aid Services.  First the bad: Boise’s KTVB television station explores what difficulties may befall the organization (and other LSC grantees) if Uncle Sam closes up shop today.  Idaho Legal Aid Services takes in two-thirds of its funding from federal sources.  “Money for the month of April is guaranteed, but after that they could see a delay, and it would lead to a considerable impact.  ‘If that cut was substantial then it may mean we wouldn’t be able to operate at all. If the cut is something less than that, then we have to look at how big the cut was and determine how many literally how many attorneys how many staff would have to be laid off,’ said [executive director Ritchie] Eppink.  Another noteworthy fact from the story: “Eppink says Idaho is the only state in the country that doesn’t provide state funding for legal assistance programs.”  Regarding state funding, Idaho Legal Aid Services may have a small reason to celebrate.  According to a Greenfield Daily Reporter article that ran earlier this week – and you better believe, cats and kittens, that the PSLawNet Blog reads the Greenfield Daily Reporter religiously – the state house narrowly approved a bill to “help provide free legal counsel to low-income residents in cases involving domestic violence, child abuse, and exploitation of the elderly.”  The bill would authorize revenue generation via a court filing fee.     

• 4.6.11 – the WisLaw Blog reports on Wisconsin Law School’s Law and Entrepreneurship Clinic, which matches low-income entrepreneurs with law students who provide help on transactional matters.  The clinic also enlists the help of pro bono attorneys to supervise the students’ work.  The PSLawNet Blog once had the privilege of helping to start a transactional pro bono program, and we’re big fans of pro bono projects that offer opportunities to advocates who are on business law career paths.  It greatly broadens the pool of pro bono advocates, and there are many nonprofit institutions and micro-entrepreneurs who are doing great work but are unable to afford counsel when needed.

• 4.6.11 – the Twin Cities Daily Planet reports on some Minnesota legislative proposals which could have a kryptonite-like effect on legal services providers: “State funding for civil legal services has fallen by 11 percent between 2008 and 2011 and is currently below 2006 levels. The Governor recommends flat funding for these services, the Senate cuts funding by six percent, and the House cuts funding by 17 percent in FY 2012-13 and 25 percent in FY 2014-15. The House proposal also limits the ability of legal aid and similar state-funded programs to lobby the legislature and pursue legal actions against the state and federal government on behalf of their clients.”  Public defenders, which have been victims of past budget cuts, stand to fare better; they may see funding increases.

• 4.4.11 – the Quad-City Times looks at funding troubles which confront Prairie State Legal Services in western Illinois as well as Iowa’s HELP Legal Assistance.  Both organizations have drawn considerably on reserves to make budgetary ends meet.  Prairie State’s reserves are gone, and its executive director reports that “Thirty-five percent of our budget…is at risk.”  The picture isn’t much better for HELP, which is bracing for funding news this spring that will affect the size of its staff going forward.

• 4.3.11 – Two stories involving legal services in the Lone Star State:
  • The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal highlights funding troubles that confront the Legal Aid Society of Lubbock, which devotes a considerable amount of time helping domestic violence victims and others with family-law related problems.  “As officials at all levels of government have tightened the purse strings, Legal Aid has seen cuts in funding, Graham said. She expected total funding to be down 10 percent to 30 percent this year.  And the budget cuts come when the organization has seen a 22 percent increase in clients over last year….  Last year the organization served 1343 clients.  Of those clients, 1100 were women.”
  • And now for some bipartisanship.  Last week a Dallas Morning News editorial urged the state house to pass HB 2174, which would raise some public filing fees to support legal services providers.  “The Texas Access to Justice Commission wants the state to put a small fee on non-judicial documents filed with a county clerk, such as for mortgages. They also want a minor fee put on judicial documents filed with justices of the peace and in municipal courts, such as for misdemeanor cases.  The fees would be paid by users of the justice system, so the money wouldn’t come out of general revenues. And estimates show they could bring in $58 million over the next two years.  Interestingly, liberal lawyers aren’t the only ones advocating this solution. Supporters include Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht, arguably the court’s most conservative jurist. Hecht recently told this newspaper, “This is about the rule of law. Access to the courthouse shouldn’t be dependent upon your ability to pay.”  Indeed, HR 2174, which is still in committee, is sponsored by a conservative Republican.

We’ll close by noting, with all due modesty, that the Glorious Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Franchise is 5-1, having absolutely thrashed the hapless New York Mutts last night.  Happy weekend!