The Georgia Law Center for the Homeless is looking for a staff attorney to join in providing legal services to Atlanta’s most vulnerable populations. GLC serves its clients in a holistic manner, helping them move toward self-sufficiency.

The staff attorney will represent clients in civil legal proceedings, primarily in family law, housing law and public benefits. Also, the attorney will conduct outreach to area shelters and homeless service providers.

If you’re a member of the Georgia bar, check out the complete listing at PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers, and greetings from the nation’s capital, where the First Lady is out and about with the regular people and those wiseacre rascals at the Onion have drawn the attention of Johnny Law.

This week in the public interest world: a Rainbow State legal services program merges with Appleseed; Cleveland Legal Aid Society gets a $ boost to help with an office move; the importance of maintaining government legal services funding here in DC; MLAB hits the century mark, and there’s no shortage of work; news about the new USAJobs site; training bilingual law students in proper legal translating/interpretation (great idea!); checking in with the Legal Services Corp.’s prez; AtJ in the Cornhusker State; a long-cherished UAW legal services programs is going the way of many other union benefits. 

• 9.28.11 – from a press release published in the Hawaii Reporter, we learn that a legal services program is merging into the national Appleseed network: “The Board of Directors of Lawyers for Equal Justice (LEJ) is proud to announce that LEJ is joining with 16 other public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico affiliated with the Appleseed organization.  LEJ’s new name is the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.” 

• 9.28.11 – the Morning Journal reports on some good news for our friends at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.  Law firm largesse recently helped LAS relocate its Lorain County office.  Wickens, Herzer, Panza, Cook & Batista donated $40,000 to LAS to assist with the move and office operations.  (Name-partner Richard Panza is an LAS board member.)

• 9.27.11 – right here in the District, UDC Law Professor Matthew Fraidin makes the case for local government funding of legal services.  Writing in the Huffington Post, Fraidin highlights a recent death of a woman who had sought, pro se, a protection order against the alleged killer.  Fraidin uses this tragedy to illustrate the invaluable role that public interest lawyers play in guiding DV victims through a highly complex legal system.  (He notes the benefits of representation for alleged DV perpetrators, as well.)  As DC’s local elected officials are forming the budget, Fraidin argues, they must appreciate the value and importance of funding legal services.”

• 9.26.11 – the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau turns 100. Birthday present: tons and tons of clients. A Baltimore Sun article highlights the uptick in cases: Legal Aid, which employs about 150 lawyers around the state, has seen its annual caseload grow from less than 42,000 five years ago to nearly 70,000 in the fiscal year that ended in June.  The challenges faced by clients reflect the times. Unemployment insurance cases are up 150 percent in the last four years. Consumer collection cases — default on debt, Social Security attachments and the like — are up 30 percent.”

• 9.26.11 – the new (and promised-to-be-improved) USAJobs website is set to launch officially on 10/13.  From the Government Executive website, some important details about the transition: “Agencies will have to close all open job announcements before Oct. 6, when the system will be made unavailable to all applicants. The downtime will allow agencies to move data to the new platform built by OPM and create a level playing field for job seekers and human resources staff. According to agency officials, the system could be back up and running as early as Oct. 11.”

• 9.26.11 – here’s one from the “good ideas” department.  The Jacksonville Daily Record reports that a group of bilingual Florida Coastal Law students participated in the “Interpreting and Translating in a Legal Setting” training.  “Led by Elizabeth Cuevas, the Clinical Student Representative for the Florida Coastal Immigration Clinic, students learned the differences between interpreting and translating and their roles in helping clients through the clinical program and from possible outside agencies.” While working in legal services I relied on law students and support staff for interpreting and translation help with non-English-speaking clients.  It’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a trained interpreter and an untrained one, and working with someone who’s trained makes a huge difference.  

• 9.25.11 – the Washington Post checks in with Legal Services Corporation president Jim Sandman, who has taken the helm in stormy seas.  LSC faces congressional funding cuts and continued scrutiny of its grantee monitoring procedures. Sandman offers four of his goals moving forward:

• “Create an independent body to make fiscal operations more efficient;
• Focus on getting services to hard-to-reach communities;
• Prove legal aid is different [than other federally funded programs that are threatened with funding cuts.  In particular: providing citizens with equal access to justice is in keeping with our Constitution’s fundamental tenets.]
• Seek alternative revenue sources.”

• 9.25.11 – AtJ news from the Cornhusker State.  The Grand Island Independent – hey, I spent a night there in a roadside motel while driving cross-country in my beloved 1991 Honda Civic – reports on a widening justice gap.  “More Nebraskans than ever have the need for free legal aid, but the available funds and number of attorneys willing to take on a pro-bono case are limited, said a group of Nebraska Bar Association executive committee members who were traveling the state last week talking about the cause…. State bar president-elect Warren Whitted noted that “of 25,000 qualifying applications [for legal services], about 10,000 were able to be served [because of resource shortages]. Most of those cases involved domestic matters, landlord/ tenant disputes, and social security questions.”

• 9.24.11 – did you know that, for decades, free legal services were available to some GM autoworkers via their union contract?  Neither did I.  Does it surprise you that this benefit is going away as the UAW continues a fundamental restructuring of its relationship with American automakers?  Me neither.  The Detroit Free-Press reports that via a tentative labor deal, in 2014 a UAW-created legal aid program will come to an end: “The program, which operates separately from the UAW, employs about 200 attorneys and covers legal services, such as adopting a child, probate proceedings and real estate disputes.”  Similar programs for Ford and Chrysler workers could suffer the same fate.  

The Middle District of Florida (located in Jacksonville, Florida) is looking for a judicial law clerk to research issues of law, draft briefs and opinions, attends trials and other court proceedings, and act as an law advisor to the Honorable Timothy J. Corrigan, United States District Judge.

Judge Corrigan hears all kinds of cases, civil and criminal, often involving novel issues of law.

If you’re looking for warm winters and are interested in a legal career in the government, check out the listing at PSLawNet!

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports® and ConsumerReports.org®, is looking for a law school graduate or graduate-level policy analyst to work for two years as the Esther Peterson Fellow in its Washington D.C. Office.

The Esther Peterson Fellow will receive hands-on experience and training in advocacy on consumer issues at the federal legislative and executive branch level.

Responsibilities include legal research and writing, bill analysis, lobbying Congress and administrative agencies, and filing petitions at administrative agencies.

If you’re committed to social and economic justice, learn how to apply at PSLawNet!

The Innocence Project is a nonprofit pro bono legal clinic founded in 1992 by Prof. Barry Scheck and civil rights lawyer Peter Neufeld at the Cardozo School of Law/Yeshiva University. Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to avoid future injustice.

The Innocence Project has established the position of Joseph Flom Special Counsel, a new senior-level staff position that will significantly increase the clinic’s capacity to address the leading causes of wrongful convictions through strategic litigation. This is a new capacity being developed at the Innocence Project. We are seeking candidates with established litigation and leadership skills, necessary for structuring and implementing our strategic litigation reform work.

The Joseph Flom Special Counsel will initially identify and litigate cases.  In the course of the first four years, the Special Counsel will develop and lead a small cadre of strategic litigators that will enable the Innocence Project to increase its ability to free the innocent and reform the criminal justice system.

In the first two years, the strategic litigation will focus on supporting the organization’s efforts to reform forensic sciences to make them more scientific.  Over time, the Special Counsel will evolve the organization’s capacity to shape strategic litigation efforts on the leading causes of wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, and incentivized witness testimony.

The Innocence Project’s strategic litigation will serve three primary purposes:  1)  to support legislative and policy reform efforts; 2) to change the ways that courts consider evidence that has historically brought about wrongful convictions; and 3) to provide support to litigators across the country who litigate post-conviction claims of innocence in strategically chosen cases.

If you’re interested in working with the Innocence Project to advance reform in criminal justice policies, find out how to apply at PSLawNet!

Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), a Chicago-based public interest law and policy center that addresses compelling issues of social justice and quality of life in the Chicago region, is hiring interns for the summer of 2012.

BPI’s staff of lawyers and policy specialists works to increase the availability of affordable housing for working families, transform segregated public housing, improve Chicago’s public schools, and help restore open, honest, responsible, and accountable government in our state using a wide variety of approaches, including legal and policy research, advocacy, organizing, litigation and collaboration with non-profit, business, community and governmental organizations.
Interns work closely with our staff on important public interest projects in BPI’s program groups: affordable housing, public housing, public education, and political reform.

Interns receive excellent supervision and mentorship, the opportunity to contribute directly to solving pressing policy issues, and the chance to learn more about Chicago’s ever growing public interest community.

1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls are encouraged to apply. BPI is frequently able to offer summer funding assistance to legal interns through the Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) program. PILI provides funding for law students to work at various public interest legal organizations in Chicago.

To apply or learn more about the position, see the listing at PSLawNet!

Hello, PSLawNet Blog readers.  Please spread the word far and wide among nonprofit and government law offices.  Our survey response deadline is extended to Friday, 9/30.  Here’s some more detail:

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) is conducting a brief, anonymous survey of nonprofit and government public-interest law offices throughout the country about 1) recent law student and attorney hiring and 2) hiring expectations for the immediate future. We will use the data to produce a report about what the public interest employment market looks like now and how it may change in the near future.  NALP will release the report later this fall. The report will be made freely available online. The report will NOT identify any responding organizations by name. We hope the report will benefit the public interest legal community as well as law students and attorneys who are on public interest career paths.  Please participate in the brief, online survey by clicking here.  Please contact Steve Grumm with any questions: sgrumm@nalp.org.

Founded in 1991, Pace Women’s Justice Center was the first academic legal center in the country devoted to training attorneys and others on domestic violence issues. The Center’s mission is to end abuse by providing innovative legal programs including direct legal representation for victims and survivors of domestic violence and elder abuse, training, community education and outreach, service coordination, and information and referrals.

Today, with a staff of 17 and over 6,700 hours contributed annually by pro-bono attorneys, volunteers, and law students, the Center provides direct legal services to over 2,800 victims and survivors of domestic violence and elder abuse each year.

PWJC is looking for a Pro Bono Coordinator who is committed to the Center’s mission and work. The Pro Bono Coordinator will work closely with the Executive Director, Deputy Director and the management team to coordinate the PWJC Pro Bono Project, including developing and overseeing both new and existing pro bono projects, building relationships and recruiting volunteers from law firms, in-house legal departments, and the community, as well as training, managing and supervising the volunteers and supervising substantive work.

If you’re interested in applying, check out the listing at PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Florida (ACLU), a statewide affiliate of the National ACLU, is seeking a Staff Attorney specializing in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and HIV/AIDS related issues.

The staff attorney may be involved in the broad range of ACLU and civil liberties issues. However, the staff attorney will be expected to work primarily on civil rights issues on behalf of LGBT individuals and families.

The attorney will likely be located in the affiliate’s main office in Miami, although placement in one of the ACLU FL’s Regional Offices (Tampa, Pensacola, or Jacksonville) may be considered.

Interested in working with ACLU? Check out the whole listing and find out how to apply at PSLawNet!