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)

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! The digest is a bit abbreviated this week, as I write to you from NALP’s Newer Professionals Forum. I look forward to putting what I’m learning here to work for all of you in the weeks and months ahead. (And if you’re at the conference, feel free to come find me!)

The big news this week involves a student loan tidbit you won’t want to miss! (Read below.)

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• InsideHigherEd.com reported that “[t]he Department of Education signaled…that it is interested in tweaking the standards used for determining whether student loan debt can be discharged in bankruptcy.“

Access to Justice – Civil

• In San Francisco, CA, the interim Mayor unexpectedly announced his support for a legal fund that would create a right to counsel for deportation cases in the city.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Minnehaha County, SD, the public defender’s office warned that an increased focus in the county on drug arrests has created a staffing crisis that threatens its ability to represent defendants in homicide cases.

Law School News

• Kaplan reported that a survey revealed that over 30% of pre-law students were motivated to pursue law by the results of the 2016 election.
• UPenn Law received a $3 million dollar donation from Robert and Jane Toll, which it will put toward public interest scholarships and loan repayment assistance. [Full article behind paywall.]

Music Bonus!

C2C, “Happy” (feat. Derek Martin)

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! The big news this week includes big decisions from the Attorney General of California and the Philadelphia DA’s office, as well as a report publishing the results of a worldwide survey on access to justice.

And speaking of surveys…

• NALP is still collecting responses for the 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey.  We’ve extended our deadline through Friday, March 2nd to collect as many responses as we can. To ensure the eventual reports is as useful as possible, it would be so helpful if everyone could share the survey link (www.psjd.org/salarysurvey) with their networks and encourage organizations to contribute to this study. In particular, we could use more responses from public defenders in Midwest. (If you’re curious, here are some more details about this study, from the last time we published this report.)

Until next week,
Sam

Disaster Legal Aid

• The Miami Herald reported on the ongoing misery of low-income Floridians caught beneath the fury of Hurricane Irma and beyond the reach of legal services.

Student Loans

• AboveTheLaw.com discussed the social implications of lawyers publicly discussing their loan forgiveness status–and speculated as to the potential policy consequences of such behavior.

Pro Bono Services

• In Maryland, the Administrative Office of the Courts submitted its report on the “Current Status of Pro Bono Service Among Maryland Lawyers (2016)”: “Approximately 53 percent of the lawyers practicing full-time in the state helped people of limited means…Maryland boasts one of the highest rates of pro bono activity in the country.“

Access to Justice – Civil

• The World Justice Project published “Global Insights on Access to Justice,” research which “presents data on how ordinary people around the world navigate their everyday legal problems.” The data for the United States is summarized on page 53: 48% of survey respondents experienced a legal problem within the last two years, and only 23% of those turned to an authority or third party to help resolve the problem.
•  In Idaho, the former State Supreme Court Chief Justice (ret. 2017) advocated for state-level funding for Idaho Legal Aid in the Idaho Press-Tribune.
• In New York, New York Law School’s Center for New York City Law published a thorough overview of NYC’s new right to counsel law for low-income tenants facing eviction.
• In Maryland, the editorial board of the Daily Record advocated for the right to counsel in housing cases for Baltimore residents. [NB: The full article is behind a paywall.]

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Texas County, Missouri, the Missouri State Public Defender entirely privatized its services; state lawmakers are engaged in ongoing debate over  whether to privatize the state’s public defender system in response to challenges of unconstitutional failures to provide adequate representation.

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Philadelphia, PA, the city’s new district attorney announced that his office has dropped all criminal marijuana possession charges that aren’t coupled with intent to deliver or sell, and that this will be the office’s new policy going forward.
• In California, the State Attorney General declined to appeal a ruling finding that a defendant’s ability to pay must be taken into account when setting bail, “adding his voice to the growing statewide push to overhaul a money bail system that criminal justice advocates argue is discriminatory to poor Californians.“
• In British Columbia, the Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund (West Coast LEAF) criticized the province’s new budget for failing to adequately fund legal aid.

Music Bonus!

Kendrick Lamar & SZA, “All The Stars”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! If you read one thing this week, I’d check out the pull quote from Missouri’s top public defender–it speaks directly to issues of public service salaries & hiring.

And speaking of public service salaries…

• NALP is still collecting responses for the 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey.  For the first time since 2014, we are studying salaries and benefits for attorneys at public service organizations across the county. To ensure the eventual reports is as useful as possible, it would be so helpful if everyone could share the survey link (www.psjd.org/salarysurvey) with their networks and encourage organizations to contribute to this study. In particular, we could use more responses from public defenders in the Northeast and Midwest and from issue-specific organizations in the Northeast. (If you’re curious, here are some more details about this study, from the last time we published this report.)

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• US News reported that House Republicans’ plans to overhaul the federal student loan program may deter law applicants.
• In Virginia, “legislators are seeking to mitigate the personal and economic consequences of their constituents’ student loan debt by creating a state-level ombudsman to troubleshoot problems and educate borrowers regarding college loans.“
• CBS’ MoneyWatch program and New York Magazine picked up the Levy Economics Institute Report on Student Debt Amnesty (released earlier this month and featured in a prior edition of this bulletin).
• In a counter-point to the Levy Institute’s study, the American Benefits Center suggested that borrowers focus on currently available options for income-based repayment.
• At a conference for investors in distressed assets, the CEO of consumer advisory-firm Distill warned that millennials are “the most frugal demographic since the so-called Greatest Generation that came of age during the depression…largely because of the huge student-debt cloud that hangs over them.“

Legal Technology

• “CuroLegal, a company that designs and develops technology for the legal industry, has launched CuroStudio, a venture studio with a special focus on developing tools and services to address the access-to-justice gap and improve the delivery of legal services.“
• FCW published a solid overview of the CLOUD Act and civil liberties’ groups concern over it. The act seeks to clarify law enforcement’s ability to access data stored overseas and potentially preempt legal questions raised in US v. Microsoft.

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Idaho, the Office of Performance Evaluation reported that the state’s legally-mandated system for providing representation to children involved in protective services cases failed to provide a guardian ad litem or a public defender in roughly a third of the 2017 cases their study sampled.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Missouri, the state’s public defender director said that his office has hundreds fewer attorneys than it needs–and that his departments’ starting salaries make it impossible to employ attorneys:
  

  “It’s not that they don’t want to come work for us, it’s that they can’t afford to…[A]s creative as I can be sometimes, I cannot kidnap people with law degrees and put them in courtrooms. I can’t hire. I’ve had vacancies open for six months–a year in many jurisdictions.“

• In California, NBC reporting revealed that budget cuts to courts have created a situation in which “thousands of felony criminal cases have been delayed for years, and sometimes even decades, in jurisdictions around California.“
• Also in California, Public Defenders in Los Angeles County held a rally to protest the Board of Supervisors’ choice of an interim head Public Defender they say has no experience defending poor, needy clients.

Music Bonus!

Fever the Ghost, “((SOURCE))”

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! There are a few major stories this week, spread out across topics. Look for big changes to federal hiring on the horizon and important new research affecting the Immigration debate and the Student Loan debate. Before we get to that, though, I have another appeal to make:

• NALP has launched the 2018 Public Service Attorney Salary Survey.  For the first time since 2014, we are studying salaries and benefits for attorneys at public service organizations across the county. To ensure that our eventual report (to be released later this year) is as useful as possible, I hope that everyone will help me by sharing the survey link (www.psjd.org/salarysurvey) with their networks and encouraging as many organizations as possible to contribute to this study. We are already hearing back from participating organizations eager to learn the results, so hopefully you would be doing your contacts a favor to pass this along. (Here are some more details about this study, from the last time we published this report.)

Until next week,
Sam

Federal Hiring

• OMB officials speaking anonymously revealed to reporters that the Trump Administration’s budget will include “the most ambitious proposal to overhaul the civil service in 40 years.“

DACA/Immigration

• The Texas Civil Rights project released a report providing the first detailed look at the effect of deportation policies on veterans. The report is titled “Land of the Free, No Home to the Brave: A Report on the Social, Economic, and Moral Cost of Deporting Veterans.“
• Public defenders held an impromptu protest after ICE agents detained an undocumented immigrant outside Bronx Criminal Court.

Disaster Legal Aid

• Pepperdine School of Law created a Disaster Relief Clinic to assist individuals affected by wildfires in California and hurricanes in Texas.

Legal Technology

• In Syracuse, NY, New York State has re-designated Syracuse University’s College of Law as a New York State Science and Technology Law Center.

Student Loans

• The CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia gave a speech on higher education in which he called student loan debt a “real threat” to American households.
• The Levy Institute of Bard college released a paper suggesting that universal student debt amnesty is the best way to tackle the student debt crisis.
• The Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General released a report on the costs of income-driven repayment plans and loan forgiveness programs. Journalism covering the report stated that “participation in income-driven repayment and loan forgiveness programs have grown in recent years, and the government is expected to lend more money than borrowers repay.” Apparently, this trend may have knock-on implications for for viability of the Affordable Care Act.
• Meanwhile, fewer than 1,000 of the 7,500 people who have applied for Public Service Loan forgiveness thus far are expected to qualify.

Access to Education

• In New York, state legislators have proposed a bill to reverse a “Ban the Box” initiative enacted in 2016 by the State University of New York Board of Trustees. The bill “would require SUNY schools to include ‘a question on whether the applicant has been convicted of any violent felony offense’ on their applications.“
• At Harvard Law, professors held a public debate over the law school’s alleged disconnect with public interest efforts. (A student-authored report, “Our Bicentennial Crisis,” sparked the debate last fall.)

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In New York, “Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has proposed $50.7 million to counties across the state as part of a five-year plan to help pay the costs of indigent defense.“

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Cleveland, Ohio, the Cleveland Tenants Organization closed down after 40 years of efforts on behalf of tenants in the city. The organization served thousands from the city and its suburbs annually.
• Legal aid organizations have begun to feel the pain of cuts in funding from United Way after a budget shortfall at the funder last Spring. Last week, Prairie State Legal Services (Bloomington, IN) discussed the effect of cuts on their operations.

Music Bonus!