Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! The biggest story below is at the top of the civil A2J section, but there’s a different piece of news I want to call your particular attention to this week:

• 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

Student Loans

• The National Center for Educational Statistics published a new dataset covering student borrowing patterns for 2015-2016.
• A veterinary news site detailed the effect of proposed changes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness on that profession.

Legal Technology

• AboveTheLaw published the second part of its examination of “How to Reboot the Justice System on Technology.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• The New York Times reported on the Justice Department’s quiet starvation of its Office for Access to Justice, an Obama-era initiative responsible for (among other things) launching the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable and filing statements of interest in a variety of cases involving the criminalization of poverty.
• In Oklahoma, the State Supreme Court created a commission to investigate new models for providing indigent civil legal aid.
• The 9th Circuit held that “neither the Due Process Clause nor the Immigration & Nationality Act creates a categorical right to court-appointed counsel at government expense for alien minors.” The ACLU of Southern California called the ruling “a brutal decision.“
• In San Francisco, tenant advocacy groups assembled enough signatures to put a measure on the ballot proposing legal counsel for all renters in the city facing eviction.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Florida, the State’s Attorney’s Office has created Florida’s first conviction integrity review unit.
• In Wisconsin, a State Public Defender wrote an op-ed arguing that increasing pay for private attorneys who accept public defense cases is crucial to upholding Wisconsin’s Constitution.
• In Michigan, “many local governments have been asked to resubmit financial requests [related to new standards for indigent legal defense] that are being drafted and reviewed for the first time.“
• In Montana, “[s]tate budget cuts mean the Office of the State Public Defender is freezing salaries and reducing pay to contractors.“
• In Idaho, the ACLU won class action status for its lawsuit against the state’s allegedly defective public defense system.
• In New York City, the Legal Aid Society launched a prison book drive to furnish inmates with copies of “The New Jim Crow.”

Music Bonus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAxHALkWp_8

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Read on for two weeks worth of news, as I missed delivering the digest last week due to an illness. The most consequential story this week is out of Canada, where the Canadian Intern Association questioned the legality of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s internship program. Additional highlights include class action status for the ACLU’s indigent defense funding lawsuit in Idaho and a new report from Brookings with even more dire predictions about potential student loan default rates.

Until next week,
Sam

Disaster Legal Aid

• Legal experts anticipated a looming crisis in Puerto Rico as the majority of mortgage payment moratorium agreements issued after Hurricane Maria expire this month.

Student Loans

• The Brookings Institute, using newly-available data, issued a report predicting that in the near future the default rate on student loans may rise more sharply than previously anticipated, predicting “nearly 40 percent may default on their student loans by 2023.“
• Washington State’s Attorney General reintroduced a bill establishing a “student loan advocate” to “field complaints from loan borrowers, help them understand their loans and compile data on loans.“
• Prof. Jeffery Dorfman of the University of Georgia advocated in Forbes for Congress to adopt “automatic income-based payroll deduction programs for student loans” modeled on programs in Australia and Great Britain. The professor cites other experts to argue that this idea would “allow borrowers to cover basic living expenses first, remove an enormous amount of bureaucracy, and increase collections.”

Legal Technology

• The Legal Services Corporation held its “Innovations in Technology Conference” in New Orleans, LA. Interested readers can catch up on many of the conference presentations on the LSC’s Facebook feed.
• BYU Law’s legal design lab launched its first application: a tool designed to address Utah’s “debt collection epidemic.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Canada, the Canadian Intern Association warned the Canadian Civil Liberties Association that its summer internship program “likely” violates Ontario law.
• In Canada, the Supreme Court issued a decision expanding the scope of “public interest standing”–a development that may give advocacy groups increased access to administrative tribunals.
• In Ontario, Lakehead University’s student legal clinic expanded its services from the city of Thunder Bay into the surrounding district.
• In Ontario, the Law Society of Ontario’s board of directors voted unanimously to deepen its relationship with Legal Aid Ontario and to “champion the need for robust legal aid.“

• In Hawaii, the Legal Aid Society of Hawai’i will receive $300,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to assist victims of housing discrimination.
• In Virginia, the Virginia Law Foundation launched a free online portal for attorneys providing poverty law training and resources to help them prepare to assist in pro bono cases.
• In New York City, CityLimits.org wrote a lengthy profile of early reactions to Mayor DeBlasio’s Right to Counsel initiative in housing cases.
• In Delaware, the Combined Campaign for Justice and the Delaware Community Foundation created a new legal aid fellowship in honor of recently-retired Delaware Supreme Court Justice Randy Holland. Holland Fellows will serve at one of Delaware’s three legal aid organizations for two years at a time.
• In St. Louis, Missouri, ArchCity Defenders announced a plan to expand its operations under a new Executive Director.
• In Kentucky, legal aid directors spoke out against the Governor of Kentucky’s proposal to eliminate all Access to Justice civil legal aid funding in the state’s 2018 budget.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Idaho, a court granted an ACLU lawsuit concerning public defender funding class action status.
• In Minnesota, Governor Mark Dayton recommended a public defender to fill a judicial opening in Minnesota’s 3rd Judicial District.
• In Yolo County, CA, a long-serving public defender announced his candidacy for District Attorney, “outlining a platform tackling overprosecution, racial inequity in the court’s and Yolo County’s high jury trial and incarceration rates.“
• In Wisconsin, private attorneys lobbied the state Supreme Court to increase the pay rate for indigent defense contract work; the current pay rate is the lowest in the country.
• In response to a report he commissioned from the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School, Manhattan’s District Attorney announced “he will no longer accept campaign contributions from lawyers with business before his office, including those representing people being investigated or prosecuted.“
• In Wyoming, the state’s top public defender warned the state legislature that if it does not fund additional staff, “her attorneys are going to have to start refusing cases.“
• In New Mexico, the Albuquerque Journal interviewed a legendary public defender to create a history of indigent defense in Lincoln County tying growing caseloads and lengthening pre-trial detention to the fact that “legislators over the years have criminalized more and more behavior and added increased penalties to some crimes.” Meanwhile, Lincoln county’s District Attorney claims “public defenders in the region…are fabricating the crisis to get more funding.“

Music Bonus!

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! A terse but consequential digest includes a significant development in student loans, as the Justice Department took steps to curb state efforts to protect loan forgiveness. The Chief Justice of Iowa also had remarkably strong words for the state legislature on the state of access to justice in his state.

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• “The U.S. Justice Department has filed papers arguing Massachusetts’ attorney general cannot pursue claims under state law that one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers undermined a federal debt forgiveness program.“

Access to Justice – Civil

• A pilot clinic for pro bono legal advice on Prince Edward Island extended its services into 2018. This is the second such extension of the pilot.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In his annual address to the Iowa General Assembly on the Condition of the Judiciary, the Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court warned that declining funding for courts is “beginning to tear at the very fabric of our operation and mission…Iowans are losing access to justice.“
• The State Bar of Texas published a report in which “[c]urrent and former attorneys with the State Counsel for Offenders (SCFO), which represents indigent inmates accused of committing crimes inside Texas prisons, claim higher-ups at SCFO have ordered them to change legal strategy, for example prohibiting them from filing motions to assist mentally ill clients and even forcing them to withdraw from certain cases…after their bosses consulted with the Texas Board of Criminal Justice,…[which] controls SCFO’s purse strings and all other Texas Department of Criminal Justice [TDCJ] operations [including Texas prisons themselves].”
• In the opinion section of a local paper, Washington state legislator Derek Young announced his intention to focus on achieving full funding for criminal defense during the upcoming legislative session in Olympia, WA.
• A 2015 challenge to Indiana’s public defender system, alleging it violates the rights of indigent defendants to an adequate defense, is likely to proceed to the state Supreme Court after an appeals court last month upheld a decision below to dismiss the lawsuit.
•  After the state’s attorney’s office issued a bulletin suggesting hundreds of pedestrian tickets had been issued in error in recent years, local lawmakers in Jacksonville, FL called for police to stop issuing pedestrian tickets.

Music Bonus!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpeisHYbKdE

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Welcome to 2018. In a roundup of stories from the end of last year, the main news items involve continued discussion of the student debt crisis (both in DC and within state governments) and the impact of recent policy changes at the Department of Justice on post-Ferguson federal reforms of court fines.

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) voiced his support for strengthening Public Service Loan Forgiveness, in opposition to proposals currently being discussed by other members of the House Republican Caucus.
• Washington State’s Attorney General called for legislation to give college borrowers greater safeguards against deceptive loan practices in a report on student indebtedness in his state.
• Democratic legislators in Wisconsin criticized a Republican proposal to provide student loan relief to attorneys who take public defender cases in sparsely-populated counties (mentioned in an earlier edition of this digest), arguing the strategy would create favor some areas of the state at the expense of others.
• The American Association of Law Schools’ new president expressed concern about proposals to eliminate Public Service Loan Forgiveness and cap graduate borrowing.

Access to Justice – Civil

• Idaho Legal Aid Services announced plans to hire a lobbyist to seek state funding in the face of a possible loss of federal support.
• The Baltimore, MD City District Court expanded its self-help aid for tenants in housing cases, as Maryland Legal Aid secured a $90,000 grant to expand its “Lawyer in the Library” program in Baltimore.
• Judge Workman of the West Virginia Supreme Court defended her institution’s access to justice record against recent criticism from a former Court administrative director, mentioning (among other measures) a new court rule directing half of all excess residual funds in class-action suits to Legal Aid.
• TVO.org discussed challenges francophones face exercising their rights to court proceedings in French in Ontario Province.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• Salon.com profiled Attorney General Sessions’ policies ending the practice of using nonbinding guidance to create policy at the Department of Justice–a procedural decision that has effected a reversal of federal positions created in the aftermath of the Ferguson protests to discourage local municipalities from financing government operations with court fines levied on poor defendants.
• The Lansing State Journal laid out the potential impact of Michigan’s attempts at indigent defense reform–with counties submitting plans which, if fully funded, would create an $87 million budget for public defense in the state, narrowing the gap between spending on prosecution and spending on defense from roughly $108 million to roughly $26 million.
• In Washington State, local reporting identified rising indigent defense costs as another consequence of the opioid epidemic.

Music Bonus!

Tiny Desk Concerts are often excellent.

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! We’re headed into a photo-finish for 2017, with a flurry of activity related to student loans, a new report from the Canadian federal government with potentially huge implications for the practice of individual rights law in that country, and additional developments in New York City legal services organizations ongoing attempts to prevent ICE from conducting arrests at local courthouses. Read below for additional details, as well as a few other juicy stories.

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

First, the context:

• The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of student loan defaults has doubled over the last four years, even as the economy has recovered.

Legislators have a variety of ideas about how to handle the situation:

• A bipartisan group of senators introduced the “Empowering Student Borrowers Act.” This act “would require colleges to send a letter to students every year about their total loan debt, monthly repayment amounts, and the estimated interest rate for each loan.”
• In the House of Representatives, the “Student Security Act of 2017” proposes offering students loan forgiveness in when they agree to delay their receipt of Social Security benefits, providing $550 in relief for each month’s delay up to a maximum of six years and one month.
• Alan Collinge, founder of StudentLoanJustice.org, advocated in an opinion piece on insidehighered.com in favor of the “Discharge Student Loans in Bankruptcy Act”.
• In Wisconsin, the state assembly’s Committee on Colleges and Universities held a public hearing to discuss bills related to a student loan repayment pilot program that would allow attorneys to get $20,000 a year in student loan relief if they took at least 50 public defender cases in sparsely-populated counties.

Meanwhile, state and federal agencies continue their work:

• The California Attorney General sued the US Department of Education, alleging it failed to process the debt-relief claims of students who took out loans to pay for a now-defunct for-profit school.
• Citing cybersecurity concerns, Interim CFPB Director Mulvaney suspended a consumer complaint database concerning student loans. As studentloans.net noted, “[s]everal legal actions have been taken after analyzing patterns of complaints in the database, so it’s easy to assume that the CFPB will have a diminished capacity in finding and prosecuting faulty loan programs and bad actors in the servicing and student loan industries.”

Legal Technology

• In New York City, New York, The Legal Aid Society sued the Manhattan district attorney after the DA’s office refused to divulge whether it purchases social media information as a way to track civil rights protesters.

Access to Justice – Civil

• The Canadian federal government released its first national housing strategy, which included an acknowledgement that housing rights are human rights. Commentary on rabble.ca suggests that “this acknowledgement opens up a very real path to push for recognition that positive rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms exist.”
• According to the National Catholic Reporter, “[i]mmigration experts say that perhaps more than a million people don’t know they are eligible for legal residency…without the right to a provided attorney.”
• Mississippi planned a roll call in January, 2019, to see which districts will participate in a new statewide initiative to expand on free clinic programs offered in its first chancery district.
• In Missouri, the Attorney General announced a Military Legal Assistance Team that will work with attorneys on military bases in the state to find pro bono assistance for service members with certain legal needs.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• The acute indigent defense crisis in Missouri–and its relationship to broader trends–continues to climb the news cycle. This week, it earned attention from NBC’s main site.
• A public defender in the Bronx, New York, argued in the Huffington Post that ICE policy of making immigration-related arrests of individual appearing before local courts is threatening his clients’ constitutional rights to defend themselves in court; a coalition of legal groups, including The Legal Aid Society, and defenders in New York County, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem jointly called on New York’s Chief Judge Janet DiFiore to issue rules addressing the practice.
• The Indiana Lawyer profiled the ongoing work of the state’s Task Force on Public Defense, which was created earlier this year and has met four times thus far.
• Meanwhile, an ineffective assistance of counsel case in Indiana may provide the basis for a court-driven systemic reform of the state’s system.

Music Bonus!

Who doesn’t like to watch a virtuoso?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFcPlv9RhEY

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I’m writing to you live from this year’s annual NLADA Conference; expect to hear more about that in next week’s digest. This week, most stories sound in student loans, with news concerning virtually every aspect of the educational finance system. Also, be sure to read all the way to the end for big news out of Canada concerning civil access to justice.

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans

• The House of Representatives introduced legislation to renew the Higher Education Act of 1965 which includes a revision to the statute eliminating Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
• In the wake of the new bill’s announcement, Credible.com published an analysis of how proposed changes might affect borrowers.
• The African-American Intellectual History Society examined the historic effects of student loan policies on African-Americans.
• Salon reported that “the total size of student loan debt is now $1.3 trillion — roughly the same size as the U.S. high-yield corporate bond market.”
• In DC Superior Court, a judge ordered a company that defrauded students of loan payments to pay a $233,000 fine and $192,824.95 in refunds to 233 city customers.
• Meanwhile, at the state level, loan repayment assistance is catching on in a variety of ways.
• And finally, Inside Philanthropy discussed how a number of high-profile gifts to universities indicate “the growing influence of private dollars in public education in an era when legislatures have cut back support for state university systems.”

Disaster Legal Aid

• In Puerto Rico, legal services and pro bono attorneys are working to help families living on properties passed across generations without formal title as they struggle to access FEMA benefits.
• The Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada created a financial toolkit for viciims of the recent shooting in Las Vegas; these people have found themselves the target of confidence scams designed to bilk them of their shares of the Compassion Fund.
• Attorneys in Northern California have been working pro bono to assist victims of the recent wildfires there.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• The Baltimore, MD public defender’s office increased its estimate of the number of cases affected by recent racketeering charges against Baltimore Police officers, saying more than 2,000 cases may be compromised.
• Oakland County and St. Clair County, MI joined fellow counties in the state in submitting a budget plan for indigent defense in order to comply with new standards set by the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission.
• In Winnebago County, IL, a judge ordered the county board to restore $326,852 to the county’s budget, saying that the cuts compromise court services and threaten public safety.
• In Nashville, TN, the chief public defender and chief prosecutor clashed as the defender’s office advocates for alternatives to cash bail; Civil Rights Corps recently sent a letter to Nashville’s top attorney threatening a lawsuit over the city’s “two-tiered system of justice.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• The Law Society of Upper Canada “approved, in principle, an action plan to help improve access to justice for Ontario families. The plan includes establishing a special licence for paralegals and others with appropriate training, to offer some family law legal services.”

Music Bonus!

Something cinematic, I think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tvUPFsaj5s<//a>

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Hope you all enjoyed Thanksgiving. Recent news concerning our community involves a few themes, including strategic disputes when considering court reforms (cash bail and right to council in eviction cases, in California), concerns about the Sixth Amendment (in South Carolina and California, again), and the role of technology in access to justice (in Ontario and among law schools).

Welcome to December,
Sam

Student Loans

• The New York Times profiled states’ practice of suspending professional licenses–including law licenses–as a penalty for graduates who fall into arrears on their student debt.

Immigration

• In New York City, about 100 public defenders protested outside the criminal courthouse against ICE’s continuing arrests of individuals making local court appearances.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• The Huffington Post drew nation-wide parallels between far-flung disputes over indigent defense shortfalls in Missouri, Louisiana, and Nevada (covered previously in the Digest) as well as in several other states.
• In Oskaloosa, Iowa, the city council approved an ordinance eliminating jail penalties for many city ordinances in order to reduce the cost of its indigent defense program.
• In Louisiana, funding for indigent defense in capital cases ran out for the year and defenders’ offices began refusing clients.
• In California, a dispute arose around how best to reform problems with cash bail, as San Francisco’s chief Public Defender criticized the state judiciary for expressing an interest in moving to an algorithm-based system for determining whom to remand and whom to release in criminal cases, as popular support builds for a state bill that would provide “widespread release for all misdemeanors and low-level felonies.”
• In South Carolina, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court issued a memo ordering lower court judges to stop issuing bench warrants for traffic violations because these warrants often resulted in Sixth Amendment violations.
• West Virginia University College of Law received a five-year grant of $100,000 from Wilson, Frame, and Metheny to fund its Innocence Project clinic.

Access to Justice – Civil

• The Ontario Attorney General announced “Putting Justice Within Reach: The Foundation for User-Focused Justice in Ontario,” a roadmap for digitizing justice services and streamlining court processes in the province to increase access to justice. Legal Aid Ontario also officially launched its legal advice phone hotline after a 10-week soft-launch.
• Professor Dan Linna (of Michigan State University), the Director of The Center for Legal Services Innovation, argued in an interview discussing his Center’s new “Legal Services Innovation Index” that “[the legal profession] must innovate and think big, especially in law school” in order to solve the United States’ access to justice problem.
• In a three-part opinion column, a California attorney argued that differences in the relative size of federal judicial districts in California, when compared with similar areas on the eastern seaboard, effectively means that “Californian’s [sic] have second class status when it comes to having access to federal justice.”
• The ABA, the Veterans Consortium, and the National Law School Veterans Clinic Consortium joined the Department of Veterans’ Affairs in a memorandum of agreement facilitating veterans’ access to pro bono legal services–ideally through existing VA facilities.

• As San Francisco, California, moves toward a right to council in eviction cases a dispute has arisen between a grassroots proposal and a more narrowly-drawn right promoted by members of the City Council.
• CityLandNYC covered a panel discussion held earlier in November covering New York City’s new law providing a right to council in eviction cases.

Music Bonus!

All that, and a trombone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxmDKtAvqpM

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! After a Veterans’ Day hiatus and some technical difficulties with the collection of woodland creatures that bring me the news, the Digest returns! Among other things, this week has seen minor disagreements between judges and defenders over caseloads in Michigan, and major ones in Missouri. Student loan debt was also a theme, as legislators in DC and Wisconsin floated new loan relief assistance plans.

Enjoy Thanksgiving next week; more from me here, after the holiday,
Sam

Student Loans

• The Huffington Post reported on how “[m]any major cities and states are already helping their residents pay back their student loans,” focusing on a new bill proposed in Washington DC aimed at establishing an LRAP for the city.
• Lawmakers in Wisconsin proposed offering loan repayment assistance–up to $20,000 a year– to lawyers who agree to represent poor defendants in rural counties.

Federal Hiring

• The Trump Administration “is seeking $2 million to hire 12 land acquisition attorneys at the Department of Justice to mount an ‘initial surge’ of land seizures from holdout landowners who aren’t willing to part with their property on the government’s terms.”

News in Canada

• A new non-profit in Canada, the East Coast Prison Justice Society, wants to identify and address gaps in the prison system.
• According to a new report from the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Access to Justice Fund it has been administering since 2010 has made a significant impact on access to justice issues in the country.
• The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a report finding that a wide variety of people in Manitoba province lack equal access to justice; the report concluded that “legal services need to be easier to navigate, more community-driven and more co-ordinated with each other”.
• The Law Society of Upper Canada released a set of recommendations related to legal fee issues and attorney advertising, intended to reform Canada’s contingency-fee system and protect consumers.
• A new legal service organization–The Child and Youth Legal Centre–opened in British Columbia to focus on the needs of vulnerable young people.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Michigan, counties have continued submitting plans for indigent defense to the state to meet new requirements: The Board of Commissioners in Ionia County approved a new public defender’s plan over the objections of local attorneys, who believe that their stated target that defenders handle no more than 150 felony cases or 400 non-traffic misdemeanors is still unreasonably high. Van Buren and Allegan counties proposed a joint office, with similar “encouragement from judges but [] criticism from attorneys.”
• Tensions between Missouri public defenders and the Missouri judiciary continued to run high, as “[l]ocal public defenders gathered in Jackson County Circuit Judge Patrick W. Campbell’s courtroom to protest the assignment of another case to an office already overburdened. This protest was triggered in part because they feel they are at risk of losing their licenses to practice law because they cannot give a proper defense to every client they have.”
• “The American Civil Liberties Union has accused Nevada of routinely violating the constitutional rights of criminal defendants in 11 rural counties by failing to provide them with adequate legal representation when they cannot afford their own lawyers.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• A panel at Harvard Law School brainstormed around access to justice, focusing on two key questions: “Whom are we educating, and for what kind of service?”
• Congressman Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) announced efforts by the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs to improve Veterans’ access to free legal services.
• The Venable Foundation awarded a one-time impact grant of $750,000 to five legal aid organizations in Venable LLP’s respective communities: Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC.
• Tenants’ rights groups in San Francisco, CA were highly critical of a proposed “right to counsel in evictions” measure crafted without their input which they feel offers insufficient protection in a variety of ways.
• After unsuccessful efforts to address its shortage of lawyers in rural areas, the “Eliminating Barriers to Justice” conference at Georgia State University College of Law explored the potential of do-it-yourself solutions.

• The Baltimore Sun published a powerful profile of Maryland Legal Aid’s “Lawyer in the Library” program.
• The Idaho Statesman profiled the access-to-justice work of Concordia Law’s burgeoning clinic programs.

Music Bonus!

Just because:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSW1kUtuVQk

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I hope everyone had a good National Pro Bono Week last week–there was lots to do here in DC, including the NALP/PSJD Public Service Mini-Conference and the Equal Justice Works Career Fair. Thanks to everyone who was able to attend, and especially to those of you who contributed to the week’s programming.

Now, let’s catch up on the news. Highlights include a Harvard Law Record report causing a stir at Harvard and more broadly about the legal academy’s proper role in society and ongoing dramas concerning student debt policy, cash bail in California, and public defenders’ responsibilities in Missouri.

Until next week,
Sam

Editor’s Pick: Harvard Law Record Challenges Harvard Law School to Assume Greater Social Responsibility

• The Harvard Law Record published a report, “Our Bicentennial Crisis,” arguing that Harvard Law is not doing enough to address a growing “civic deficit”:[A] bicentennial is not just a time for celebration of the past — it is also a time to confront the present and plan the future.  As we celebrate, many students are concerned: about our school being overtaken by corporate interests and losing relevance to the average American; about a watchdog of the law being largely asleep as the institutions of the rule of law and equal justice under law are under siege; and of a school community that has lost track of its declared mission to “educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society.”

Student Loans

• Senator Elizabeth Warren expressed concern that Navient’s recent acquisition of Earnest, an online lending service, positioned the company to profit from convincing debtholders with forgiveness-eligible federal student loans to refinance with its own private loan products.
• The CFPB released its 6th annual report of the CFPB Student Loan Ombudsman; Forbes.com reported that “the CFPB has helped return $750 million to student loan borrowers since 2011.”
• The Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee praised the Department of Education’s decision to stop sharing information with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
  • In response, a consumer advocate with the Center for Responsible Lending noted that “the Department of Education is both a lender and a loan servicer…we don’t want to be in a position where the department is overseeing its own loans.”
• A bipartisan group of twenty-five state attorneys general have written to Secretary DeVos asking her to reject student loan industry requests that she use federal authority to block state-level regulatory schemes.
• Seventeen states and the District of Columbia sued the Department of Education, alleging its refusal to enforce the Gainful Employment Rule (a regulation designed to protect student borrowers) violates federal law.
• Anonymous sources revealed that Secretary DeVos’ Department of Education is considering replacing the Obama-era policy of fully forgiving the debt of students defrauded by for-profit colleges with one that would only partially forgive such debts.
• The US Naval Institute’s news service published an article discussing the importance of PSLF to Navy recruiting.
• Student Loan Hero published the results of a survey on the mental health impacts of student debt.

Disaster Legal Aid

• NPR profiled Hurricane Maria Legal Assistance–a team of volunteer law professors and students who have been travelling across the island to provide legal relief to hurricane victims.
• UC Hastings Law offered legal assistance to wildfire victims in California’s wine country.
• A coalition of organizations have created a hotline with English, Spanish, and Chinese language support to provide legal aid to fire victims across California.

Immigration

• MLive.com examined the impact of Washtenaw County, MI’s decision last summer to create a fund to help immigrants facing hardships due to federal immigration enforcement and other challenges.
• Columbus, OH decided to establish a legal defense fund for immigrants facing deportation.
• Minnesota non-profits serving immigrants wrote to ICE, arguing that the agency’s plans to increase the volume of its immigration detention operations would threaten due process rights, as free service providers are already struggling to meet demand.
• NowToronto.com published an expose of long-term detention without charge as part of Canada’s immigration system.

Access to Justice : Civil

• Judge Posner, formerly of the Seventh Circuit, announced he will be forming a nationwide pro bono law group as part of his new quest to help pro se litigants.
• Canada’s Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin delivered remarks blaming a lack of legal aid funding for access to justice challenges facing Canada’s poor and marginalized.
• The Equire Pro Bono 2017 Survey found that 89% of attorneys performed services pro bono last year, with over a third (37%) providing more than 100 hours.
• DigitalJournal.com profiled DAABA, a mobile app connecting people who cannot afford lawyers with legal service providers such as law students, paralegals, or licensed attorneys.
• The Pew Charitable Trusts Research & Analysis section examined how municipal right-to-counsel programs for landlord-tenant court prevent evictions and combat homelessness.
• The Portland Press Herald profiled Maine’s new “Rural Practice Fellowship”–a program that places law students with attorneys in rural parts of the state in an effort to address access to justice issues in 12 of Maine’s 16 counties.

Access to Justice : Criminal

• Missouri public defenders are speaking out against recent Missouri Supreme Court rulings (discussed in earlier digests), which they say force them to choose between “tak[ing] on too many cases and risk losing their law license to an ethics complaint, or refus[ing] to take on an excessive workload and risk being held in contempt of court and jailed.”
• As California’s Chief Justice called for an end to cash bail, the San Francisco Public Defender’s office confirmed it has decided as a matter of policy to challenge bail in every criminal case in which it has been set, triggering a hearing in which a judge must consider alternatives to incarceration.
• Prosecutors and public defenders in Louisville, KY are collaborating to streamline arraignments in hopes of reducing crowding within jails that have been over capacity for more than a year.
• Public defenders in Hancock County, IN waited to be paid as the county’s public defender fund hovers near $0.
• A state district judge recently allowed a class action lawsuit filed by Louisiana inmates charging the state has unconstitutionally underfunded public defense to proceed; a federal court dismissed a similar lawsuit filed on behalf of New Orleans public defenders earlier this year.
• Vermont’s Chief Public Defender criticized the state’s arrangement to house inmates in a Pennsylvania prison, making it much more difficult for defenders to get access to their clients.
• An op-ed in the Kansas City Star argued that the unsustainable caseload of the Kansas City public defender’s office can only be solved by addressing the Kansas City prosecutorial practice that prefers to incarcerate defendants pre-trial: “It is at least twice as hard and time consuming to effectively represent a client who cannot make bail.”

Indigenous People & The Law

• In Manitoba, five judges met with Indigenous leaders to discuss how to improve the justice system as part of a new effort to redress the high incarceration rate for Indigenous people in the province.
• Court watchers are optimistic that Prime Minister Trudeau may soon appoint the first Indigenous jurist to Canada’s Supreme Court.

Music Bonus!

With compliments of the season:

https://youtu.be/sOnqjkJTMaA

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! It’s Friday again, and our world has been pretty busy this week–particularly in relation to student loans and structural issues related to public defender services. To see what I mean, read on!

Until next week,
Sam

Student Loans & Consumer Law

• Student loan servicer Navient responded in a public statement to the recent lawsuit commenced by the Pennsylvania Attorney General alleging it violated federal and state consumer protection laws, saying “the allegations are completely unfounded and the case was filed without any review of Pennsylvania residents’ customer accounts.”
• Meanwhile, a class action against Navient is proceeding alleging that the company has been disguising certain loans which are dischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings–including bar exam loans–as non-dischargeable ones.
• A writer in the ABA Journal noted that the Department of Education’s recently-released statistics on student loan default rates aggregate data at the university level–obscuring the default rate for law schools that do not operate as independent institutions.
• A study from University of Pennsylvania and Ryerson University economists found that student loans are more likely to negatively affect female lawyers; among other consequences they are more likely to stay in private sector jobs. They also concluded that the current program offering complete loan forgiveness after a decade does not address this gender disparity.
• Over 175 Harvard Law School students and alumni called on their school to improve its “Low Income Protection Plan,” which they say compares unfavorably to similar public service loan relief programs at Yale and Stanford.
• Osgoode Hall Law School has launched Canada’s first Investor Protection Clinic.

Conflict on Campus

• Texas Southern University’s decision to cancel a Federalist Society-planned lecture at Thurgood Marshall Law School sparked public conflict between members of the Texas legislature and a debate about university policy.
• In a session open to law students, faculty, and staff only, University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Wax delivered a lecture entitled “Stop Saying That: Dissent and Disagreement at Penn Law,” responding to the widespread backlash against her recent op-ed column published on Philly.com.

Law & Technology

• Gillian Hadfield called for broadening our professional conversation concerning the future of legal services beyond the realm of BigLaw to consider how legal technologies can help ordinary citizens.
• The Legal Services Commission of South Australia launched a 24-hour digital legal services program.
• A former state and federal prosecutor has called for greater public debate as law enforcement agencies begin to adopt iris scanning tools.

Pro Bono

• The New Jersey Law Journal’s Editorial Board anticipates that Judge Posner’s recent retirement from the bench may spur growth in voluntary pro bono programs.
• The Taproot Foundation mediated a conversation on the value of pro bono work as a strategy for building leadership skills.
• George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School co-authored a report on the experiences of non-profit board members: why they serve, how they are called upon to assist their organizations, and what they believe they need to be successful.

Disaster Response

• The Legal Aid Society of Southern Nevada and the State Bar of Nevada announced they will provide free civil legal aid to victims of the recent mass shooting at Nevada’s Route 91 Harvest Festival.
• Three Columbia Law students from Puerto Rico organized a volunteer “Legal Corps for Puerto Rico.”

Civil Justice

• A pilot project in Ontario courts has improved access to justice for the province’s Francophone population.
• Alberta justice officials spoke in defense of their proposal to require up-front fees from legal aid clients, explaining that their plan would include safeguards for individuals unable to pay.
• The City of Winnipeg ordered a thorough review of its Law Department after the failure of a high-profile lawsuit aiming to recover tens of millions of dollars from city contractors.

Criminal Justice

• The New Mexico Supreme Court unanimously denied a petition from the state’s Chief Public Defender seeking to limit or reduce PD caseloads; the Chief Public Defender intends to continue filing protests in district courts on a case-by-case basis.
• In the wake of the Missouri Supreme Court’s decision last month to suspend the license of an overburdened public defender, public defenders throughout the state are refusing to accept additional clients. One Missouri PD has suggested the court might look to other attorneys in the employ of the state, “such as those who work for the various departments, agencies, legislative research[,etc.].”
• A New York Daily News columnist called on the New York State legislature to redress how “current laws in New York allow a prosecutor to withhold evidence and even lie about it with few consequences.”
• The city of Mukilteowa, WA has issued an RFP for public defender services.
• In a profile focused on South Carolina, the New York Times called attention to how defendants facing misdemeanor charges often go without court-appointed representation. The ACLU is challenging the practice in South Carolina, and also in Florida.
• “A Delaware judicial commission is asking police officers, probation officers and the public to share their opinions on the state’s judicial system.”

Music Bonus!

This week, it’s a classic film bonus also!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SQ4ogstDVE