Need a job or internship? During the last week PSLawNet has posted: 29 new attorney positions, 38 new internships, and 13 new law related opportunities. Additionally, there are currently 1,190 active opportunities in our job database. To search the database visit PSLawNet.

Featured New Positions:

The Criminal Division of the Nevada Supreme Court’s Central Legal Staff is accepting applications for a staff attorney position.  Under the direction of the court and the Legal Counsel for the Criminal Division, staff attorneys in the Criminal Division assist the court in resolving motions and screening for jurisdiction in criminal appeals, advise the court regarding all types of criminal appeals and writ petitions through written memoranda or oral presentations, and prepare written dispositions for the court in criminal appeals and writ petitions.  Staff attorneys must possess superior legal research, writing, and oral presentation skills, must be flexible, and must be capable of working independently. This position is located in Carson City, Nevada.  Application Deadline:  February 25, 2011.  Visit PSLawNet for full details.

Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, Inc. (HRI) is hiring for unpaid summer internship opportunities for law students wishing to gain firsthand knowledge in immigration law and international human rights issues.  HRI strives to provide every legal intern with invaluable experience in immigration and nationality law and international human rights issues.  As such interns provide support to all members of the legal team in many different capacities.  Visit PSLawNet for full details.

Featured Public Service Career Resource:

Searching for a summer position or exploring options for a post-graduate position?  You should check out Harvard Law School’s Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising’s Networking, Interviewing, and Following-up Landing Page. The Landing Page leads you to additional information on:

• Networking
• Negotiating – Tips on Choosing a Better Job Offer
• Interviewing and Following Up

This week: LSC on federal budget chopping block?; everything’s bigger in Texas, and hopefully that includes state funding of legal services; it does seem to include funding for innocence clinics at four Lone Star State law schools; get hitched to fund legal services in Idaho; mourning Sargent Shriver’s passing; state budgets in terrible shape; death penalty debate in Illinois could signify changes in other jurisdictions; NYC public interest and pro bono lawyers racing the clock to help Haitian immigrants; an expanded LRAP program at Boston College Law; commendable pro bono contributions from New York lawyers; an appeal for more pro bono from Pennsylvania’s top jurist; how do you prosecute a defendant who is deaf, mute, and unable to read or understand sign language?

• 1.20.11 – not exactly a surprise, but the Legal Services Corporation won’t be invited to a tea party anytime soon.  From the Associated Press: “A proposal unveiled by the Republican Study Committee, whose conservative members make up about three-fourths of the House GOP conference, called for bringing domestic agency budgets down to the 2006 levels in place when Republicans last controlled Congress. That’s about a $175 billion cut from current levels and roughly $90 billion more than the cuts promised by Republicans last fall … The study committee proposed eliminating several programs outright, including the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal help to people who can’t afford a lawyer….”  A Washington Post article does a good job of putting this spending proposal into context as debate over the federal budget promises to heat up in the coming weeks.

• 1.20.11 – an editorial in the San Antonio Express makes the case for preserving state funding for legal services.  The piece notes that in its last session the state government “provided some much needed one-time support in the form of a $20 million allocation in anticipation that the economy would get better and the IOLTA funding would go back to its former levels.”  But the financial circumstances for the legal services community have not markedly improved; they are in fact still “in crisis.”  Texas’s attorneys have contributed $700,000 via bar dues, and they have given generously of their time through pro bono efforts.  But the legislature must step up to the plate again by sustaining its funding.

• 1.19.11 – moving along to some better funding news out of Texas, the Dallas Morning News’s Trailblazers Blog notes that “…the $400,000 of funding allotted to the innocence clinics at the University of Texas, Texas Tech University, University of Houston and Texas Southern University law schools had not been slashed in the base House budget released late Tuesday night.”  The clinics have cleared 11 people who were wrongly convicted of crimes, and there is evidently more work to do in the Lone Star State.  We noted one of the more dramatic instances of a wrongful conviction’s undoing in our January 7 News Bulletin: a man who’d served 30 years in prison before being cleared by DNA evidence.

• 1.19.11 – Want to support legal services in Idaho?  Tie the knot.  In his annual “state of the judiciary” speech, the Gem State’s top jurist, Justice Daniel Eismann, lamented the fact that so many Idahoan families and children are unable to afford counsel in domestic relations and other cases.  The Spokesman Review reports that Justice Eismann proposed boosting the cost of marriage licenses by $20; this would yield about $280K per year which could fund civil legal services.

Keep reading . . .

Yesterday we began a series of blog posts on public interest job application tips by covering cover letters. Today we’ll focus on résumés. Next week we’ll publish a post on interview tips.

As we noted yesterday, the first thing for 1Ls and 2Ls to do is visit your career services office.  Career advisors are going to help you with both form and substance on summer job applications.  As regards formatting, employers

reviewing dozens upon dozens of résumés want to find the most relevant information quickly.  Clean, easy-to-read formatting is essential, and your career advisors know how to help you put your résumé in the most presentable format.  But more important is substance. Your career advisors know what language will jump out at an employer while they are reading, and advisors will also know how to frame your experiences and credentials in such a way that they will match up most effectively with the qualifications sought for a particular job.

And now…

Five Tips for Public Interest Résumés

1. Like a cover letter, a résumé is a living document.  Different job listings will call upon you to emphasize different experiences and skill sets.  You should be comfortable with making tweaks to your résumé so that it highlights the things that a particular employer will want to see.  As a result, though…
2. …you must have someone else proofread a résumé before you send it out – each time.  While tweaking a résumé is a best practice, it is also one of the easiest ways to inadvertently create typos, and/or language and grammar inconsistencies.
3. Do not include an “objective” statement in a résumé.  It is a waste of space, and employers know your objective is to land a job.
4. A résumé should, as specifically as possible, list your skills and experiences.  It should be driven by action verbs and cite to numbers where possible.  E.g.: “Represented 3 minor defendants as a student-attorney while completing an intensive, one-semester juvenile justice clinic,” as opposed to, “Juvenile Justice Clinic, Fall Semester 2010.”
5. A résumé generally should not exceed one page.   This is a hard issue to give advice on because there are two separate variables at work in determining résumé length: how much relevant experience you have and how detailed (or lengthy) a job description is.  As a general matter, though, for summer jobs you should be able to capture all of your credentials and qualifications on a one-page résumé.  The folks at Harvard’s Office of Public Interest Advising (OPIA) list exceptions to the rule with which we agree: “Exceptions to this ‘one page rule’ are if you have an extensive list of publications or five or more years of work experience prior to law school.”  (We also recommend reading through the OPIA résumé tips in full.)  We can also speak from an employer’s perspective here, and the reality is that a one-page résumé just seems “cleaner” and less cumbersome to read.  If a law student sends a two-page résumé, that second page better have been necessary – i.e. filled with relevant past experience – or we’re turned off as an employer.  So our advice, to use a fancy legal term, is this: operate on the “rebuttable presumption” that your résumé should be one page.  If you come across a job listing that compels you to go over a page, talk to your career advisor about it.

Bonus Tips:

• Italicized text is generally easier to read than underlined text.
• Putting dates of employment or past experiences in the left margin makes for an easy-to-read format.

Remember to consult PSLawNet’s Job Search Fundamentals page for more tips.

Next Monday we’ll post interviewing tips. Stay tuned.  And good luck!

It’s that time of year.  1Ls and 2Ls are scurrying about looking for summer internship/clerkship listings, checking deadlines, and putting application materials together.  Here, we start a series of job application posts we’ll publish over the next several days, offering tips and best practices. Today’s post will focus on cover letters.  

Before we get to our tips list, the first, most important, universal tip is that law students should immediately schedule an appointment in their career services or public interest advising office.  Your author, about 10 years ago, fancied himself a sort of rogue public-interest student who didn’t need the help of his public interest career advisor.  This was really, really dumb.  Only after I sent the job applications out did I see the typos (amazing how they jump out at you once the original letter has already been sent), the formatting inconsistencies, etc.  These are things that a trained eye would have caught in no time.  So by all means, speak to a professional who’s helped hundreds of students in the exact position you’re in now.

Without further ado:

Five Tips for Public Interest Cover Letters

1. A cover letter is a “living document,” which means that each letter must be tailored to specific employers.  An employer is usually able to identify a form letter by the end of the first paragraph.  Then that letter is often thrown in the trash can before the second paragraph begins.
2. A cover letter should almost always be one page.  The chief exception may be if you have a wealth of experience related to a particular employment opportunity, and if the job listing for that opportunity is so fleshed out that you need more than a page to convey your qualifications.  This is not typically the case with law student positions, so try to keep it to one.  If you want a second opinion on a particular job application, ask your career advisor.
3. A cover letter is a complement to the resume, not simply a reformatted version of the resume.  The letter gives you a chance to express your passion directly to the employer in a slightly less formal manner than a resume; it gives you a chance to say not only what your credentials are, but a) why your credentials will enable to you to do that job, and b) why you want that job.  A personal commitment to an organization and/or its mission is a chief criterion used by almost all public interest employers in evaluating job candidates.  This doesn’t mean that you should go over the top, writing something like, “As a child I fell asleep dreaming of handling public benefits appeals.”  But the cover letter is your opportunity to say that you want to use your degree to “ensure that the poor and others on society’s margins can achieve real, meaningful access to the justice system” and, if you can, to illustrate past experiences that reflect this commitment.  One cover letter format to consider is as follows:
   • Paragraph One: Who I am and, in short, why I want the job;
   • Paragraph Two: What I bring to the job by way of experience, interest, and credentials;
   • Paragraph Three: Fleshed out explanation of why I want the job – an expression of my passion for the employer organization and/or the work.
4. Use the qualifications listed in the job description as prompts for points to hit about your experience/credentials. If an employer is seeking someone with an interest in juvenile justice issues, then you can write that, “My strong interest in juvenile justice issues has prompted me to gain experience researching juvenile sentencing trends for violent offenses, and to spend four weeks shadowing a legal services attorney who represents accused minors in criminal proceedings.
5. Have someone – a career counselor, classmate, friend, etc. – proofread your cover letters.  We are always our own worst editors and proofreaders, so don’t rely on yourself to do it.

Bonus Tip: Follow application instructions to the letter.  An employer may send a job description to your school, and your school may post it on Symplicity.  This does not necessarily mean that the employer wishes to receive your application via a Symplicity email – even if the employer does want the application emailed.  If they direct you to apply by email, send the email directly to them yourself.

For more tips and best practices, be sure to visit PSLawNet’s job search fundamentals page.

NEXT UP: later this week revisit the PSLawNet Blog for a post on resume tips.

This week: we begin with an exciting announcement about…case management software(!), but then we move on to a profile of Chicago’s Cabrini Green Legal Aid; kudos for a Florida-based Equal Justice Works fellow; the ABA wants guaranteed counsel in civil contempt proceedings; profiles of Judy Clarke, the accomplished federal defender who will represent accused killer  Jared Loughner; a NOLA administrative battle has judges squaring off against the DA and public defender; thoughts from a deferred associate leaving Texas RioGrande Legal Aid; UNC law forges a new pro bono partnership; a statewide legal services hotline is launched in Oklahoma; Legal Aid of East Tennessee gets $125K in IOLTA revenue; free legal help for Staten Islanders facing debt collection cases; and office/staff constriction at Southern Arizona Legal Aid.

• 1.13.11 – looking for new case management software, legal services providers?  According to a press release, “Technology consulting firm Urban Insight today announced a donation of nearly $100,000 in free software to help nonprofit legal services organizations that serve millions of residents in 12 states … Urban Insight’s free and open source software, called Drupal for Legal Aid Websites, or DLAW, enables legal aid programs to affordably manage complex websites using only a web browser … DLAW is developed and maintained in the public interest by Urban Insight in collaboration with Legal Services National Technology Assistant Project (LSNTAP), Idaho Legal Aid Services (ILAS) and legal aid organizations from Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia. Original development of the software was funded through a Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative Grant.  More information about DLAW is available on a special website, www.legalaidtech.org, where legal aid organizations can also download the latest version of the software for free.”

• 1.12.11 – the Huffington Post has a nice, albeit brief, profile of Chicago-based Cabrini Green Legal Aid.  “The Cabrini Green Legal Aid (CGLA) has provided free legal services to Chicagoans since 1973 and represents residents in the city living below the poverty level.  From family and housing law to criminal defense, CGLA wants all residents to know their options.”

• 1.12.11 – hey, wait a minute.  More Huffington Post.  And, only a week after naming an Equal Justice Works fellow its “Greatest Person of the Day” (Anneliese Gryta – 1/4/11), Huffington Post did it again.  January 11’s Greatest Person of the Day was Equal Justice Works Fellow Peterson St. Philippe of Gulf Coast Legal Services in Tampa, FL.  “[A]s an Equal Justice Works Fellow working with Gulf Coast Legal Services, Peterson finds himself in a prime position to give back. For Haitian immigrants who arrived before the quake, he assists in filing for Temporary Protected Status–letting them stay and work here for up to 18 months.  But for survivors who fled to America after the quake, the legal options differ. Typically granted temporary visa status, these immigrants cannot legally work or drive a car, leaving them stranded in legal limbo. Many of these people have nothing to go back to in Haiti, where they have lost homes and family members.”  While both Gryta and St. Philippe are doing great work and undoubtedly deserve this kind of recognition, we at the PSLawNet Blog find it curious that two EJW fellows have been featured in consecutive weeks.  As it happens, we’re going to happy hour with a friend from EJW this evening.  We’ll get to the bottom of this.  We’ll likely also stick our friend with the bar bill, but let’s keep that between us.

• 1.12.10 – the ABA has filed an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case – Turner v. Rogers, to be argued on March 23 – asserting “that poor people should have the right to a lawyer in civil contempt proceedings carrying a threat of jail time … According to the brief (PDF), the ABA has concluded that low-income people should have a right to counsel in adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving sustenance, safety, health, or child custody determinations. The rationale underlying this position also supports a right to counsel in civil contempt cases where an indigent defendant faces possible jail time.”

• 1.10.11 – the New York Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune are among many news outlets that have written about the federal defender who will represent accused Tucson killer Jared Loughner.  Judy Clarke’s record of helping defendants in high-profile cases avoid the death penalty is remarkable.  From the Times piece, which refers to Clarke as a “master strategist”: “The capital-defense lawyer who will represent Jared L. Loughner in the shootings in Tucson, Judy Clarke, is a well-known public defender who gets life sentences in cases that often begin with emotional calls for the death penalty.  Ms. Clarke has helped a number of infamous defendants avoid death sentences, including Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Robert Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber; and Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her toddlers.”  The Union-Tribune article focuses on Clarke’s low-key personality, work ethic, and her passion for making the justice system work fairly for those accused of crimes.  “Those who know her say she’s the most low-profile high-profile attorney in the country — she doesn’t chase after cases and she doesn’t do press conferences. All she does is work.”

• 1.10.11 – according to the New Orleans Times Picayune, a strange battle is playing out in New Orleans criminal courts regarding the system for assigning cases to judges.  “The DA’s office and public defenders want a system that allows them to better manage their offices by assigning cases to a judge the moment a person is arrested. This summer, the judges agreed to that change, but then three months later scrapped it, saying it wasn’t fairly distributing cases.”  And what’s a courtroom – or courthouse – drama without dueling experts?  The judges abandoned the new system after a report from the National Center for State Courts (which had been commissioned by the judges) found that the system created an imbalanced workload from judge to judge.  Not to be outdone, though, the DA and PD can point to a recent report from the New Orleans inspector general’s office which is critical of the NCSC report. The latest is that the judges are commissioning yet another study.  The “battle of the experts” may end up being a battle of attrition.  (Here, by the way, is a Times Picayune editorial siding with the DA and PD.)

• 1.10.11 – the TRLA Times, a newsletter run by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, features a post by an outgoing Sidley Austin deferred associate who spent a year in TRLA’s Austin office defending low-income clients who were facing eviction actions.  Vijay Desai ran a trial within his first month of work (lost, but learned a lot), and through the course of his year got a lot of litigation skills under his belt.  Here’s how he closed the piece: “Finally, I learned that legal aid attorneys and staff are among the most decent human beings I have ever met.  I do not know where it begins, but the greatest characteristic I can identify is their unshakable passion for helping the helpless.  Advice from one of my supervisors almost always begins with ‘It’s just not right!  They shouldn’t be allowed to do this.’  And I have never worked in an environment where my supervisors were so enthusiastic about stopping everything they were doing to answer my questions … I am still whole-heartedly committed to my career in IP law, but now I have a new commitment to continue housing pro bono work as well.  Sidley Austin is gaining more than an attorney – they are gaining an associate who knows that his strength lies less in his one year of knowledge and more in his friends at TRLA who will always be his mentors.”

• 1.9.11 – more news about law schools entering into pro bono partnerships with legal services providers in order to help the rising numbers of low-income clients who seek assistance.  Chapel Hill News reports that “[t]he Pittsboro Office of Legal Aid of North Carolina has partnered with the UNC School of Law to assist qualifying low-income Orange County residents seeking divorces.  Under the partnership, UNC law students who are committed to providing access to justice for people of modest means will represent clients under the supervision [of a clinical professor].”

• 1.8.11 – Legal services news from Oklahoma.  The Enid News & Eagle (great name! – why just get news when you can get it with an eagle!?) reports that “Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma has launched a statewide phone line to better serve low-income and elderly Oklahomans facing civil legal problems.”

• 1.8.11 – from the Daily Times in the Volunteer State, we learn that the “Tennessee Bar Foundation has awarded Legal Aid of East Tennessee a $129,467 grant from its IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts) program to be used to provide critical civil legal services to the abused, impoverished and elderly during 2011 … Even with this generous grant award, there are thousands more that need LAET’s help. It is estimated that more than 300,000 persons in the LAET service area are eligible for services, yet limited resources allow LAET to serve less than 5 percent of the legal needs of this population.”

• 1.8.11 – according to a report from the NYC-based CBS radio affiliate, Staten Island lawyers are teaming up to provide free legal help to the increased numbers of New Yorkers facing consumer debt collection actions.  “In 2009, more than 15,000 collection cases were filed, according to the [Richmond County Bar] Association, and only 1 percent of the defendants had legal representation.  [The bar] formed a civil legal advice and resource office to provide free legal aid.

• 1.7.11 – We end the digest, unfortunately, with some bad news out of the Arizona legal services community.  The Nogales International reports that budget strains have taken a toll on Southern Arizona Legal Aid, which last week shuttered its Santa Cruz County office and let two staffers go.  SALA is looking for free office space now, and the county attorney, who referred many cases to SALA, is supportive of a continued presence.  Like a lot of providers, the main culprit causing SALA’s budget woes is a huge falloff of IOLTA funding – 50% in this case.

When hunting for a public interest job (summer or permanent), networking is an invaluable career-building tool.  As we’ve noted before, networking is not schmoozing.  Rather, it is the process of developing relationships with individuals and organizations who operate in the professional arena that you wish to join (or advance within).   We’re thrilled to present this guest post –  10 Tips for Networking Made Easy! – by Michael Bergmann, executive director of the Chicago-based Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI).

Michael joined PILI in 2006 as Pro Bono Initiative Director and more recently served as PILI’s Director of Programs prior to being named Executive Director on December 1, 2010.  Prior to joining PILI in 2006, Michael served as the Guardian Ad Litem Program Director for Chicago Volunteer Legal Services.  An active member of the American Bar Association, he is Chair-Elect of the ABA Young Lawyers Division and Secretary of the Lawyers Conference of the Judicial Division.   

10 Tips for Networking Made Easy

1. It’s always better to give than receive!  Networking isn’t about getting a job or business development; it’s about developing relationships and making connections.  Networking is about meeting others to learn about what their needs are, how you can help and what connections you can make.  If you approach it from this angle, you’ll be successful and receive your rewards.  If not, you’ll be labeled a schmoozer, ‘pol’ or worse.
2. RSVP when asked, and do what you said!  They wouldn’t ask if they didn’t care.  If a host is asking for responses, be sure to let them know if you’re coming and if you say you are, be there.
3. Turn your cell phone/PDA/pager off!  I know it’s hard, but try it.  Hiding in a corner checking messages or on a call doesn’t go unnoticed.   And, answering the phone or checking e-mail while you’re talking, well, need I say more?
4. Listen more than you talk!  This is critical to a good networking session.  Take the time to learn about the person.  But, no one wants to carry the weight of the whole conversation, so talk responsibly.
5. Learn the person’s name and use it!  This is important during the conversation and for afterwards.  Doing so will show your sincerity and interest in the person and will help you remember their name later.
6. Know who you are and what you are!  Be able to explain who you are and to tell a little about yourself.  No one wants to hear the highlights of you resume or feel like their being sold something.  Explain who you are and what you do in a short but thorough way and relate to what you’ve learned about them.
7. Put your best face forward!  If you’re that mad/sad/angry/sick, don’t go.  No one wants to hear your whining or sob story when they first meet you and your less than sunny disposition will impede your ability to make connections.
8. Always have business cards on you!  Nothing kills a great networking opportunity like not having a way to connect again in the future.  And, be sure the one you give it is really yours!  You might jot down some important facts about the person or your conversation on the back of the card for later use.
9. Don’t shoulder surf!  You may think no one notices, but they do.  When talking with someone be sure to give them your full attention.  If you’re not enjoying the conversation, then politely move on.
10. Follow up with the contacts you make!  Whenever possible, you should follow-up within a week of meeting a new contact.  Include some highlights from your discussion to help them remember you.  And, if they follow-up with you first, be sure to respond.

Need a job or internship? During the  last week PSLawNet has posted:   34 new attorney positions,   17 new internships, and  4 new law related opportunities.  Additionally, there are currently 1,031 active opportunities in our job database.  To search the database visit PSLawNet.

Featured New Positions:

The Legal Aid Society – Employment Law Center (LAS-ELC) in San Francisco is hiring for an attorney to direct and supervise its Claims Project, which provides low-income and unemployed workers with information, counseling and representation in wage/hour claims and unemployment insurance appeals.   To implement the project, the staff attorney trains and supervises law student counselors to represent clients in administrative hearings, corresponds with claimants, employers, judges, the Labor Commissioner and representatives of the EDD/CUIB, and follows up on behalf of clients.  The staff attorney will provide technical support and possible co-counsel to LAS-ELC litigation staff; will conduct periodic trainings on UI and wage/hour and other issues to sister organizations and other groups; and will seek to influence policy through legislative or agency policy-making processes or amicus work.  Additionally, the staff attorney will periodically supervise the LAS-ELC’s Workers’ Rights Clinic, will conduct extensive community outreach, and will evaluate potential claims on behalf of the organization.  As an integral member of the Community Legal Services program, the staff attorney works with the program director, language access coordinator, and program assistant to provide direct legal services to several thousand clients throughout California each year.  Application Deadline:  January 21, 2011.  Visit PSLawNet for full details.

The Illinois Migrant Legal Assistance Project is seeking summer interns to work with Spanish-speaking migrant and seasonal farmworkers in Illinois.   IMLAP has been at the forefront of farmworker advocacy for decades providing legal representation to farmworkers harvesting crops, detasseling corn, working in packing sheds, or cultivating nursery products throughout Illinois.  Interns will be assigned to one of three satellite offices and be responsible for its daily operations (Mendota, Champaign/Rantoul, or Carbondale).  Paid internships begin May 31st and end August 14, 2011.  Application Deadline:  April 15, 2011. Check PSLawNet for additional details and application instructions.

Featured Public Service Career Resource:

Searching for a summer or post-graduate positions?  Don’t forget to maximize the effectiveness of your application materials by taking advantage of the resume tips and cover letter samples on our Job Search Fundamentals page.  Also, check our blog regularly in the upcoming months because we will be featuring a variety of posts on resume/cover letter drafting, interviewing, and more.  Check out this post from last week on strategic planning for your post-graduate job search.

Learn more about getting a PSLawNet job seeker or employer account . . .

Here’s a message from the folks organizing this year’s RebLaw gathering:

Come to the 17th Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference!
Yale Law School
February 18-20, 2011

Hello Rebel!  

You are invited to the 17th Annual Rebellious Lawyering Conference, which will take place on the weekend of February 18-20, 2011.  Last year, we brought over 700 practitioners, law students, and community activists to New Haven to discuss progressive strategies for social change within and without the law, and we’re excited to do it again! We have posted descriptions of panels and workshops on our website and will continue to update with speakers and schedule information as it becomes available.  Please visit: http://www.yale.edu/reblaw/  to register, and for more information–PLEASE REGISTER BEFORE FEBRUARY FIRST IF YOU WOULD LIKE FREE HOUSING!

Questions?  contact rebellious.law.questions@gmail.com

This week: indigent defense budget wrangling between a county and state government; a new veterans clinic will operate out of a West Virginia Veterans Affairs building; Ithaca has gorges and a securities law clinic; it’s nice when a legal services lawyer is the GREATEST PERSON OF THE DAY; a 30-year prison ordeal ended for an innocent man following his exoneration in a Texas court (wow, if the PSLawNet Blog subtracted 30 years from his life he’d be writing this report in crayon and commuting to work on a Big Wheel); hail to the new LSC chief; a  new Top Ten Environmental Watch List from Vermont Law School; the “perfect storm” in legal services funding; the National Law Journal’s Pro Bono Awards; in California, you best not call yourself “legal aid” unless you’re really legal aid; mirroring a national trend, law-firm pro bono in Kansas City picked up during the recession; no honeymoon period for Texas’s new death-row appeals office; the remarkable story of a recovering drug addict who’s just become a California county’s chief prosecutor.

• 1.6.10 – according to the Poughkeepsie Journal, in a cost-saving move last year New York’s state government passed a bill that changed the nature of its relationship with Dutchess County for purposes of funding indigent defense services.  County officials are contending with a potential loss of revenue from the state unless the county moves away from an assigned-counsel system and toward a staffed public defense program.  This situation is but one illustration of the tension that will exist between state and county governments as they struggle with post-recession budget shortfalls.  Criminal justice is an area in which many state and municipal governments throughout the country have shared-cost arrangements, so it will be interesting to see how they maintain balances amidst fiscal pressures in the coming budget cycles.

• 1.5.10 – In West Virginia, the State Journal reports on a new veterans legal clinic that will station a lawyer at the VA building.  “The Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center has a new legal aid program for its veterans. Legal Aid of West Virginia, Equal Justice Works, AmeriCorps, The State Nursing Home, and the VA Hospital are all working together to offer free legal assistance to Veterans and their family members.”  Once per week, an Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps Legal Fellow will set up shop in the VA to meet with those in need.

• 1.4.10 – from the Ithaca Journal, we learn of a recession-era legal clinic operating at Cornell: “The Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School is available to provide legal services to investors in the Southern Tier and central and western New York who have suffered losses due to fraud or other improper conduct, the clinic announced.”

• 1.4.10 – the Huffington Post’s “Greatest Person of the Day” on Tuesday was Anneliese Gryta, a legal services lawyer doing community economic development work in Toledo (go Mudhens!).  Anneliese’s doing some terrific work as an Equal Justice Works Fellow.  Check out our earlier blog post to learn more about her efforts.

• 1.4.10 – NPR was one of several news outlets that covered the release of an innocent Texan man after 30 years of incarceration.  The story focused on the release of Cornelius Dupree, Jr., and went on to note that there’s something of a trend afoot in Dallas.  “For the past five years, Dallas has watched a parade of men, nearly all black, march out of the state prison system after wasting decades of their lives. Dupree, who served more time than any other Texas prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence, is the 21st from Dallas — that’s more than all but two states.  Barry Scheck and his staff at the Innocence Project have been behind many of these exonerations, including Dupree’s.”  It’s not necessarily that Dallas County juries get it wrong more than others, but Dallas happens to do a good job of storing DNA from old criminal cases.  So advocates for the wrongfully imprisoned have more evidence to work with.

Keep reading . . .

Last June, our former NALP colleague Katie Dilks published an article asking “Why is Nobody Talking about Gender Diversity in Public Interest Law?”  Katie noted that while a lot of time and effort is used analyzing gender gaps which disfavor female attorneys in law-firm practice and on the bench, there’s been little discussion of the fact that the tables are turned in the nonprofit arena:

[According to NALP’s 2004 After the J.D. report,] 9% (147) of the women surveyed worked in civil legal services or public defender offices, nonprofits or education, and public interest, while only 4% (71) of the men worked in these fields.

Nonprofit guys and gals, but mostly gals

More recent research by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association supports the idea of a notable gender gap in the civil legal services community, particularly among younger attorneys.  The survey effort that led to NLADA’s 2007 report, It’s the Salaries, Stupid…And Much More, was focused mainly on gathering information from legal services attorneys 35 and younger about how salary and debt impacted their decision to remain in legal services or move to private practice.  A startling data point emerged when the responses were broken down by gender: of the 786 survey respondents, 79% were female.  4 in 5. Wow. 

We’ve now got some even fresher data which confirms a gender gap within nonprofit law offices.  NALP’s 2010 Public Interest & Public Sector Attorney Salary Survey (final report available in NALP’s bookstore here), in addition to collecting salary data, also collected data about the gender makeup in public interest law offices.  Among attorneys in civil legal services offices, 66% were female.  (That 2 in 3 legal services attorneys are female might seem like good news in light of the 4-in-5 figure from the 2007 NLADA report.  But recall that the NLADA data dealt only with attorneys 35 years old and younger.  So it’s reasonable to at least wonder if the gender gap could be wider among younger attorneys.)

Interestingly, by comparison, attorneys working with local prosecutors’ and public defenders’ offices were split nearly 50/50 with respect to gender makeup.

There has long been discussion in the legal services community about the “why” – why is the community disproportionately female?  One worrisome explanation which has been offered is that the low salaries (legal services salaries are basically at the back of the pack in the legal industry) ward off men, particularly those who feel a need to be significant breadwinners on the domestic front.  In this circumstance, there is a tie-in between the gender makeup of an office and the salaries paid to attorneys.  John Tobin, executive director of New Hampshire Legal Assistance, wrote in a 2003 Management Information Exchange Journal article:

“Legal services salaries are so low that many legal services staff are de facto subsidized by a spouse/partner, and a divorce/breakup can make the legal services person’s financial situation untenable. Legal services staffs are becoming disproportionately female. We must ask ourselves what role we are unwittingly playing in a culture that conditions women to work for less.”