This week: lots of coverage about hearings on legal services funding in New York; a “Civil Gideon” proposal in Wisconsin; $3.62 million in cy pres funding will benefit legal services providers, mostly in Illinois; changing the beleaguered Michigan public defense infrastructure?; turning a federal internship into a federal job; Attorney General Holder tells the Senate to hurry up on judicial confirmations; a deferred associate looks back on his one-year public service placement; humanizing a defendant in a capital trial is no easy feat; a call for a legal services funding boost in Texas; making the wheels of justice turn more smoothly in Philly courts (and by the way, go Phils!); the Washington Post editorial board laments the state of indigent defense funding; a sobering, and hopefully effective, fundraising effort in Texas to curtail domestic violence; a new volunteer initiative driven by a Florida lawyer; and an Indiana prosecutor stands up for his office’s LRAP program.   

• 9.30.10 – a handful of news outlets from throughout the Empire State are reporting on a statewide series of hearings about access-to-justice issues.  The hearings are the result of efforts by New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to raise awareness about under-funding of civil legal services and to find solutions.  The New York Times and the New York Law Journal report on the first of the four hearings, which took place in Manhattan.  From the Times, we see half of the dilemma facing legal services providers: “Since 2008, there has been a 40 percent increase at the Legal Aid Society in requests for help on health care issues and an 800 percent increase in requests for help with foreclosures…”  From the Law Journal, we see the other half: “Current funding is provided through what Judge Lippman called a ‘hodgepodge’ of mechanisms…  Due to plunging interest rates because of the poor economy, IOLA revenues have dropped to $7 million this year from $32 million in 2008, and the other sources of aid have not made up the difference.”  After the Manhattan hearing, a second one took place across the state in Rochester.  Here’s coverage from the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.  Chief Judge Lippman’s end goal is to craft a formal report to use in urging the legislative and executive branches for increased financial support of civil legal services.  The hearings are just the latest step in his campaign.  Earlier this year Lippman created a high-level task force to explore how to expand civil legal services for low-income New Yorkers.  He also created an “Attorney Emeritus” program through which retired lawyers can volunteer their time on pro bono matters.  Indeed, Lippman has gone so far as to call for a civil right to counsel in some matters.  Read more about his efforts in Item One of PSLawNet’s 6.11.10 Public Interest News Bulletin.

• 9.29.10 – from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, we learn that Legal Action of Wisconsin will urge the state’s high court to adopt a rule guaranteeing a right to counsel for low-income persons in circumstances “where the assistance of counsel is needed to protect the litigant’s rights to basic human needs, including sustenance, shelter, clothing, heat, medical care, safety and child custody and placement.”  This is an interesting tactic toward establishing a so-called “Civil Gideon” – a right to counsel in some non-criminal cases.  As the Journal Sentinel article notes, though, the “big hurdle” would be paying for a program if the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted the rule.

• 9.29.10 – the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin (subscription required – boo!) reports on a cy pres award that will benefit Illinois legal services providers as well as other providers throughout the country: “Organizations that help provide legal services to the poor in Illinois and legal aid groups around the country will receive $3.62 million in unclaimed funds from a nationwide class-action settlement involving a rate increase on life insurance policies. This week, five legal aid organizations and foundations serving Illinois are expected to receive a total of more than $1.8 million of the unclaimed funds from the $93 million settlement. Another $1.8 million is to be disbursed to 111 legal aid organizations serving other states throughout the country.”  One of the Chicago-based beneficiaries is the Chicago Bar Foundation, and this makes the PSLawNet Blog happy because we’ve worked with CBF before and have great admiration for them.  UPDATE: here’s freely accessible National Law Journal coverage.

• 9.29.10 – and in our third story in a row from the northern Midwest, the Michigan Campaign for Justice is advocating that the state “create a statewide public defense system” to replace the patchwork, county-by-county systems that exist now and which have been the subject of intense scrutiny.  “A study commissioned by the state legislature on the public defense system gave Michigan failing grades in 2008 for the way defense attorneys provide counsel to indigent defendants…”, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette.

• 9.29.10 – from the Washington Post, here are some tips about leveraging federal internships into postgraduate jobs.

• 9.28.10 – speaking of the Post, in an op-ed  Attorney General Eric Holder urges the Senate to move with more dispatch on federal judicial nominees.  He recounts a few specific cases of relatively uncontroversial nominees waiting for months for confirmation hearings, and further notes that “[l]ast year, 259,000 civil cases and 75,000 criminal cases were filed in the federal courts, enough to tax the abilities of the judiciary even when it is fully staffed. But today there are 103 judicial vacancies — nearly one in eight seats on the bench. Men and women who need their day in court must stand in longer and longer lines.  The problem is about to get worse. Because of projected retirements and other demographic changes, the number of annual new vacancies in the next decade will be 33 percent greater than in the past three decades. If the historic pace of Senate confirmations continues, one third of the federal judiciary will be vacant by 2020. If we stay on the pace that the Senate has set in the past two years — the slowest pace of confirmations in history — fully half the federal judiciary will be vacant by 2020.”

• 9.28.10 – Andrew Ardinger, a deferred law firm associate from the Class of 2009, has spent the past year in a public service placement with the Oakland-based Public Interest Law Project.  He’s been submitting articles periodically about his experience to the American Lawyer.  Here’s his final AmLaw piece before returning the law firm world.  Ardinger reviews his experience with PILP, which seems to have been overwhelmingly positive: “On a professional development level, too, this experience has been outstanding. As I have noted before, there are only six attorneys in the office, and one legal assistant. It was a very warm, genial work environment, and the two attorneys with whom I worked most closely were, from the first day, obviously committed to mentoring me and helping me develop as an attorney.”  Ardinger’s experience was pretty hands-on; he drafted motions/pleadings, made some court appearances, and forged relationships with clients.  The PSLawNet Blog has been following the deferred-associates-in-public-service-placements phenomenon closely.   See our recent post on the issue, which tracks back to some of our past coverage.

• 9.27.10 – courtesy of Connecticut’s Middletown Press, here’s a pretty interesting story about capital-case trial strategy.  While the case is still in the trial phase now, prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty in the event of a guilty verdict.  The story emphasizes the public defender’s apparent goal of highlighting mitigating factors and humanizing a man who’s accused of doing some terrible things during a home invasion.  Seems like an uphill battle given the facts.

• 9.25.10 – the Houston Chronicle is late to the party, picking up an op-ed from Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht that originally ran in the Cherokeean Herald, which not only got the drop on the Chron but has a much cooler name.  In the piece, which we included in last week’s News Bulletin, Hecht laments the decline in legal services funding and, while acknowledging budgetary constraints, argues that the state legislature should appropriate funds to support the legal services community.

• 9.25.10 – the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that “A highly diverse panel of competing players in the Philadelphia criminal-justice system – defense lawyers, prosecutors, police, and others – on Friday began the difficult job of finding a consensus on how to reform the city’s troubled courts.”  Giving itself a nice pat on the back, the Inquirer notes that the panel’s creation stems from “an Inquirer series that documented a court system beset by low conviction rates, widespread witness intimidation, and a massive number of fugitives.  The newspaper reported that Philadelphia had one of the lowest felony conviction rates among big cities and that almost two-thirds of all defendants charged with violent crimes in Philadelphia were escaping conviction on all charges.”  One half of the PSLawNet Blog hails from Philly, and we recall that the longtime-but-now-former district attorney Lynne Abraham leaned toward a policy of prosecuting in very high volume as opposed to focusing on cases with a high probability of conviction.

• 9.25.10 – the Washington Post’s editorial board, using the long-stalled homicide prosecution of Jamie Ryan Weis as a jumping off point (we covered Weis case’s speedy trial woes in last week’s News Bulletin – Item 4), bemoans the “crisis in providing legal counsel” for the indigent: “Public defenders throughout the country are throwing up their hands, in some instances begging judges not to assign them new cases. According to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, defendants facing lesser criminal charges in some jurisdictions are processed through the system without ever speaking with a lawyer, even though they face jail time and are constitutionally entitled to representation.”

• 9.24.10 – October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that “[t]he Legal Aid Society of Lubbock is trying to raise awareness about the problem and give the victims a voice by launching the “Signs for Change” campaign during October … The nonprofit organization is selling yard signs. The goal is to sell 136 by Oct. 1 — to represent each woman killed in Texas in 2008, which is the most recent information provided by the Texas Council on Family Violence.”

• 9.24.10 – from the Miami Herald we learn that a South Florida couple, both grads of University of Miami’s law school, has delved into the public service arena by creating “Lawyers to the Rescue,” a nonprofit operation that so far has tackled, well, a broad array of issues, including the Haitian earthquake relief effort, the Gulf Coast oil spill aftermath, as well as work with Habitat for Humanity and with local soup kitchen.

• 9.23.10 – the Indianapolis Star reports that the outgoing Marion County Prosecutor, Carl Brizzi, is pressing, in the face of budget cuts, for the preservation of his office’s loan repayment program for deputy prosecutors.  Brizzi worries that looming salary cuts will make it even more difficult for debt-laden junior attorneys to remain with the office, risking a “brain drain” effect.

Andrew Ardinger was one of many law school Class-of-2009 grads whose career path took an interesting turn when the law firm he was bound for – in his case, Orrick – deferred his start date.  Ardinger made great use of his time, spending the past 12 months with the Public Interest Law Project in Oakland.  Periodically during this past year, Ardinger contributed short update pieces to the American Lawyer, offering  a check-in about his public-service experience.  As he is preparing to return to BigLaw world, Ardinger penned a final piece looking back upon his time with PILP. 

 Now that I’m in the waning days of this fellowship, and I start to reflect on it, I keep coming back to the same thought: It’s been a great experience for me on a number of levels.

…

On a professional development level…this experience has been outstanding. As I have noted before, there are only six attorneys in the office, and one legal assistant. It was a very warm, genial work environment, and the two attorneys with whom I worked most closely were, from the first day, obviously committed to mentoring me and helping me develop as an attorney.

The PSLawNet Blog has been closely following the phenomenon of deferred associates taking temporary, public-service placements.  It’s a classic “on one hand, on the other” scenario.  So…on one hand, the public interest lawyer who lives inside of us finds these developments to be very beneficial, for at least a couple of reasons:

1. The main reason is this: the concern ultimately has to be for the clients.  Nonprofit law offices were hit hard by the recession.  This caused tremendous difficulties for the staff, and for law students who were seeking to begin their career in this arena (we’ll get back to this in a moment).  But it’s the low- and middle-income client communities that were hit hardest.  And the reduced service capacity which the recession caused in many public interest shops meant that fewer clients could be served even as their numbers were increasing.  Deferred associates were able to shore up – and in some cases, expand – service capacity.  That’ s huge, and it came at a critical moment.
2. Also, the public interest community benefits by forging strong relationships with the private bar.  Quite aside from pro bono work, money flows from the private bar to the public interest bar.  And in myriad other ways, law firms leverage their resources to support public interest work.  So if dozens, or maybe even hundreds, of today’s deferred associates have positive experiences during their public service placements,  they may become tomorrow’s pro bono advocates, board members, and financial supporters.  That’s a win-win.

But there is “on the other hand,” too.  PSLawNet’s mission is to support public-service minded law students and attorneys in achieving their professionals goals.  And it has been undoubtedly frustrating for many students and grads who want to commit their careers to public interest work to see the desks at public interest offices temporarily occupied by deferred associates who were there until business picked up at the firm.  To boot, many of the associates were living on firm-provided stipends which comfortably outpaced public interest salaries.  It is very difficult to measure how much of a “displacement effect” was caused by the deferred associate phenomenon, because frankly very few public interest organizations were in strong enough financial positions to hire new attorneys anyway (at least back in the throes of the recession).  Nevertheless, it was a daunting obstacle for those students who wanted to earn to a low salary in order to fight for those on society’s margins.

We suspect that as the legal economy emerges from the recession, it’ll make something of a return to the pre-recession “normal.”  Law firms will adjust staffing models to match business needs.  Public interest funding will stabilize gradually.  Now, there is discussion these days about whether a longer-term service model might emerge from the deferral model – something akin to the “loaned associate” programs that presently exist between law firms and public interest organizations.  Nevertheless, the prospects of those on public interest career paths feeling crowded out by their law-firm bound peers are diminishing.

This week: cold, hard cash for debt-laden prosecutors and public defenders; USA Today smacks down US Attorneys; legal services funding needed in the Lonestar State; four years in jail without a trial because the state can’t fund a public defense; LSC’s doing some financial oversight; law students aiding servicemembers who are about to be deployed (well done!); mandatory pro bono for Mississippi lawyers(?); legal services funding found for the Lonestar State (good timing!); national poverty data are out, and opponents of poverty are not going to like the news; the strain on legal services in Tennessee; LSC’s looking for a president; do prosecutors wield too much power at the expense of judges?   

• 9.23.10 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports that long overdue funds from the John R. Justice Act, a loan repayment program for prosecutors and public defenders authorized in 2008, will finally begin flowing to beneficiaries throughout the nation.

• 9.22.10 – USA Today has run an analysis piece – yes, its’ a USA Today story longer than two paragraphs! – on the state of ethics among federal prosecutors nationally, concluding that “prosecutors repeatedly have violated that duty in courtrooms across the nation. The abuses have put innocent people in prison, set guilty people free and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in legal fees and sanctions.”  Although acknowledging that the instances of misconduct or negligence are not broadly representative of the federal prosecution community, the story paints a picture of increasingly faltering work from prosecutors who are either overworked, under-supervised, or willing to break the rules in order to win.  (Also, Main Justice, an independent news organization which covers all things related to the Justice Department, picked up on the USA Today report.) 

• 9.22.10 – in the Cherokeean Herald of Texas, state supreme court justice Nathan L. Hecht reviews the recession’s impact on low-income Texans, highlights the dramatic declines civil legal services funding that limit providers’ ability to serve a swelling client base, and calls on the state legislature to once again appropriate funding in support of legal services.

• 9.21.10 – the Southern Center for Human Rights has run a piece by E. Wycliffe Orr, an attorney and former elected official in Georgia, about the alarmingly protracted murder prosecution of Jamie Ryan Weis in the Peach State.  Weis, who qualifies for indigent defense, has been incarcerated in a county jail for four years, largely on account of funding shortages that have prevented counsel from staying on to handle the complex case in its entirety.  He has attempted suicide three times while in jail.  After a great deal of litigation on the state level, Weis has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to, in Orr’s words, “decide whether poor people accused of crimes have a right to continued representation once their lawyers are thoroughly familiar with their cases and attorney-client relationships of trust and confidence have been established. He also asked the Court to decide whether the State could pursue the death penalty even if it was unwilling to provide legal representation for the person whose life it seeks to extinguish.”  Orr has joined with other practitioners to file an amicus brief in support of Weis’s position.  The PSLawNet blog shed light on the Weis case in a post last May, and we followed up with more coverage in July (see item 4). 

• 9.21.10 – a press release from the Legal Services Corporation announces “members of a Special Task Force on Fiscal Oversight charged by the Board with reviewing LSC’s fiscal oversight responsibilities and how LSC conducts fiscal oversight of its grantees…. The Board approved the Task Force’s formation on July 21 and the above members were announced at the Board’s meeting today. Chairman Levi said he may announce a few additional members in coming weeks.  The Task Force’s report and findings are expected in the Spring of 2011. The Task Force will operate independently of LSC, but is authorized to conduct its work with any necessary support from the LSC staff and to engage consultants with the approval of the Board Chairman.”  LSC had been the target of a critical piece put out by the Center for Public Integrity on July 15, which questioned oversight of LSC funds once disbursed to grantee organizations.

• 9.20.10 – the Jacksonville Daily Record reports on two students at the Florida Coastal School of Law who successfully hatched a project to provide free legal services to military reservists preparing for deployment and trying to get wills, powers of attorney, healthcare and other issues squared away.  The project resulted in collaboration between Florida Coastal, the Jacksonville Bar Association, and Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, as law students and attorneys met with their clients at a free clinic held on the 9th anniversary of September 11th.  This is just one more example of work done by law students who themselves wish to serve current and former servicemembers.  For example, see the PSLawNet Blog’s story from last August about Project Salute, run by the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.

• 9.19.10 – Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger reports on a proposal being considered by the state’s high court “that would require lawyers to provide at least 20 hours of free service to the poor each year.”  There is debate within both the Mississippi bar and the legal blogosphere (see this Wall Street Journal Law Blog post) about whether or not traditional volunteer service can/should be made compulsory.   This question stems from the release of a report, The Unmet Civil Needs of Low-Income Mississippians, by the Mississippi Access to Justice Commission.  The report outlined “difficulties people encounter in gaining access to civil legal representation….  Between a third and half of those who apply for legal aid are turned away….  About 550,000 poor people are eligible for services, and about 30 legal services attorneys are available in Mississippi.”   The mandatory pro bono requirement doesn’t appear to be a specific recommendation made in the report, but rather one among many options the Supreme Court is considering to narrow the justice gap.   Here’s a Clarion Ledger article on the report’s release. 

• 9.17.10 – a press release from the Texas Access to Justice Foundation trumpets good funding news: TAJF is among five other legal services organizations which will share in a $2.6 million cy pres award intended to benefit advocates for the disabled.  A recent PSLawNet Blog post provides more detail, and here’s coverage from the  San Antonio Business Journal and the Austin Business Journal.

• 9.16.10 – the Washington Post covers the release of census data showing that, in 2009, “the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line.”  One in seven people “lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four.”  The article goes on to cover the political back-and-forth about government’s role and effectiveness in fighting poverty during a recession.  (Nothing like think-tank quotes to put things into perspective!).  Also see the PSLawNet Blog’s coverage of the new poverty data, with links to other news outlets.  Finally, the Legal Services Corporation issued a press release to put the data into context regarding civil legal services: “Nearly 57 million Americans now qualify for civil legal assistance from the Legal Services Corporation, an increase of 3 million from 2008, and the highest number of people eligible for legal aid in our country in the Corporation’s 35-year history. Of the 57 million, 19.6 million were children, the Census Bureau said.”  LSC will be lobbying Congress and entreating the private sector to provide funding and pro bono support.

• 9.15.10 – the Chattanooga Times Free Press runs a thorough story illustrating the strains on Tennessee’s civil legal services system as the number of potential clients increases but funding does not.  “It’s a dilemma that led the Tennessee Supreme Court to announce in late 2008 that fixing the state’s legal aid crisis would become its No. 1 strategic priority. The goal is the same in 2010, with the court recently declaring the lack of access to legal help ‘one of the most pressing issues’ facing Tennessee’s court system.”  The problem boils down to simple numbers; because of funding shortages there are not the means to hire the lawyers necessary to serve all potential clients who face dire legal problems.  “There are only 81 legal aid lawyers who work full time in one of Tennessee’s five legal aid centers. Twenty-seven work for Legal Aid of East Tennessee, serving a client base of 300,000 out of the approximately 1 million residents statewide whose low incomes qualify them for free legal help.  It means the state’s full-time legal aid lawyers every year wind up accepting only one in five cases brought by people seeking their services, a Tennessee Supreme Court study found.”

• 9.13.10 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports that the Legal Services Corporation’s search for a new president continues.  According to John Levi, the LSC board chair, “‘We’re looking for a lawyer who has first-rate management skills. But we’re also looking for someone who understands the needs that are out there and isn’t afraid of them,’ Levi said. ‘We view this is a great opportunity for the LSC.’  Levi said that the LSC search committee will likely draw about eight or 12 candidates from the pool of applicants and select the next president from there. He said he and the other board members would like to see a president in place by the beginning of next year.”

• 9.10.10 – in an Anchorage Daily News opinion piece, former Alaska attorney general John Havelock notes that prosecutors, who shoulder enormous responsibilities in the operation of the justice system, also have extraordinary power that can be dangerous to the system if it is unchecked.  Havelock supports political appointments of prosecutors rather than elections because “campaign contributions lay a hand on the scale of justice.”  He also supports “enhancing the discretionary power of the judiciary” so that prosecutors do not wield so much influence in all facets of criminal proceedings, from charging decisions through sentencing.

We know that many public-interest minded law students and attorneys are interested in opportunities in international human rights work.  So we figured we’d pass along word that a recently announced gift from George Soros will lead to Human Rights Watch considerably expanding its staff – “adding more than 120 employees to a an organization of 300.”

The gift, according to the Washington Post, is also expected to begin a change in the way that HRW builds support – financial and otherwise – for its activities throughout the global community.  Rather than leaning so heavily on donations from U.S. and European sources, HRW wishes to expand its support base:

The Human Rights Watch gift will consist of $10 million annual grants over the next decade. Human Rights Watch is expected to find funding to match that grant. It is also seeking to cultivate a new generation of foreign donors to fund the group’s activities. Today, Human Rights Watch receives 30 percent of its funding from abroad, mostly from Europe and some from Japan. It has a target of raising 40 percent of its funding from abroad within five years and 50 percent within a decade.

On a related note, here are two PSLawNet resources for law students and lawyers searching for international public-interest jobs:

1.  Finding Jobs with the UN and other International Organizations
2. Finding and Funding International Public Service Opportunities

There was no Public Interest News Bulletin last Friday.  This is because the PSLawNet Blog observed the Labor Day long weekend by doing less labor.  But the Bulletin returns today with a special Interrogatory Edition.

This week: Why is it bad to be mean to opposing counsel?; Volunteer State pro bono – redundant?; legal services – to bundle or not to bundle?; do you know what an MLP is?; how do resource-strapped courts observe speedy-trial guarantees?; law students can’t pretend to be attorneys, but can they collect attorney’s fees?; how cold is stealing money from a legal services provider?; how cool an acronym is LOLLAF?;  where’s the best place to work in Uncle Sam’s bureaucracy?; how much poverty has the recession created?; are those pesky law school professors messing up legal education?; and finally, what’s shakin’ over at the ABA Division for Legal Services?

• 9.10.10 – the New Jersey Law Journal reports that a “New Jersey state appeals court on Wednesday overturned a conviction for attempted murder of a policeman, in part because the prosecutor’s persistent denigration of defense counsel could have swayed jurors. The comments ‘clearly suggested to the jury that defense counsel was inept,’ the Appellate Division said in State v. Bridges, A-0806-07.”  Among other remarks the prosecuting attorney accused the public defender – in front of the jury – of violating court rules, interrupted his summation several times, and repeatedly asked the defendant if he was a liar.  The appeals court noted that defense counsel did not object very often and, ironically, this gave more momentum to the aggressive prosecution and led to an imbalanced picture for the jury to view.  The court also found error in the trial judge’s jury charges.  The county prosecutor’s (Sussex) office has not yet decided whether to appeal the decision. 

• 9.8.10 – a blog on the Knoxville News Sentinel’s website reports on a new access to justice initiative:  “The Tennessee Supreme Court has established a program allowing retired attorneys to provide pro bono legal services as yet another step in the Court’s effort to improve access to justice in the state…. The pro bono emeritus rule gives retired attorneys the authority to perform all legal work, without pay, on behalf of a client. Pro bono emeritus attorneys may represent the client in court with the approval of the judge hearing the case.”  The state’s high court has done some heavy lifting lately on the access-to-justice front; for more check out item 10 in the PSLawNet Blog’s July 9, 2010 Public Interest News Bulletin.  It’s also noteworthy that a similar retired-lawyers-return-to-do-pro-bono-program was launched in New York State earlier this year.

• 9.8.10 – according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Cobb County is expanding attorney practice rules that permit limited scope representation, or “unbundled legal services,” so that more moderate-income individuals can afford the services of a lawyer for discrete undertakings – like a consultation or document preparation – when they could not afford the fees that would be charged for full-scope representation on a legal matter(s).  The article touches upon the fact that the recession has brought the debate about limited scope representation to the front burner because many more people find themselves with legal problems but without sufficient funds to pay for an attorney.  And outside of Georgia, “[t]he practice is popular in California, where there are continuing legal education courses for lawyers on the topic.  In Massachusetts, the state’s highest court last year expanded a trial program for limited scope representation to the entire state court system.”  The PSLawNet Blog has covered news on the limited-scope representation debate in other jurisdictions, like Arizona (item 5) and Michigan (item 7), and here’s a New York Times op-ed from the chief justices of California and New Hampshire arguing that states should consider limited-scope representation as one means to increase access to justice.

• 9.6.10 – the Jacksonville Daily Record reports on a success story emerging from the work of the Northeast Florida Medical Legal Partnership.  The NFMLP has teamed up with medical clinics that serve low-income patients in order to provide legal services for patients when necessary – such as appealing a denial of Social Security or medical benefits.  Cases that run through the NFMLP are taken by pro bono attorneys at firms of all sizes or by staff attorneys at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid.  As the PSLawNet Blog has noted before, medical-legal partnerships are increasingly popular because they afford professionals from these two disciplines an opportunity to holistically address their patients’/clients’ problems.

• 9.5.10 – Congestion in the courts!  The Press-Enterprise reports on a case in front of the California Supreme Court – People v. Engram – stemming from resource shortfalls and case backlogs in Riverside County trial courts – problems that exist in many other California counties as well.  The case could have an impact on “how courts statewide handle criminal cases on the verge of dismissal because of constitutional speedy-trial deadlines.”  After a long, winding adjudicatory path that included a conviction on a felony charge, a reversal, a retrial, a mistrial, and a stream of continuances on a third trial, a court ultimately dismissed the people’s case against Engram because it has reached a time deadline intended to guarantee a defendant’s speedy-trial right.  As it turns out, Riverside County has streamlined its docket system since the troubles at the center of this case took place.  As noted though, the underlying issue in the case could affect courts elsewhere in the state which are grappling with similar problems.

• 9.4.10 – the Palm Beach Post reports that, “In Florida, 12 men have been freed from prison since 2000 after DNA evidence proved their innocence, some after serving time on Death Row.  Now the Florida Supreme Court has ruled a legal system that allows such miscarriages of justice needs to be fixed. It has created the Florida Innocence Commission to learn what goes wrong and to propose reforms.  Florida becomes the 10th state to study the causes of wrongful convictions.”  The commission is being funded with an appropriation from the state legislature and a grant from the Florida Bar Foundation.  The commission “will not hear individual please from those who say they have been wrongly imprisoned,” but rather will explore the systemic causes of wrongful convictions.  That work is already underway, and according to the story, “Mistaken eyewitness identification is far and away the leading cause…” of wrongful convictions.

• 9.2.10 – from the National Law Journal, we learn that Washington D.C.’s highest (local) court delivered a favorable ruling regarding attorney’s fee awards for law school clinical programs last week.  Regarding an administrative matter in which two law students represented an individual whose disability benefits were terminated, the “…D.C. Court of Appeals ruled…that the Public Justice Advocacy Clinic [at George Washington University’s law school] was entitled to legal fees under a District of Columbia law pertaining to government worker disability cases. The court…found that the students’ work, supervised by George Washington clinical professor Jeffrey Gutman, did not amount to lay representation, which would have precluded recovery. The clinic sought about $6,400 in fees.”  The question in the case turned on whether a particular statute governing attorneys fees could apply to the work done by law students, who are by definition not attorneys.  “Because the students had worked closely with Gutman, a licensed attorney, the court found that awarding the fees was warranted.”  This decision is narrow because it deals with a particular statute, but this story makes the PSLawNet Blog wonder about case law in other jurisdictions on the question of law school clinic programs receiving attorney’s fees for cases handled by students.  If you have any insight on this topic, please offer it in the Comments section below.

• 9.2.10 – the Washington Post’s “The Crime Scene” blog reports that a former Maryland Legal Aid Bureau employee “admitted in court that he stole more than $1 million from the nonprofit organization.”  Over a 10-year period, MLAB’s former finance chief inflated “invoices for office supplies, then stole the excess money.”

• 9.1.10 – the Suburban Journals (St. Louis Metro Region) website offers a nice profile of Lois Wood, a longtime legal services attorney, and the organization for which she  currently serves as executive director, the Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation (LOLLAF) in southern Illinois.

• 9.1.10 – the Washington Post reports on the release of the “Best Places to Work” rankings of federal government offices, a report produced by the Partnership for Public Service and the American University School of Public Affairs.  Over a quarter of a million federal employees at 290 federal organizations participated in the survey process.   Here’s a link to a recent PSLawNet Blog post about “Best Places to Work”, and here’s a link to the report website itself.

• 8.30.10 – in a short, data-heavy piece, USA Today reports that, “Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.” Medicaid enrollment is up 17% since late 2007, when the recession began.  The number of food stamp recipients has grown by almost 50%.  Unemployment insurance benefits are going to four times as many individuals now compared to 2007.  And the Temporary Assistance for Needy Family (TANF) “welfare” rolls have increased by 18% in the recession.  Costs, of course, have risen as caseloads have expanded, and folks in Washington are debating how much strain anti-poverty programs can/should bear in light of federal fiscal woes.

• 8.30.10 –  the National Law Journal reports on a forthcoming law review article which argues that reforms in legal education may be hampered by the fact that the legal academy is still highly focused on scholarly research and not on teaching practice skills.  The PSLawNet Blog nicely summarized the article (if we do say so ourselves) in a post last week, and here’s a link directly the NLJ article.

• Summer 2010 Edition of ABA Dialogue – the Summer 2010 edition of Dialogue, the quarterly magazine of the ABA Division for Legal Services, is now available online.  it features several articles on IOLTA funding, pro bono news from around the nation, and pieces on medical-legal partnership and a project to aid military servicemembers. 

Please participate in NALP’s brief, anonymous survey about recent trends in the public interest hiring market.  NALP is a national member association of career services and human resources professionals from law schools and legal employers throughout the U.S.  (NALP also administers the PSLawNet website and the PSLawNet Blog.)  We are conducting a survey of nonprofit and government law offices about 1) recent law student and law graduate hiring and 2) hiring expectations in the immediate future.  In late October we will produce a report based on survey responses.  The report will be made freely available on our PSLawNet website: www.pslawnet.org.  We will NOT identify any participating organizations by name. We hope the report, which will provide a snapshot about the current employment market, will benefit the public interest legal community as well as law students and attorneys who are on public service career paths.

Who Should Participate: nonprofit and government (local/state/federal) legal organizations in the U.S.  There is a place in the survey to indicate whether it is being submitted on behalf of an entire organization, a branch office of a larger organization, or a practice unit within a larger organization.  We encourage respondents to coordinate with others in your organizations in order to avoid duplicating responses. 

Survey Completion Deadline: Wednesday, September 22, 2010.

Link to Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DJW9WNL  

Questions/Concerns: Please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s Director of Public Service Initiatives, at sgrumm@nalp.org or directly at 202.296.0057.

Searching for the ideal summer or postgraduate public-interest job?  The annual Equal Justice Works Conference & Career Fair is taking place just outside DC on October 22-23.  Job-seeker registration has just opened.  Learn more details and register on the Equal Justice Works website.  The career fair is a terrific and unique event, and we encourage law students and grads to look into attending.

Thinking about pursuing a career in federal government?  If so, the Partnership for Public Service’s Best Places to Work rankings are an excellent resource to learn about employees’ perceptions of overall employee satisfaction, agency leadership, opportunities for performance based rewards and advancement, diversity, work/life balance, and more throughout the federal government.

The Partnership for Public Service’s  2010 Best Places to Work were just released.  The rankings are “based on the responses of more than 263,000 employees” at “290 federal organizations (32 large agencies, 34 small agencies and 224 subcomponents).”  The rankings also provide a demographic breakdown of responses from each agency or subcomponent.

Of the large agencies, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Government Accountability Office, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Smithsonian Institution, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration were ranked as the top five “best places to work.”  At the other end of the spectrum, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, National Archives and Records Administration, Department of Education, Small Business Administration, and Department of Homeland Security received the lowest rankings.

Access the complete rankings:  http://www.bestplacestowork.org/BPTW/rankings

Check out The Wastington Post’s article for responses to the rankings from the SEC, OMB, and the Smithsonian.

The National Law Journal is covering a little bit of ruckus in the legal academy, raised by a forthcoming law review article entitled “”Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy.” Georgetown Law adjunct professor Brent Evan Newton, the article’s author, argues that, “The academy — both in terms of its preparation of law students to enter the profession and the type of scholarship being produced by the professoriate — has lost its practical moorings.”  (The article will run in the South Carolina Law Review.)

The NLJ piece goes on to summarize Newton’s criticisms and calls for change:

The value that law schools place on publication of law review articles means that faculty members often focus more on scholarship than teaching, Newton wrote. Most law review articles are grounded in legal theory as opposed to practical legal issues….Many law schools have attempted to make their curricula more relevant by adding adjunct professors and clinical faculty, but Newton concluded that those efforts are not nearly enough.

…

[Newton] suggested that law faculties be divided into two tracks — research professors and teaching professors, both of whom would be tenure-track. Research professors would account for one-third of a faculty and would concentrate on “theoretical, interdisciplinary research and scholarship” and teach fewer classes. The remaining two-thirds would teach doctrinal, clinical and legal reading and writing courses. Teaching professors would have extensive practice experience and would be expected to publish articles less frequently than research professors.

Newton’s piece apparently refers to conclusions in the much-discussed Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s 2007 report on the pros and cons of the current legal education model.  That report, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law, in essence says that law schools do really well at teaching critical thinking skills, but don’t teach practical applications (i.e. legal practice skills) particularly well.  To boot, the larger moral implications of lawyers’ actions are sometimes downplayed in favor of students being taught to think dispassionately.  The report doesn’t read easily like a Harry Potter…er….Twilight…well, the PSLawNet blog has no idea which of these serials is popular nowadays, but it’s worthy reading for those who wish to plug into the increasingly robust conversation about how we should teach law students to be lawyers.

For what it’s worth, the PSLawNet Blog believes strongly in some reformation of legal education that would incorporate more experiential learning components.  Public interest experiential programs – clinicals, externships, pro bono programs and the like – could point the academy in the right direction.  It’s not often that public interest advocates on law school campuses get to say they’re ahead of the curve, but in this case we think it’s true.   Going to court and doing real work on behalf of real clients is what public interest students have always been doing to make themselves more marketable immediately after graduation.

Speaking of robust conversations, the super-exciting legal blogosphere is abuzz:

Are Law School Faculties Part of the Problem with Legal Education? (WSJ Law Blog)

A Skunk In The Ivory Tower (Simple Justice)

Law School and Lawyering: A Post by Kristen Holmquist (PrawfsBlawg)

Two-Track Legal Education Coming to a Law School Near You? (Legal Blog Watch)

We are curious about your thoughts . . .  Please share in our comments section.

Do you have interest in pursuing a career in the federal government?  The Office of General Counsel at DHS has extended the deadline to apply for their 2011 Summer Intern Program and Honors Program to October 15.

To learn more about both programs check out our earlier post on these opportunities at DHS.

Also of interest, Craig Raynsford, who serves in the Office of the General Counsel at DHS, spoke to us earlier this year about the advantages of a career in federal government and the application process.