Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! The past week has been an eventful one, particularly concerning Federal agency action (and responses to such action by other government and civil institutions). Additionally, the Movement Advocacy Project (MAP) released a report on the changing dynamic between state legislatures and local authorities. You’ll find these tidbits first, ordinally, below. Along, of course, with other news of interest.

See you around,
Sam

Federal Government

• The Washington Post reported that “Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, fired the agency’s 25-member advisory board Wednesday, days after some of its members criticized his leadership of the watchdog agency.“
• According to Waterworld.com, a broad coalition of interest groups, “including public health, environment, faith-based, farming and ranching, and legal advocacy groups” signed a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services “calling for the immediate release of a suppressed federal study that says perfluorinated chemicals in drinking water are hazardous at much lower levels than the [EPA]’s guidelines state.”
• Courthousenews.com reported that “[a] host of legal advocacy organizations, human trafficking survivors, attorneys and prosecutors called on the Justice Department Wednesday to reinstate funding for post-conviction relief to expunge trafficking survivors’ criminal records.“

State & Local Government – Civil Rights

• The Movement Advancement Project published a report chronicling the efforts “many state legislatures” are taking to limit local governments’ authority to “protect their residents on a range of issues, including workers’ rights and benefits, the minimum wage, nondiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, pro-immigrant policies, environmental efforts, and more.”
• Governing.com profiled efforts within state governments to reduce barriers to hiring individuals with disabilities into government positions.

Legal Employment

• In Brooklyn, NY, “staff attorneys at CAMBA Legal Services…announced that they have won union recognization after a card check agreement was reached.“

Immigration

• The Mayors of Los Angeles, CA; Houston, TX; Tucson, AZ, and Albuquerque, NM sent a letter to Attorney General Sessions condemning the Department of Justice’s policy of separating children from their families at the border as “cruel,” “morally reprehensible,” “not an appropriate use of taxpayer resources,” and “utterly inconsistent with our values of decency and compassion.”
  • Meanwhile, Vice reported that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement–“a federal program that for over a decade has funded organizations representing unaccompanied minors in immigration court…told the groups [it funds] to stop taking new cases just days after the family separation policy began.”
• In New York, NY, Human Rights Watch released a report criticizing New York City’s “criminal carveout” excluding immigrants with certain criminal convictions from city-funded immigrant legal services.
• Haaretz profiled the joint efforts of faith communities across the country to provide sanctuary to immigrants within their spaces of worship.

Access to Justice – Civil

• In San Francisco, CA, “[a] ballot measure to give tenants facing eviction lawsuits the right to taxpayer-funded legal representation won Tuesday…with nearly 56 percent in favor[.]“
• In Quebec, legal aid eligibility thresholds increased by 6.67%, as a result of minimum wage increases implemented on May 1st.
• In the Northwest Territories, the Court of Appeal ruled that a Legal Aid Commission policy against funding human rights complaints is not discriminatory.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Texas, reporting out of Austin decried the fact that indigent defense, “a program that’s supposed to be fully funded by the state[,] now has local tax dollars covering about 90 percent of the costs.”
• In Maryland, the Court of Special Appeals ruled that “[c]onvicts have a right to counsel when being resentenced after a determination that their original sentence was illegal.”
• In Livingston County, NY, the Public Defender Office announced plans to hire new attorneys in order to comply with a new state mandate providing a right to counsel at arraignment.

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Minneapolis, MN, the Minneapolis Police Department announced plans to stop conducting stings of low-level marijuana sales due to their disproportionate racial effects.
• In California, “voters appeared to reject liberal challengers in three closely watched district attorney races on Tuesday, delivering a sharp defeat to a national network attempting to reshape the criminal justice system by electing left-leaning prosecutors.”
• In Kansas, the Federal Public Defender’s Office said it has discovered that the Core Civic prison in Leavenworth, a Federal holding facility, recorded over 1,300 conversations between public defenders and their clients over a two-year period.

Music Bonus!

Mumford & Sons, “Not in Nottingham” (Disney Cover)

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Two BIG highlights this week:

• The Federal Student Aid Office has published a page describing the Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which may be able to help borrowers whose PSLF applications have been denied. See “Student Loans,” below.
• An article in The Practice attempts an empirical examination of “public-interest drift,” the phenomenon wherein law students with nonprofit or government career ambitions decide instead to pursue positions in private law firms.

See you around,
Sam

Public Service Career Development

• In The Practice (the journal of Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession), CLP Research Fellow John Bliss conducted “a systematic qualitative look at the public-interest drift process.” Bliss defined “public interest drift” as the phenomenon wherein students with nonprofit or government career ambitions decide instead to pursue positions in private law firms. He concluded that “these students struggle most with a lack of preparation for the job market.” The article concludes with “policy recommendations focusing on preparing students to broker the job market.”

Student Loans

• The Federal Student Aid Office published a guide to the Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, under which “[i]f your PSLF application was denied because some or all of your payments were not made on a qualifying repayment plan for PSLF, you may be able to receive loan forgiveness under a temporary opportunity.”
• In the U.S. Senate, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand discussed a pair of bills she hopes to schedule votes on which would help alleviate student debt.

Immigration

• In Montgomery County, MD, the county council “passed a special appropriation that creates a legal fund for undocumented immigrants who live in the county and could face deportation.“
• In California, the State Senate “and more than 20 cities and counties have come out in support of the state’s ‘sanctuary’ law, which limits police and sheriff agencies from cooperating with federal immigration agencies” in amicus court filings authored by former U.S. Attorney General Holder, submitted in the federal lawsuit brought by Attorney General Sessions against California’s immigrant policies.
• Meanwhile, also in CA, NPR examined whether the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” border policy is having its desired effect.

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Washington, DC, the President of the ABA testified before a Senate subcommittee that “[t]he Legal Services Corp.’s funding should be restored ‘at least’ to inflation-adjusted 2010 levels.“

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Missouri, the Director of the State Public Defender’s Office filed a motion in a high-profile first-degree murder case arguing that “it’s not fair that the state is stepping in to help county prosecutors while also ‘depriving the defense of the resources necessary to provide diligent, effective, and conflict-free representation.'” According to the National Post, “[t]he motion is the latest effort to draw attention to funding problems that have prompted an ACLU lawsuit and increasingly led Missouri public defenders to turn down new cases.”
• In New Mexico, the president of the state prosecutors’ association suggested that public defenders should turn to charitable donations and other sources of private fundraising, instead of seeking to decline new cases in the face of unconstitutional caseloads. The Public Defender Commission in the state is developing new rules “that would allow overburdened public defenders in New Mexico to refuse new cases rather than provide inadequate legal representation.”
• In Wisconsin, the Supreme Court “voted to raise the hourly rate of pay for court-appointed attorneys from $70 to $100 per hour [in response to] a petition from a coalition of lawyers and judges who say Wisconsin’s current system for public defense attorneys is so underfunded, it’s facing a constitutional crisis.” However, the ruling “leaves the pay rate for state-funded public defenders at $40 per hour, the lowest in the nation.”
• In Buffalo, New York, local TV spoke with a public defender at the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo about his hopes for the state’s new Public Defense Reform law.
• In Mississippi, a local television station reported on the unacceptable lengths of pre-trial detentions in Mississippi–an issue the Mississippi Public Defender Task Force and the ACLU have been working to raise with state lawmakers.
• In Texas, a local county commissioner called out the state government at a conference of county judges and commissioners. According to reporting from Go San Angelo, the official claimed “the State of Texas is seriously in arrears when it comes to reimbursing counties for indigent defense attorneys, and that could make it difficult for county officials to balance the budget in the future.”

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Baltimore, MD, “[s]chool discipline reform advocates have asked the Baltimore city schools police to adopt a youth-specific Miranda warning to let children know their legal rights.”
• In New Orleans, LA, Court Watch Nola (CWN) called out the New Orleans District Attorney’s office for recording and listening to inmates’ calls to their lawyers.

Music Bonus!

Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! The big news for this week once again grew out of our recent conference, as the conversation we were having during the Public Service Luncheon about diversity and legal technology became a talking point in the ABA Journal. And folks working on proposals for NALP’s 2019 Conference may want to check out the Center for Court Innovation podcast below (see Criminal Justice Reform), where a longtime public defender discusses the power of prosecutors to change the system.

See you around,
Sam

Legal Technology

• The ABA Journal discussed the implications of a new report calling attention to the lack of diversity among the founders of legal technology firms.
• The New York Times published a primer on the European Union’s new “General Data Protection Regulation”–a new legal regime that is attempting to force companies to be more transparent about what data they collect, and to offer consumer more say in how their information is used.

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court is accepting applications for volunteer, at-large appointments to the Massachusetts Access to Justice Commission.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Alberta, negotiations continued between the provincial government, Legal Aid Alberta, and the Law Society of Alberta over funding for legal aid.
• In Montana, the Public Defender’s Office reported that the agency’s total caseload has decreased by 5 percent since last year, crediting the reduction to indigent defense reforms the Montana legislature introduced in 2017.
• In Michigan, the Lansing State Journal profiled the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission.

Criminal Justice Reform

• The Center for Court Innovation interviewed a public defender about how reform-minded prosecutors have the power to reshape the justice system.

Music Bonus!

Childish Gambino, “Stand Tall”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I must confess, with the Annual Education Conference very much on my mind the news that leapt off the page for me this week concerned coverage of efforts in Newark and San Francisco to create a right to counsel in eviction cases, in the model of New York City. The Public Service Section’s Conference Proposals Committee is considering proposing a conference session on these kinds of new initiatives and their implications for legal hiring; if you’re a NALP member feel free to reach out to me for details on how to attend the open meeting where we’ll be discussing this proposal and others, today at 1:30pm EST.

See you around,
Sam

Funding & Loans

• In Canada, uncertainty around a federal pay system has led to a situation in which “thousands of public servants [] don’t know whether they have been paid the raises and back pay owed to them [and won’t know] before June 30, 2019.”
• The President of the ABA argued in The Hill that “Congress must increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation.”
• In the US, major private industry leaders participated in a panel discussion discussing whether payroll-integrated student loan repayment and financing support should be a new form of job benefit.
• The US Department of Education revealed in court filings details of its new plan for serving borrowers in default on their federal student loans.

Legal Technology

• In Ohio, the Toledo Legal Aid Society launched a website, toledolegalaid.com, “intended to better connect underserved populations with legal representation.”
• The Center for Agriculture & Food Systems released the “Farmland Access Legal Toolkit,” an online resource designed to “support[] current and aspiring farmers in finding and transitioning farmland.”
• In Canada, “the federal government is willing to accept the privacy and security risks of storing data in the internet cloud as an alternative to its own aging computers that are ‘at risk of breaking down,’ says an internal policy paper.”
• Ars Technica’s Senior Technology Policy Reporter previewed arguments from his forthcoming book, Habeas Data, in the Los Angeles Times.
• In California, the ACLU wrote in support of SB1186, “a bill that helps restores power at the local level and makes sure local voices are heard when surveillance proposals are on the table.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Newark, NJ, the Mayor proposed a “municipal ordinance that would provide Newark’s low-income residents with access to free legal representation in landlord-tenant disputes.” The proposed ordinance would cover tenants facing eviction in Essex County Landlord Tenant Court earning up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line.
• In San Francisco, CA, the San Francisco Public Press profiled Proposition F–an upcoming ballot initiative that would provide free legal aid to tenants facing eviction.
• In Minneapolis, MN, the Star Tribune profiled the medical-legal partnership at the Community-University Health Care Center–one of the first such programs in the country, and an idea that has gained increasing traction at clinics and hospitals nationwide.
• In Albany, NY, the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new Center for Legal Services.
• In South Dakota, the State Bar of South Dakota sponsored a 3-day Ask-A-Lawyer event, an annual program allowing people to call in and ask anonymous questions about legal issues for free.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Louisiana, “the Louisiana Public Defender Board recently reached a compromise on a new plan intended to more fairly distribute state funds used to pay lawyers who represent indigent defendants…[b]ut because the amount of money available under the new plan is still limited, almost all districts are still worried.“
• In Wisconsin, “[t]he number of lawyers…willing to defend indigent clients for $40 an hour dropped 16 percent in five years, the head of the State Public Defender’s office told the supreme court.”
• In Missouri, the Pulitzer Center published a story detailing how “Missouri Public Defenders are Overloaded with Hundreds of Cases While Defendants Wait in Jail.”

Music Bonus!

2Cellos, “Thunderstruck”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I wish I could tell you that NALP’s Annual Conference is my highlight for you this week–I think it’s certainly provided more than a few highlights for those of us lucky enough to be here. However, the news I want to call your attention to most is Secretary Session’s dramatic reversal of his position on legal support for immigrants, which he announced this week before a Senate oversight committee. (See Immigration, below.) In addition, you’ll likely be interested in a new report out of Delaware showing a dramatic return on investment for legal aid.

In general, it’s been an eventful week. Read on to see what I mean.

See you around,
Sam

Funding

• In Delaware, the Combined Campaign for Justice produced an independent report showing a more than 700% return on investment for the state’s three legal aid providers. The providers are hoping to leverage the study as they seek to reverse cuts to their funding suffered in last year’s state budget.
• In New York, the 2019 State Budget restored over $1m in funding to Neighborhood Legal Services of Buffalo, which the organization had lost the previous year due to an administrative error.
• In Florida, Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida announced it received a $326,000 donation from Liggio Law–a proportion of $4m of unclaimed damage awards in a class action lawsuit.
• At Harvard, Ralph Nader and six other HLS alumni wrote an open letter “asking Law School Dean John F. Manning ‘82 if he intends to publicly respond to a report published last fall that criticizes the school’s commitment to public interest.”
• At Yale, “Professor Judith Resnik, the founding director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, was selected as a member of the 2018 class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows, awarded to support innovative scholarship on pressing contemporary issues.” The fellowship will allow Professor Resnik to “analyze[] how obligations of democratic states toward people in and out of prison are forged, and why the debilitation that many prison systems impose is beyond what governments should be able to inflict as punishment for crimes.”

Immigration

• “At a Senate committee hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he’s restoring funding to a program that provides free legal help to people in immigrant detention centers.“

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Florida, legal aid organizations and private attorneys filed amicus briefs in Marie Ann Glass v. Nationstar Mortgage et al., expressing concern that an unfavorable result “would discourage attorneys from defending homeowners if the lawyers couldn’t collect fees from defeated plaintiffs.”
• In New York, NY, the Right to Counsel NYC Coalition and Catholic Migration Services held a town hall meeting in Queens to explain the details of the city’s new law providing universal access to legal representation in wrongful eviction cases.
• The Hill published an opinion piece advocating in support of efforts in the Senate to provide civil legal aid specifically for veterans.
• In Ontario, community legal clinics across the northern portion of the province announced plans to band together in order to expand services. The new collaboration is called “Advocacy North.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Alberta, criminal defense groups continued their protest of legal aid funding in the province, calling the legal aid program “a starving system.” (See previous coverage of this issue in past weeks of the Digest.)
• In Travis County, TX, the Texas Tribune reported that the county’s indigent defense system still has lawyers working unsustainable caseloads, despite a highly-touted overhaul of the system in 2015.
• BET promoted its new show, “In Contempt”–a courtroom drama it believes will stand out for its decision to represent the work of public defenders. “[Y]ou’ll get a nice peek behind the curtain of their world, to see why these people are fighting, because it’s not for the money, because they’re underfinanced, they’re understaffed, they’re underinformed.”

Music Bonus!

Lauryn Hill, “To Zion”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! A number of major criminal justice-related legal changes are underway at both the federal and provincial levels up in Canada, detailed below. But the highlight of the news this week, for us, is our 2017 Pro Bono Publico Award Winner, Lydia X.Z. Brown, who received a feature article in Northeastern’s online publication. Lydia is a truly exceptional advocate, and the article does an excellent job illuminating the many reasons they became our 2017 PBP Award Winner. If you can’t make it to the Annual Conference next week, or you want an early glimpse of photos from Lydia’s award ceremony late last month, check out Northeastern’s coverage.

Hope to see you next week at NALP’s Annual Conference!
Sam

Student Debt

• “The Trump administration announced plans to make it easier for permanently disabled military veterans to have their federal student debt wiped away.“

Immigration

• America Magazine reported that the Department of Justice will temporarily halt its Legal Orientation Program, “[a] federal program that has help detained immigrants navigate the courts for the last 15 years”, at the end of the month while an audit assesses its cost-effectiveness.
• In Montgomery County, MD, the County Council discussed spending $374,000 to fund legal aid for immigrants facing deportation.

Legal Technology

• In Chicago, IL, Baker McKenzie relaunched its Homeless Youth Handbook, described as “a pro bono project led by the law firm to help homeless youth better understand their legal rights.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Ontario, the provincial government increased the threshold for financial eligibility for legal services by six percent, meaning “about 153,000 more people will be able to access [Legal Aid Ontairio’s] services.“
• In Kansas, businesses and other organizations joined Kansas Legal Services in an attempt to increase the amount of pro bono work performed in the state by petitioning the state Board of Law Examiners “to level the playing field by allowing in-house counsel with a restricted license to provide pro bono legal services.”
• In Ohio, the Ohio Supreme Court’s Civil Justice Program Fund provided a $50,000 grant to Southeast Ohio Legal Services “to increase legal assistance for ‘low income individuals who have children in their care but need help to get custody of the children.’“

Access to Justice – Criminal

• Legal experts criticized a Canadian Federal proposal for reducing delays in the courts, arguing that shifting caseloads from Superior Court by increasing the maximum available penalty for provincial court cases would “effectively prevent paralegals and law students from representing defendants in provincial court…because the Criminal Code only allows them to act in cases [with a lower maximum penalty.]“
• In Alberta, “[m]embers of a Calgary defense lawyers group say they will no longer do unpaid work to pressure the Alberta government to boost Legal Aid funding.”
  • Also in Alberta, the provincial government expanded duty counsel services to include defendants’ first appearance bail hearings as part of an initiative to reduce court backlogs.
• In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to restore the franchise to paroled felons, a move the Chautauqua County public defender has already praised as “the first of many steps in createing ‘equal justice’.“
• In St. Lawrence County, NY, the public defender’s office proposed hiring two additional public defender positions in order to meet new caseload guidelines the New York State Office of Indigent Defense Services established last year. According to the Watertown Daily Times, “[t]he new guidelines begin taking effect this year and will phase in fully by 2023, with $50 million being added to cover the increased costs each year.”

Music Bonus!

Brass Against the Machine, “Freedom” (Beyoncé/Rage Against the Machine Mashup)

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! There’s a fair amount of news this week, including some major new developments in law-school public-interest funding at Yale, Harvard, and in Ontario.

It was Louisiana that really caught my eye this week, though. Look at the two crim-law related sections below to read about how the state legislature is looking to slash funding for indigent defense and a local judge is calling into question a method by which some public defender offices have been trying to create alternative funding streams, in partnership with district attorneys.

Until next week,
Sam

Law School Public Interest Funding
& Student Loans

• At Yale Law, a classmate of Hillary Clinton is working to create a Public Interest Fund, in Ms. Clinton’s name, that would allow for two recent Yale grads to obtain year-long fellowships–and ultimately to create additional legal clinics at the school.
• At Harvard Law, students continued their advocacy efforts with the University, aimed at convincing the school to “strengthen its support for graduates pursuing public interest and lower-paying work.”
• In Ontario, the provincial government allocated an additional $7.3m for community legal clinics and law student legal aid services throughout the provinces in 2018-2019.
• In Alberta, a lack of legal aid funding from the provincial government fueled ongoing speculation about a potential legal aid strike.
• In Texas, state lawmakers called for changes to the a state statute barring workers from renewing professional licenses if they are in default on their student loans.
• 29 State Attorneys General wrote a letter to select members of Congress expressing opposition to the PROSPER Act’s provisions that would shield student loan collection companies from regulation by individual states.
• One of the country’s largest student loan servicers “sued the Connecticut Banking Department, challenging the agency’s demands for confidential information about its student loan borrowers.” [full article behind paywall]

Hiring Trends

• In Pittsburgh, PA, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette chronicled the difficulties the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office has had with turnover over the last year.

Immigration

• “More than two dozen elite private law firms filed amicus briefs…backing Hawaii in its U.S. Supreme Court challenge to President Trump’s executive order barring people from several Muslim majority countries from entering the United States.”
• A federal district judge ruled that the Commerce Department International Trade Administration (ITA) must comply with FOIA requests for its records on alien ingress for the same fees as other records. (The ITA had been charging $13,000 per year to access its data.)
• In New Jersey, prominent attorneys argued for the State Supreme Court to “promulgate a rule on an expedited basis imposing a special fee of $100 per year on every lawyer in the state…[with t]he proceeds…dedicated to enlisting attorneys to defend New Jersey residents facing possible deportation.”

Emerging Service Models

• Slate.com published an excellent piece on medical-legal partnerships in the United States.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Idaho, the Idaho Statesman reported on how “[a] growing body of research on Idaho’s overworked and underfunded public defenders has led to consensus across the board — from defendants to politicians to the public defenders themselves — that the system needs to change.”
• In Louisiana, public defenders spoke out against House Bill 167, a state legislature proposal that would shut down efforts to identify and exonerate the wrongfully convicted, cut funding for death penalty defense, and restrict funds for appealing convictions. The defenders warn these changes could slow the administration of justice and possibly cost the state more, long-term, than the status quo.

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Canada, the federal government proposed legislation that would “scrap most preliminary inquires, abolish peremptory challenges and make it easier for accused people to be released on bail as part of sweeping legislation intended to speed up Canada’s snail-like criminal-justice system.”
• In New York, NY, the Legal Aid Society argued to an appeals court that the City made false claims to the court below in a lawsuit concerning transparency for disciplinary records in the NYPD.
• In DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, a judge raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest in a new cooperative endeavor agreement under which the District Attorney’s Office will pay the Public Defender’s Office a portion of money the DA collects from a pretrial diversion program. Meanwhile, the Public Defender moved to recuse the judge, alleging the court itself had a “personal interest” in the matter. All public-defender-represented cases have been suspended until the issue is resolved.

Music Bonus!

William Shatner, “Common People”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! It’s been an eventful week. Many folks have worked to make sense of the many changes wrought last week in Congress’ omnibus bill. A judge in Georgia explained how important law schools are to the access-to-justice ecosystem while mourning the loss of Savannah Law School. And, of course, a tidbit I’ve created a special highlight for immediately below.

Until next week,
Sam

Highlight: Character & Fitness

• The Practice published a conversation exploring potential reforms to the way our profession attempts to ensure ethical conduct through its character & fitness requirements. As with intimated changes to federal hiring & firing (see below), these kinds of ideas would have a profound effect on who attempts to become a lawyer and how attorneys’ work is reviewed. Here’s a representative snippet:
  

  “The more I study this, the more the whole process feels arbitrary, often because the people who make the decisions at the bar associations are people who don’t have experience with the criminal justice system. They don’t understand things like reentry, rehabilitation, and all of the collateral consequences of coming out of prison. And they don’t understand addiction issues either.
  …
  [I]f the goal of character and fitness is to weed out lawyers without integrity, it is not working…[A]s a profession, I think that we should spend a lot less time worrying about character and fitness at entry and more time and more resources monitoring the conduct and behavior of practicing lawyers. I realize that it’s much easier to just keep people out at the front end and not have to deal with issues once somebody becomes a lawyer, but that system is not working.”

Federal Hiring

• The Hill published an opinion piece that picks up where this year’s State of the Union Address left off, arguing “Civil servants can undermine the president too easily.” I’ll be watching the development of arguments like this one, because if these voices are successful they may transform the way professional development happens in federal government.
• On a possibly related note, “[t]op law schools in the nation’s capital say they are seeking an uptick in students’ interest in careers outside of government and public interest.”
• The Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a regulation that would allow the IRS to hire outside specialists under certain circumstances, with a specific prohibition against doing so in situations involving summoned information or testimony under oath.

Student Loans

• Financial Regulation News discussed the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Technical Corrections Act, signed into law as part of last week’s omnibus spending bill. The bill aims to ensure that borrowers who should have been enrolled in the PSLF program but were not will be able to receive benefits. The New York Times provided additional background on the change.
• In Massachusetts, state officials spoke out against the Trump administration’s recent declaration that states cannot regulate student loan services. (Chronicled in a recent edition of the digest.)
• A group of Harvard Law students and alumni published an open letter to Havard Law’s Dean proposing five changes to the school’s Low Income Protection Plan “in order to ’empower HLS graduates of all backgrounds to pursue the careers of their choosing.'”

Immigration

• In New Jersey, Governor Murphy’s proposed budget includes a $2.1 million appropriation for immigrants facing deportation.
• In Iowa, “Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque is expanding its immigration legal services as the need for those resources continues to increase.”
• In Ohio, the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation argued that “Ohio’s philanthropic community must fully commit to investing in language, legal and health-care services to launch our newest Ohioans to success…Fewer than 35 attorneys statewide are available to assist Ohio’s immigrants regardless of their legal status or ability to pay.”

Legal Technology

• In Canada, the Law News Times reported that the Federal Privacy Commissioner “is working on developing new guidance on how companies should ask Canadians for meaningful consent [to collect, use, and disclose their personal information].”
• In Montreal, QC, Pro Bono Quebec launched the new version of its boussolejuridique.ca platform: http://boussolejuridique.ca/
• The Atlantic proposed questions for Congress to ask Mark Zuckerberg, solicited from a variety of scholars–including law professors. (Editor’s note: In addition to its effect on modern politics, Facebook’s technology platform provides the foundation for certain legal services tools, making issues surrounding privacy and Facebook relevant to our legal technology discussion. See, e.g. DoNotPay.)

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, CBC reported that “a growing number of Canadians are representing themselves in court.”
• In a statement, the ABA President commended Congress for increasing appropriations for the LSC by $25 million, while noting that more funding is still needed.
• In Indiana, Indiana Legal Services also welcomed the news of the expanded LSC budget.
• Nonprofit Quarterly analyzed the ways in which the recent two-year budget agreement, which provided an “unexpected funding boost” for nonprofits, will affect the operations of civil society organizations.
• In Kentucky, the state senate voted to eliminate funding for civil legal aid. Negotiations are ongoing. If senators are successful, Kentucky will become the third state without civil legal aid funding (alongside Delaware and Idaho).

Access to Justice – Criminal

• The 6th Circuit issued its en banc opinion in Turner v. U.S., finding no 6th amendment right to counsel prior to criminal indictment. The Volokh Conspiracy analyzed the ruling.
• In Savannah, GA, the Chief Judge for Chatham County State Court mourned the loss of Savannah Law School:
  

  “Over the last seven years, students have given 1000s of hours of unpaid labor to our courts, the Public Defenders office, the District Attorneys’ Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Federal Courthouse and in other practices across the low country. If you calculated those hours in terms of salaries (conservatively for a $12 per hour wage), it is safe to say the Law School as provided more than $1,000,000 worth of labor to the local community.”

• In Philadelphia, PA, the Chief Public Defender “is accusing the city’s court system of systematically depriving thousands of people of their due process rights by locking them up for probation violations without proper hearings.”
• In Galveston, TX, a lawyer brought suit against a local judge alleging the judge improperly removed him from cases because “he sought to provide a vigorous legal and factual defense for his clients.” As the New York Times puts it, the case aims to call attention to “[a] potential problem: Indigent defense lawyers often get their assignments from judges in whose courtroom they appear. This discourages a robust defense, experts say, and leads to an emphasis on resolving cases quickly.”
• In El Paso County, TX, the Texas Indigent Defense Commission released a report commending county officials for their successful efforts to address a series of problems discovered by the commission’s 2014 audit.
• In Michigan, the Marquette County Board of Commissioners unanimously opposed Governor Snyder’s proposed adjustments to Michigan’s indigent defense budget for fiscal year 2019, “stating it would unfairly shift financial burdens from the state onto counties.”

Music Bonus!

Janelle Monae, “Django Jane” [clean]

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! The big news this week is out of the Philadelphia DA’s office; if you haven’t read Larry Krasner’s memo yet, it’s well worth a look. On a related theme, “The Nation” magazine discusses ways in which law schools are attempting to step into the legal aid gap in the face of federal indifference. (There’s a lot of access to justice news this week, but those are the two standout bits.)

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• In Congress, the $1.3 trillion, six-month spending plan expanded Pell Grants and Public Service Loan Forgiveness funds.
• Meanwhile, the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard University filed a motion for an injunction seeking to prevent the US Department of Education from using earnings data to grant only partial student loan forgiveness to defrauded borrowers.

Access to Justice – Civil

• “The Nation” Magazine takes stock of the current environment in which indigent legal services –criminal and civil– are being provided, and the ways in which law schools are attempting to fill the gaps created by the retreat of the federal government.
• In Canada, lawyers were critical of the federal justice minister’s response to recommendations by a Commons committee on how to improve legal aid.
• In Massachusetts, legal aid organizations are calling on the state to increase its budget for civil legal aid by $5 million.
• In Alberta, legal aid workers voted to strike if their demands are not met, in response to staff reductions, office closures, and increased demand for services.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Newfoundland, the provincial government amended the Legal Aid Act to remove recipients’ option to retain private defense lawyers for serious criminal charges.
• In South Carolina, two state legislators proposed a bill that would mandate and centralize indigency screenings for potential public defender clients.
• In Mississippi, the Mississippi Public Defender Task Force released a report finding that (as the Jackson Free Press put it) “access to adequate representation across 10 Mississippi counties is lacking and far from consistent.” The full report is available at the Mississippi Judiciary’s website.
• In Maryland, the Office of the Public Defender released a study concluding that (as the Frederick News Post put it) “Maryland judges need more alternatives to pretrial detention, even as courts have successfully reduced their reliance on cash bail.”
• In Pennsylvania, a federal judge ruled that students facing criminal charges have to right to an attorney during related disciplinary hearings at their school.
• In St. Louis County, MO, a judge ruled that the public defender’s office has too many cases to effectively represent its clients.

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Philadelphia, PA, newly-elected DA Larry Krasner’s intra-office memo of February 15th became public. The memo details a variety of sweeping changes to the way the Philadelphia district attorney’s office will conduct its business, with the stated aim of “end[ing] mass incarceration and bring[ing] balance back to sentencing.”
• In New York, in an open letter in New York Magazine’s “The Cut”, the “Time’s Up” movement called on Gov. Cuomo to investigate the New York County district attorney’s office for its decision not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein for sexual abuse crimes against one of his accusers.

Music Bonus!

Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Student loans made for the most noteworthy news again this week, as the Department of Education weighed in on state government’s recent efforts to regulate lending. The LSC also announced a new disaster legal aid initiative. For these stories and more, read on!

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• The Federal Department of Education issued guidance warning state regulators that “[s]tate regulation of the servicing of direct loans impedes uniquely federal interests.”  Experts consulted in the Washington Post article linked here believe that “[m]any states are likely to view this document as legally dubious.”
• The National Review published a piece endorsing the idea of offering student loan relief to borrowers who forgo collecting Social Security, lending support to the student loan solution proposed earlier this year by Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA).
• Responding to claims that student debt is ruining borrowers’ lives, Ameritech Financial warned against “us[ing] blanket statements…when student deb situations vary so much from borrower to borrower.”

Immigration

• In New York, NY, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest relaunched a hotline that people can call to determine if they are eligible for naturalization and register for immigration clinics.
• In San Francisco, CA, Sheriff Vicki Hennessy apologized for her office, while allowed two US ICE agents access to interview rooms at San Francisco County jails–a breach of the city’s Sanctuary City policy.

Legal Technology

• In Florida, Southern Legal Counsel and the Florida Justice Technology Center partnered to create FloridaNameChange.org, a tool to assist transgender Floridians with updating government-issued documents to reflect their new names and gender markers. (You’ll be able to hear about the Florida Justice Technology Center’s work at NALP’s Annual Education Conference, where their Executive Director will be speaking at the Public Interest Lunch on Thursday, April 26th.)
• In New York, NY, TechCrunch.com profiled JustFix.nyc — a smartphone-based service that helps tenants document issues, draft letters of complaint, and file cases in NYC Housing Court.

Disaster Legal Aid

• At a Congressional briefing, “[t]wo state chief justices and legal aid experts from states recently affected by natural disasters [discussed] how legal aid programs funded by the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) assist survivors.” LSC’s Board Chair also announced a new taskforce “to improve legal aid disaster relief coordination and effectiveness across the country.”
• In Florida, the Puerto Rican Bar Association of Florida “opened a nonprofit legal clinic focused on providing legal services to Puerto Ricans who have settled in Florida after fleeing Hurricane Maria.” The clinic itself employs displaced Puerto Rican attorneys.

Criminal Justice Reform

• Professor Besiki Luka Kutateladze of Florida International University embarked on a two-year study of prosecutors’ offices in Jacksonville, Tampa, Milwaukee and Chicago. Professor Kutateladze’s team plans to “comb individual case files and implement new data-tracking tools that will detect racial bias, explain how plea deals work and see if policies are increasing the community’s trust in the justice system.”
• In Yolo County, CA, the District Attorney and the Public Defender announced a collaborative effort to expedite relief to individuals with marijuana convictions affected by California’s recent ballot measure legalizing the drug.
• In Montana, the state appointed a new Director of the Office of the State Public Defender, tasked with “continuing implementation of a package of bills passed during the 2017 legislative session to reform the Office[.]”
• In Glynn County, GA, the ACLU filed a lawsuit accusing country officials of “an unconstitutional cash bail system that discriminates against people who are financially strapped.”
• In Ottawa, Ontario, Yahoo News! examined the impact of the city’s indigenous people’s court six months into its operation.

Music Bonus!

Thundercat @ NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert Series (10/25/17)