Established in 1996, PILP is a state-wide support center for legal services and State Bar IOLTA funded law offices. It seeks to improve the lives of low-income persons through major litigation and policy advocacy in the areas of public benefits and housing.

The Public Interest Law Project (“PILP”) is seeking an attorney, with three to seven years of litigation experience and an interest in prosecuting impact litigation in the public interest, to be PILP’s first Public Interest Law Project Fellow. The Fellow will gain experience in litigation involving a wide variety of issues affecting the rights of poor and low-income people to essential public benefits and fair and affordable housing. The Fellowship position will be for two years and will help to identify specific areas on which the Fellow may decide to focus in the future, and provide training and a springboard for a career as a public interest litigator.

Find out more at PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

It’s not always easy to remain in public interest practice.  Debt is high.  Salaries are low.  Presently, many nonprofit and government law offices are fighting through funding woes.  Yet, public interest work can be tremendously fulfilling, challenging, and plain-old joyful.  Public interest lawyers live out their passions.  And junior public interest attorneys will find themselves working directly with clients and in courtrooms early in their careers – sometimes immediately.

At PSLawNet we spend much of our time aiding law students as they look for jobs – for points of access to those careers.  But it’s also quite helpful for students to know what their careers could look like a few years down the road.  What will be the challenges to remaining in public interest work? What opportunities does it present?

We encourage DC-area students to attend the Washington Council of Lawyers’s “Staying Public” event at 6pm on Wednesday, March 7.  Her are the particulars:

We hope you will join us for a presentation on how attorneys can stay in public interest work for the long haul, with discussions of financial considerations and options, avoiding burnout, and various career paths.

Featured Panelists:

• Jennifer Berger, Legal Counsel for the Elderly
• Jen Tschirch, Pro Bono Coordinator, Catholic University, Columbus School of Law
• Imoni Washington, DC Bar Foundation 
• Moderator:  Vytas V. Vergeer, Bread for the City

This free event is open to WCL Members, friends, colleagues, and the DC Public Interest Community. Law students welcome!

Location: Hogan & Lovells, 555 13 St., NW, Wash. DC 20004 (Metro Center)              

Date/Time: Tuesday, March 6, 6:00-7:30pm

Networking Happy Hour at Laughing Man Tavern to follow (right around the corner). 

Click Here to Register!

HomeBase, a non-profit public policy law firm focused on homelessness, is looking for a full-time Policy Analyst or Lawyer to join the team immediately.

HomeBase is seeking an experienced individual who will work closely with staff locally and nationally to offer technical assistance in supporting community-based and jurisdiction-led efforts to prevent and address homelessness. HomeBase support efforts to implement programs to prevent and address homelessness, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care programs and other targeted housing programs.

To learn more, see the listing at PSLawNet!

Human Rights First welcomes law students to apply for a Summer 2012 internship in our Refugee Protection Program. HRF is looking for students who are currently enrolled in law school, have a strong interest in and commitment to human rights, are fluent in a relevant second language, and want to work on behalf of asylum-seekers.

Interns will be based in HRF’s New York office and will be expected to work at least 35 hours per week for a 10-12 week period.  This is an unpaid internship. Interns will be responsible for securing their own funding or arranging to receive course credit at their law schools.

The Refugee Protection Program works to provide indigent asylum seekers with quality legal representation in their asylum cases.  The program also advocates for legal reform and policy change on issues affecting asylum seekers in the United States.

Interested? Learn how to apply at PSLawNet!

Mercy Corps’ mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.

Mercy Corps is looking for a summer legal intern to provide full-time support from approximately May through August 2012 (hours and time period to be determined). Its legal department consists of a General Counsel, Associate General Counsel and a Legal Department Administrator.

The intern will have the opportunity to learn the legal processes involved with a nonprofit, international relief and development organization. The summer legal intern will have the opportunity to conduct a significant research project regarding a current legal issue facing Mercy Corps, assist in updating policies, grids and other pertinent data.

To learn how to apply, check the listing at PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday Monday, dear readers. This is a special “72 Hours Late” bulletin edition.  The reason, of course, is that I spent the better part of last week preparing for the sublime glory of the Academy Awards.  I simply need to know whom Joan Rivers adores as Hollywood’s most glamorous promenade upon the red carpet.  This week we’ll return to the every-Friday schedule.  While we’re running with the movie theme, here’s a list of the all-time 10 best legal movie lines (from the people at Bloomberg Law).  And as for the public interest news:      

• A  proposal in the Buckeye State to move toward more state funding of the indigent defense program;
• Large-scale public defender layoff in NOLA forces legal luminaries into indigent defense roles;
• In Washington State, a class action alleging unconstitutionally overburdened indigent defense programs goes forward;
• Pay raises for Wisconsin prosecutors (and maybe public defenders) to support attorney retention;
• Yale Law School clinic files a federal suit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers;
• the boom in pro bono work by corporate counsel offices;
• plumbing the depths of Florida’s legal services funding crisis;
• continuing a national trend, a new veterans diversionary court in PA;
• to address swelling demand for legal services, stakeholders in Tennessee are serving clients by answering legal questions online;
• a Baltimore legal services provider partners with a social work school to provide more holistic services to clients.    

The summaries:

• 2.26.12 – a move to change the Buckeye State’s indigent-defense funding system.  From the Columbus Dispatch: “The County Commissioners’ Association of Ohio again has on its legislative agenda the issue of transferring the responsibility of providing indigent defendants with legal representation from the counties to the state…. Currently, counties set up their own ways of providing lawyers for indigent defendants, and they allocate money. The state then reimburses all counties at the same rate, which last year was about 35 percent. That’s down from the 50 percent the state promised when the system was set up in the early 1970s.

• 2.24.12 – a not-so-subtle message from the bench? It’s all hands on deck in the NOLA legal community as one judge calls upon high-profile lawyers for public defense work.  From the Times-Picayune: “Politicians, local media leaders and on-air pundits filed into a New Orleans criminal courtroom on Friday, under orders from a judge to take on the cases of poor defendants left without lawyers. Criminal District Judge Arthur Hunter, in a splashy move aimed at drawing attention to a wave of layoffs at the Orleans Parish public defender’s office, handpicked some of the city’s best-known lawyers to represent 32 defendants abandoned by the cuts.”  Those called into service included the state bar association president and the Times-Picayune’s publisher.

• 2.23.12 – from the AP: “A federal judge in Seattle says a lawsuit challenging the public defense systems in the cities of Mount Vernon and Burlington can proceed. Judge Robert Lasnik also granted the case class-action status Thursday.  The American Civil Liberties Union alleges that two part-time attorneys contracted by the cities fielded more than 2,100 cases in 2010. That’s although Washington state Bar Association guidelines specify full-time public defenders shouldn’t surpass 400 cases a year. The lawsuit alleges the cities fail to provide adequate resources to the public defender system.”

• 2.22.12 – from the State Bar of Wisconsin: “A bipartisan bill intended to retain experienced prosecutors by improving their compensation…advance[s] in the Legislature….  The legislation, 2011 Senate Bill 394 and Assembly Bill 488, establishes a pay progression program for assistant district attorneys (ADAs), but does not fund it in the current biennium, leaving that issue for a future Legislature to address in the next state budget….  On Feb. 15, legislators introduced a bill to create a similar pay progression system for assistant state public defenders.”  The public defender bill is not out of committee yet.

• 2.22.12 – “An immigration law clinic at Yale Law School has filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging the use of detainers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and asked Wednesday that the suit be expedited now that ICE is rolling out Secure Communities in Connecticut statewide.”  (Story from the New Haven Register.)

• 2.21.12 – the Pro Bono Institute has gotten a lot of traction in American Lawyer Media publications of late.  Most recently, Corporate Counsel looks at the increase in pro bono work performed by, well, corporate counsel, with a focus on PBI’s work in the arena.

• 2.20.12 – a Miami Herald editorial plumbs the depths of the Sunshine State’s legal services funding crisis.  The state government does not fund legal services, so programs have long been dependent on IOLTA funds.  With the real estate market collapsed and interest rates at historic lows, IOLTA funding has been gutted by 80%.  This will lead to lawyer layoffs – “…some 120 of Florida’s 410 Legal Aid attorneys are expected to lose their jobs…” – and fewer clients served unless action is taken now to shore up funding.

• 2.17.12 – continuing a national trend, a suburban Philadelphia county is creating a veterans court to adjudicate some cases involving vets who run afoul of the law.  “Congressman Pat Meehan (R-7) hosted a roundtable discussion to iron out the details of Delaware County’s Veterans Justice Initiative. With representatives from the Veterans Administration…it was announced that a Veterans Treatment Court was ready to go in Delco…. The goal [is] the creation of a diversionary court track for non-violent offenders who served in the military.”  (Story from the Delco News Network.)

• 2.16.12 – “More than 100 low-income Tennesseans are receiving free legal assistance every month through the OnlineTNJustice.org website, but backers of the project want to serve more….  The initiative is a joint project of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and the Tennessee Bar Association. The site allows clients to request advice about specific civil legal issues from volunteer lawyers and get their questions answered online.” (Story from the Tennessean.)

• 2.16.12 – a legal services office pairs with a graduate social work school to provide more holistic services to clients.  From the Public News Service: “The downtown Baltimore [Maryland Legal Aid Bureau] office has been trying something new: teaming up with social workers through the University of Maryland School of Social Work….  Legal Aid offices around the state want to replicate the Baltimore program, but it does require resources, and regular Legal Aid funding cannot be used for the social workers.”

Room to Read seeks to transform the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education. Working in collaboration with local communities, partner organizations and governments, we develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and support girls to complete secondary school with the relevant life skills to succeed in school and beyond.

The Legal Intern position is part of the Legal, Finance and Accounting Department and will report directly to the Senior Manager, Legal Operations. This position is an eight week, full-time summer internship for a law student who has completed his/her second year of law school. The position is project-focused and will include the review of corporate governance documents, compliance and legal assessments of Room to Read’s international entities and the drafting of legal memorandum.

The Legal Intern will review corporate governance documents and make recommendations, corporate minute books of international entities for compliance, and legal and organizational documents for international offices, as well as research legal requirements for corporate governance, update internal policies and procedures, as necessary, and complete additional projects depending on time and skills.

To learn more and apply, see the listing at PSLawNet!

The Southern Poverty Law Center seeks a staff attorney to join its Montgomery, Alabama office. The Center is a national non-profit organization dedicated to reducing bigotry and oppression through litigation, public education, and community organizing. The Center is exploring emerging legal issues affecting low-income people in the Southeast, such as consumer lending, employment and housing discrimination, public benefits, and other economic justice concerns.

The Southern Poverty Law Center was founded in 1971 as a small civil rights law firm. Today, the Center is internationally known for its tolerance education programs, its legal victories against white supremacists and its tracking of hate groups. Located in Montgomery, Alabama – the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement – the Center was founded by Morris Dees and Joe Levin, two local lawyers who shared a commitment to racial equality. Its first president was civil rights activist Julian Bond.

Throughout its history, the Center has worked to make the nation’s Constitutional ideals a reality. The Center’s legal department fights all forms of discrimination and works to protect society’s most vulnerable members, handling innovative cases that few lawyers are willing to take. Over three decades, it has achieved significant legal victories, including landmark Supreme Court decisions and crushing jury verdicts against hate groups.

To learn more and apply, see the listing at PSLawNet!

Massachusetts Jobs With Justice is an activist coalition working on issues of workers’ rights, support for labor, immigrant rights, health care and global justice.

Jobs with Justice is a coalition of labor, community , faith and student organizations working together to build unity and support for the struggles of working people. JwJ is a campaign for workers’ rights. Our mission is to defend working people’s standard of living, fight for job security, protect our right to organize and support contract campaigns and strikes. JwJ opposes racism, sexism, ageism and homophobia and will actively support struggles against any form of discrimination. JwJ is action oriented.

Work with Massachusetts Jobs With Justice to build a movement for immigration reform and immigrant workers’ rights. You will be working with local immigrant community organizations and activists to plan events, rallies, etc. to promote immigration rights and protect immigrant workers from employer abuses.

To learn more and apply, see the listing at PSLawNet!

The Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD) – a member-organization of neighborhood-based affordable housing groups – seeks an Associate to coordinate policy and advocacy to win improved affordable housing policies in New York City. The Associate will help develop clear affordable housing policy recommendations, then implement those recommendations to win policy change by mobilizing advocacy campaigns with ANHD’s member organizations.

The Advocacy Associate will assist with the research, policy analysis, and development of ANHD’s housing production and preservation priorities, including a campaign to win policies that require permanent affordability of publicly-subsidized housing as well as synthesize policy ideas into easily understood materials for diverse audiences, including member groups, elected officials, policymakers/experts, and other issue stakeholders. The Associate will support member advocacy committees and working groups by working collaboratively with our members, providing them with the information and technical assistance needed to formulate and pursue successful Citywide advocacy campaigns.

To learn more and apply, see the listing at PSLawNet!