By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  Your author’s a bit under the weather, so you’re spared from my typical ruminations and editorializing.  Here’s what we’ve got on the public interest and access-to-justice fronts (it being a good week for Maryland-based AtJ enthusiasts):

• $6.2 million to Old Line State legal aid providers for housing work;
• 20 Biglaw attorneys to work as special assistant DAs in suburban Philly county;
• the NLJ’s Pro Bono Hot List, hot off the presses;
• a Maryland Access to Justice Commission report on legal aid’s economic impact;
• Michigan Law’s new entrepreneurship clinic.

The summaries:

• 1.10.12 – “Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and officials from the Department of Housing and Community Development on Thursday awarded $6.2 million from the national mortgage settlement to nine legal aid groups in order to expand the availability of low-cost and pro bono legal services to Maryland homeowners facing foreclosure.  Here’s how the funds are being distributed: Maryland Legal Aid, $3.6 million; Civil Justice Inc., $1.4 million; Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service, $930,000; St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, $600,000; Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland, $565,000; Public Justice Center, $510,000; Community Legal Services of Prince George’s County, $850,000; Mid-Shore Pro Bono Inc., $342,000; and Allegany Law Foundation Inc., $200,000.”  (Full piece in the Baltimore Sun.)

• 1.7.12 –  “The [suburban Philadelphia] Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office is gaining a bit of free human capital, thanks to a relatively new partnership with an international, Philadelphia-based law firm. Twenty lawyers from the firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius are joining the DA’s office for some experience as special assistant district attorneys.”  (Story from the Times Herald.)

• 1.7.13 – the National Law Journal released its 2013 Pro Bono Hot List: “There’s an unfamiliar face in the crowd this year — the crowd being the 10 legal organizations we selected for The National Law Journal‘s Pro Bono Hot List. For the first time, we’ve included a corporate legal department — that of International Business Machines Corp. We did so in recognition of IBM’s work on behalf of people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, but also to highlight increasing corporate commitment to pro bono projects.”  

• 1.7.12 – “Maryland civil legal service programs not only benefit the poor but also save the state millions per year. Legal assistance to low-income Marylanders is a significant economic boost to the state and benefits more than just those receiving aid, according to a report just released by the Maryland Judiciary’s Access to Justice Commission…. In 2012, Maryland legal service programs preserved or found housing for almost 1,000 individuals and helped obtain 2,825 civil protective orders for clients. But the economic impact of legal services for the poor went far beyond the families helped, creating $190 million in total economic impact, including $12.6 million in economic stimulus to the state, $3.7 million in state expenditures saved, and $882,096 in tax revenue.”  (Here’s the full op-ed in the Baltimore Sun.  And here’s the AtJ Commission’s report.)  

• 1.6.12 – a profile of Michigan Law’s new entrepreneurship clinic: “In addition to helping student entrepreneurs, the program and clinic benefit law students who hope to one day work in the startup sector.  ‘For the law school students, the clinic consists of two parts, a classroom component and then actually representing their clients,’ clinic director Dana Thompson said. ‘… Most of law school is about taking classes and learning about the theory of corporations or torts or contracts. Then they come to us so we can put everything together and they can actually work with a startup.’  The clinic utilizes the ‘student practice’ rule, which allows law students to represent clients as long as a licensed attorney supervises them. Thompson said she…received more than 100 applications for 16 spots in the clinic’s first semester in the spring of 2012.”

• Super Music Bonus!  How about some Neko Case?  This is the beautiful “Bought and Sold.” 

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, ladies and gents.  And Happy 2013.  The Bulletin returns after a one-week holiday hiatus.  You are all undoubtedly looking for an authoritative source to tell you which pop culture trends to follow in 2013, and which to leave behind with 2012.  I am not that source.  (I recently had to spend 10 minutes convincing someone that my suggestion to “watch a DVD” was made in earnest.)  However, the Washington Post’s “The List: 2013” provides zeitgeist guidance in convenient “What’s Out?/What’s In?” format.  Tofu is out, in favor of insects.  That’s all well and good but I still classify both as “things that are not food.” 

Before the public interest news, a heads-up for law students that we’re hosting a public interest summer job search webinar series with our good friends at Equal Justice Works.  Dates: 1/15 and 1/22.  Registration info and all other details here.

Also, here’s a “fiscal cliff” dispatch focusing on two angles that may interest this blog’s readership:

• the potential impact on charitable contributions to nonprofits, courtesy of the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “Throughout December nonprofits [had] been lobbying Congress and President Obama not to impose limits on the tax savings wealthy donors get when they make charitable contributions.  The Senate-crafted plan enacts limits that charities have opposed. It reinstates a provision eliminated in 2010 that reduces the value of itemized deductions by 3 percent for household incomes over $300,000. Write-offs grow more limited the more taxable income a person has, and could reduce the value of deductions by up to 80 percent for the highest-income taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center.”
• the potential impact on the federal government labor force, courtesy of Government Executive.

On to the week’s public interest and access-to-justice news.  In very, very brief:

• the ongoing dispute over public defender caseload strains in Missouri;
• Oklahoma AG and legal aid collaborate on program to help low-income homeowners facing foreclosure;
• teaching law students about technology’s role in bridging the justice gap;
• Cash-strapped CA courts could see more cuts, closures;
• a CA county’s public defender sued for not providing counsel at defendants’ initial court appearances;
• ideas for how state-level access-to-justice networks should develop;
• law school clinic news potpourri;
• U.S. farmworker advocates take their pleas for farm access to the U.N.;
• no legislative action last year on Michigan indigent defense system reforms;
• a shift in post-Hurricane Sandy pro bono efforts;
• IOLTA funds to lose unlimited FDIC insurance backing(?).
• Music!

The summaries:

• 1.4.12 – this lengthy piece in The Missourian brings readers up to speed on the caseload controversy surrounding the Missouri Public Defender System.  In 2012 the rhetoric between prosecutors, judges, and those speaking for the defender system was at times quite heated. And there is still much disagreement on how strained the indigent defense system is.
  • And on a related note: “The chair of Missouri’s House Judiciary Committee is proposing reductions in the state’s public defender system.  Republican State Representative Stanley Cox of Sedalia says public defenders would still handle the most serious cases for indigent defendants, but the more minor cases would be bid out to private attorneys.”  (Story from St. Louis Public Radio.) 

• 1.2.13 – “The Attorney General’s Office and Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma are providing free legal help to homeowners who are facing mortgage issues or foreclosure.  The program – Resolution Oklahoma – is designed to help Oklahoma residents stay in their homes or seek the best outcome for their situations. The program is provided by a grant from the Attorney General’s Oklahoma Mortgage Settlement Fund.  The fund was created in March, following a settlement by the AG’s Office with five of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers.”  (Story from LoanSafe.org.)

• 1.2.13 – from a press release: “The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI®) will announce at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools in New Orleans on January 6, 2013 that they have reached agreements with faculty members from six law schools to develop course kits as part of the Access to Justice Clinical Course Project (A2J Clinic Project). Participating law schools include Columbia Law School, Concordia University School of Law, CUNY School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, UNC School of Law, and University of Miami School of Law. Each participating faculty member will develop and document a course model that uses A2J Author® to teach law students how technology tools can be used to lower barriers to justice for low-income, self-represented litigants. CALI will use those course models to assist other law schools in establishing A2J Clinical Courses as a permanent part of their law school curriculum.”

• January 2013 – “California’s judicial branch and its allies in the legal community are starting off the New Year under a cloud of uncertainty over further budget cuts…. Courts have been decimated by four years of cuts that have reduced the judicial branch budget by about 30 percent, or $475 million. In addition, the governor revealed to court leaders last month that he’s considering sweeping out local trial court reserves one year earlier than expected, which court leaders say would translate into an additional $200 million cut…. Many counties have already eliminated all non-mandatory spending, shuttered courthouses and reduced services. Litigants in remote reaches of San Bernardino County, for example, will have to travel 175 miles to the nearest courthouse starting in May. Los Angeles County Superior Court is considering a major restructuring that would close 10 courthouses and consolidate all personal injury cases to two judges”  (Story from the California Bar Journal.)

• 12.31.12 – “Contra Costa County’s long-standing practice of assigning defense attorneys to indigent criminal defendants after — and not at — their initial court appearance has resulted in a federal class action lawsuit against Public Defender Robin Lipetzky. Point Richmond attorney Christopher Martin, one of two attorneys who filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oakland on Dec. 21, says the illegal practice could cost the county a minimum of $4,000 for each defendant whose civil rights were violated…. The lawsuit alleges that indigent, in-custody defendants are left in County Jail without an attorney for five to 13 days after their first court appearance, in violation of the right to assistance of counsel from the time one first faces a judge.”  (Full story from the Contra Costa Times.)

• 12.30.12 – Richard Zorza blogs on the priorities which should govern development of state-level access-to-justice infrastructures, and offers recommendations about promoting AtJ’s evolution in the states.

• 12.28.12 – law school clinic news potpourri:
  • 12.28.12 – “When students at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law return from winter break, those enrolled in clinics will enjoy new digs in a refurbished former city firehouse.  The law school in December opened the 6,000-square-foot space, which will now house its 10 legal clinics, just steps away from its main building.”  (Story from the National Law Journal.)
  • 12.27.12 – Stanford Law starting a religious liberties clinic, which “administrators say is the first of its kind at a U.S. School. The clinic was established with $1.6 million in seed funding from the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which supports the free expression of religious beliefs regardless of the faith. Unlike many public interest law groups that support religious freedom, Stanford’s clinic will take on clients from any religion, said director James Sonne.  ‘The point of a clinic is to teach professional skills to law students using real cases and live clients,’ said Sonne. ‘We think the religious liberty aspect offers a unique way to do this work, and it’s something the students get excited about. As our culture becomes more diverse, it’s a great way for students to represent clients whose beliefs are different from their own.’  (Story from the National Law Journal.)
  • 12.21.12 – “The University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law has received a $1 million gift that will permanently endow a student-run clinic that provides legal advice to the poor.  The donation from Sue Ellen Ackerson of Louisville and her family was made to honor her late husband, Robert Ackerson, who founded the Ackerson and Yann law firm. The clinic will be renamed The Robert and Sue Ellen Ackerson Law Clinic.”  (Story from the Associated Press.)

• 12.27.12 – Voice of America reports on a group of U.S. farmworker rights advocates that has gone to the United Nations on the issue of being able to get access to workers on farm property. “[A]  coalition of 28 rights groups, including Maryland Legal Aid, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the labor union AFL-CIO, submitted a complaint to the United Nations on December 13. The coalition argued that the lack of meaningful access to migrant labor camps ‘stymies’ farmworkers’ access to justice and, as a result, ‘violates international human rights law.’  It has called on the U.N. Envoy for Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda, to pressure the U.S. government to allow aid workers better access to migrant farm camps.”

• 12.24.12 – “A proposed overhaul to Michigan’s public defense system will have to wait until next year for action by the state Legislature.  State lawmakers passed a flurry of bills in their “lame duck” session. But there were a number of high-profile bills that didn’t move at all.  One of those would change the way the state appoints lawyers to people who can’t afford one.  Michigan’s public defense system is considered one of the worst in the country….  Critics of the [reform] plan say it would burden cash-strapped county governments, and doesn’t lay out specific standards they would have to meet.”  (Story from Michigan Public Radio.) 

• 12.24.12 – “Eight weeks after Hurricane Sandy, New York lawyers who have been assisting storm victims pro bono say they are in the effort for the long haul.  However, their focus is shifting from the most pressing legal needs in the immediate aftermath of the storm to grinding long-term problems.  At first, the lawyers concentrated on securing temporary housing, food stamps and unemployment benefits for storm victims, and later, documenting damages for homeowner and flood insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency claims.  Now, people are increasingly experiencing difficulties with FEMA officials, landlords, insurance companies and contractors.”  (Full story from the New York Law Journal.)

• 12.20.12 – “Lawyer IOLTA accounts that help fund civil legal aid and other legal programs are likely to lose their unlimited federal insurance coverage on Jan. 1.  The ABA Governmental Affairs Office says it appears unlikely that lawmakers will act this year to extend the unlimited coverage provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to an ABA statement.  If Congress does not act, the amount of FDIC insurance available will be $250,000 per client, per financial institution, as long as the account is properly designated as a trust account and there is a proper accounting of each client’s funds.”  (Article in the ABA Journal.)
  • [update from Steve: an IOLTA administrator contacted me to offer some context about this, which I should have thought to include.  To closely paraphrase said administrator: Congress chose not to extend the FDIC’s temporary program that had provided unlimited insurance to certain checking accounts, including IOLTA accounts.  IOLTA accounts remain in the same position as this group of checking accounts — and the insurance picture looks pretty much the same as it did up until the 2008 emergency action that created a temporary unlimited insurance program. The biggest change from the pre-2008 picture?  The insurance cap remains at $250,000 per depositor instead of the pre-2008 cap of $100,000.  There are important details to this, of course, but none that end up treating IOLTA accounts unfavorably.  Here’s the link to the FDIC’s explanation of the change: http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/changes.html.]

 Music!  In 2006, The Long Winters of Seattle, WA released a pop gem with the album Putting the Days to Bed.   Here’s “Fire Island, AK.”

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, ladies and gents.  Depending on whom you speak to, it’s the beginning of winter or the end of the world.  I’m hoping for the former.  I’m one of the weirdos who loves our coldest season.  With that said, I’ve realized that embracing the Mayan doomsday scenario has considerably eased the guilt I feel in consuming the holiday junk food that seems to follow me everywhere I go.  So I’ve been an end-of-the-worlder for purposes of cookies.  Though I suspect there will soon be a reckoning.

Cookies aside, I wish you all a joy-filled, relaxing holiday season.  Travel safely if you are on the move, and enjoy time with family and friends.

We’re light on access-to-justice news this week.  In very, very short:

• salary differences between an Ohio county’s prosecutors & public defenders;
• improvements in Sin City’s indigent defense program;
• a call for pro bono as a requirement for a bar license;
• the continuing saga of Missouri’s indigent defense program;
• $1 million supplemental approp. to LSC for Sandy relief work?.  

This week:

• 12.20.12 – “Sitting on opposite sides of a courtroom, employees of the Clinton County [Ohio] Public Defender’s office and the Clinton County Prosecutor’s office often square-off judicially. Some of the attorneys, all employed by the same county, have much in common — knowledge of local cases, law degrees, years practicing — but in other ways, such as their salaries, they are treated very differently. ‘It’s almost universal across the state in terms of salary and resources available,’ said Tim Young, director at the office of the Ohio Public Defender. ‘Public defenders regularly make 10 to 30 percent less [than prosecutors] when they have the same amount of time in practice of law, and essentially the same work on opposite sides of the room’.”  (Story from the News Journal.)

• 12.20.12 – an op-ed looks at recent improvements in the Clark County (i.e. Las Vegas area) NV public defense program, particularly its juvenile defense unit, which was once seen as emblematic of a failed indigent defense system.  (Piece in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.)

• 12.17.12 –  UC Irvine Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky wants pro bono as a precondition for attorney licensing: “New York’s new requirement for pro bono work as a condition for admission to the bar should be a model for other states to copy. Last May, Jonathan Lippman, chief judge of New York, announced this proposal. On September 12, the New York Court of Appeals adopted a requirement that, effective January 1, 2015, admission to the New York bar will require an applicant having completed 50 hours of pro bono service. This is to be applauded: Pro bono work helps to meet the enormous unmet demand for legal services, provides law students valuable legal training and hopefully instills a lifelong habit of public service.  At a recent meeting, an American Bar Association committee considering possible changes to accreditation standards seemed unreceptive to the idea of requiring all law schools to insist on 50 hours of pro bono work from their students. But that won’t matter if states follow New York’s lead and require pro bono work as a condition for admission to the bar.” (Full piece in the National Law Journal.  For some more background on the recent, unsuccessful push to have the ABA’s law school accreditation body include a pro bono requirement in accreditation standards, feast your eyes on this here hyperlink.)

• 12.14.12 – the latest in the ongoing controversy surrounding Missouri’s indigent defense system: “State lawyers have joined forces with private attorneys in the dispute over being involuntarily assigned criminal cases to lessen the burden on Missouri’s overworked public defenders.  Attorney General Chris Koster is asking judges in Boone and Callaway counties to waive several court orders appointing state workers as pro bono lawyers for criminal defendants facing jail time and unable to afford their own legal counsel. Koster’s office is representing at least six state employees opposed to the move, court records show.  The Associated Press obtained the public court filings from attorneys concerned about the practice.  (See the full AP story here.)

• 12.19.12 – “This week, the Senate is considering a $60.4 million emergency disaster supplemental funding bill to assist victims of Hurricane Sandy in the recovery efforts. The bill includes $1 million for [the Legal Services Corporation], to support LSC grantees in the areas significantly affected by Hurricane Sandy for storm-related services. The funding for LSC matches the request submitted by the White House on December 7.  This is the first time since 1993 that a supplemental appropriations bill has included funding for LSC after a disaster. If passed, the supplemental funding would be used to give programs the necessary mobile resources, technology, and disaster coordinators to provide storm-related services to eligible clients.  LSC-funded programs in the areas most severely affected by Hurricane Sandy reported significant office damage and prolonged power outages. They are struggling to provide legal assistance to thousands of storm victims.  Supplemental disaster funding will help LSC’s grantees provide essential legal aid to low-income individuals and families.”  (News from LSC.)

Music!  Since winter is upon us, let’s go north to listen to my favorite Nova Scotian rock band.  This is Sloan with “Losing California.” 

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  It’s a beautiful, quiet December morning here in DC.  But it won’t be quiet for long.  It troubles me that the beginning of the holiday season is consumed with so much hustle and bustle.  There are gifts to buy and cards to sign.  There are end-of-year deadlines to meet.  Our law student readers have finals to take.  Our national policymakers have a fiscal cliff towards which to hurtle.  And so on.   The storms before the calm, I suppose.  In any case I’m delighted when a few quiet minutes turn up.  I hope you find some as well.

Before turning to the week’s access-to-justice and public interest news, three other items that have caught my attention this week:

• Fiscal cliff dispatch: “The White House and the nation’s most prominent charities are embroiled in a tense behind-the-scenes debate over President Obama’s push to scale back the nearly century-old tax deduction on donations that the charities say is crucial for their financial health.”  (Full article from the Washington Post.)

• Homeless vets: “The number of homeless veterans in the United States counted on a single night this year declined 7.2 percent from the previous year, a reduction significantly higher than that seen in the general population, according to figures released Monday.  Overall, the number of homeless people in the country declined only slightly, to 633,782 counted on a single night in January, about 0.4 percent lower than the previous year. The figures included a 1.4 percent increase in homeless people who are part of households that have at least one adult and one child…. The decline in veterans’ homelessness, from 67,495 in January 2011 to 62,619 in January 2012, followed a 12 percent reduction between 2010 and 2011.”  (Full story from the Washington Post.)

• 12.11.12 – big news on the legal education front: “The Arizona Supreme Court gave the green light December 10 to an experimental proposal allowing third-year law students to take the bar exam before they graduate, a move law school officials hope will give students a leg up in the job market.  Under the revised rule, 3Ls who meet eligibility requirements can take the bar exam offered in February, several months before graduation. The proposal was approved as a temporary pilot project from January 2013 until the end of December 2015. Law school officials and other stakeholders will have to file a report with the court by November 1, 2015.”  (Story from the National Law Journal.) 

Okay, this week’s access-to-justice news in very, very brief:

• volunteer lawyers roll in to help Sandy victims;
• report on legal aid’s impact on the Ohio economy;
• 2013 Equal Justice Conference registration open;
• class action on (in)adequacy of NY State’s public defense system marches on;
• CFPB chasing down alleged foreclosure legal aid scammer;
• law school clinics supporting social entrepreneurs;
• technology’s expanding role in communicating with legal aid clients;
• Super Music Bonus, Rod Stewart Edition! 

The summaries: 

• 12.12.12 – in Hurricane Sandy’s wake, legal aid and volunteer lawyers have literally rolled in to assist clients in crisis.  Pro bono lawyers have been instrumental in assisting clients with public benefits and housing problems among others.  This piece in the New York World, focusing on the response of legal aid and volunteer lawyers, notes some good timing in the Legal Aid Society’s acquisition of new wheels: “Legal Aid’s ongoing presence in Coney Island, and in the Rockaways before that, was made possible by the organization’s new Mobile Justice Unit, purchased earlier this year with the help of a grant from the Robin Hood Foundation.”

• 12.12.12 – “Legal assistance to low-income Ohioans is a significant economic driver and impacts more than just the individuals receiving aid, according to a report released Tuesday by the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation.  Ohio legal aid in 2010, the most recent year studied, saved almost 1,000 homes from foreclosure and helped obtain nearly 1,000 civil protective orders.  But the economic impact of these services goes far beyond those families helped, creating $106 million in total economic impact, including $5.6 million in state, county and municipal tax revenue.”  (Story from the Dayton Business Journal.  And here’s the OLAF report.)
  • also in Ohio, the Marion Star looks at the fiscal crunch pressing against the Legal Aid Society of Columbus’s Marion office.  Two of the office’s four attorneys are set to retire soon, and there is not presently funding to replace them. 

• 12.12.12. – registration for the 2013 Equal Justice Conference is open.  The EJC, which brings together a wide array of access-to-justice stakeholders, will take place in St. Louis from May 9-11.  (Pre-conference events, including the law school pro bono pre-conference, take place on May8.)  And don’t worry!  I already checked, and the Cardinals are hosting the Rockies of Colorado on May 10-12.

• 12.11.12 – “A settlement conference in a class-action lawsuit brought by civil rights attorneys, which seeks to remedy what they say is the state’s “persistent failure” to provide meaningful counsel to the poor, ended Tuesday with no settlement….  The suit was filed five years ago in the name of Kimberly Hurrell-Harring and 19 others charged with crimes in Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler, Suffolk and Washington counties.  Each plaintiff was left to navigate the criminal justice system without adequate counsel, some spending months unnecessarily behind bars. But the “types of harm suffered” by these defendants are “by no means limited or unique” to those counties, the suit claims.  A 2006 report from The New York State Commission on the Future of Indigent Defense Services called the public-defender situation an “ongoing crisis” and concluded “nothing short of major, far-reaching reform” can bring the state into constitutional compliance. It recommended a state takeover to properly fund counsel for the poor and enforce standards.”  The plaintiffs favor a state takeover, as well.  (Full article in the Albany Times Union.)

• 12.11.12 – “For the second time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has gone after a legal services provider for allegedly offering bogus mortgage relief assistance to struggling homeowners.  The CFPB announced today that a California federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order shutting down the National Legal Help Center, which allegedly offered legal representation to consumers ‘even though the individual defendants are not attorneys and consumers received no actual legal representation,’ according to the CFPB…. In July, the CFPB filed a similar complaint against the Gordon Law Firm also in California’s Central District and won a temporary restraining order the following day. On November 16, the court entered a preliminary injunction order halting the defendants’ allegedly unlawful conduct and freezing their assets while the case proceeds.”  (Full post from the Blog of the Legal Times.)

• 12.7.12 – an interesting look at the increasing work that law school clinical programs do to support social entrepreneurs.  “Legal systems are just one of many such complex systems that social entrepreneurs must navigate in order to be successful, but increasingly, they do not have to do it alone. Law schools are joining the ‘collective impact movement by using their legal clinics to provide social entrepreneurs with much-needed legal support from some of America’s brightest law students. Collective impact is a powerful new concept: the idea that all actors that have a stake in a problem should work together to solve that problem.”  (Story from Forbes.com.) 

• 12.7.12 –  “Like everyone else, lawyers for the poor are trying to do more with less, as government grants and private funding have dried up.  Increasingly, that means turning to tech, using new tools to deliver information to clients, support volunteer lawyers, and improve their own systems. They’re using text messaging, automated call-backs, Web chats, and computer-assisted mapping.  A crush of new clients is pushing the growing reliance on technology, as the old systems just can’t keep up. For years, people seeking help have called their local legal services offices, only to wait on hold for 20 minutes or more. If someone has a pay-by-the-minute cellphone, as many low-income people do, that gets expensive fast…. Text messages can also improve efficiency. If courts sent SMS reminders to litigants, that would help move along cases that get postponed over and over when one party doesn’t show up, says Glenn Rawdon. Rawdon runs the technology grants program at the Legal Services Corp., the federal program that funds legal aid groups. A text could also help people remember to bring documents to meetings with their overworked lawyers.”  (Full story on Slate.com.)  

• Music!  It’s the holiday season, so our thoughts turn naturally to Rod Stewart.  (It was a lot of fun to write that sentence.)  Well, even if that’s not where our thoughts are, I’ve lately been in the mood for Faces.  Faces was a rollicking 1960s British rock band whose members included Stewart – a very different version than the one we see today – and Ronnie Wood, who later joined the Rolling Stones.  They were known for terrific music, chaotic live shows, and booze.  Perhaps in that order.  Faces have a terrific back catalog, and I suppose they’re most popularly recognized song is “Ooh La La”, which a lot of people think of as the “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger” song.  Enjoy “Ooh La La.”      

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  This week’s bulletin comes to you from Chicago, where I’m attending the National Legal Aid & Defender Association’s annual conference.  Before the public interest and access to justice news, here are two interesting legal-education developments:

• 12.4.12 – another law school creates a hang-your-shingle incubator – Shincubator? Well, perhaps not – for recent grads: “The Cleveland-Marshall College of Law is the latest to announce plans for a solo incubator. The school will spend approximately $1.2 million to create a suite of offices in its library for rental at low prices to recent graduates launching their own practices.  Solo incubators are widely seen as a way for schools to help graduates establish practices at a time when law firm hiring has slowed. Around 10 such programs have been created at schools including the City University of New York School of Law; Thomas Jefferson School of Law; Chicago-Kent College of Law; the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law; the University of Maryland School of Law; and Pace Law School.”  (Full story from the National Law Journal.)
• 12.3.12 – news of a “proposal backed by all three Arizona law schools to allow 3Ls to sit for the bar during the February before they graduate, rather than making them wait until after graduation. The Arizona Supreme Court is slated to consider the proposal on December 5. If the court approves, Arizona would be the only state that allows students to take the bar exam midway through their final school year.”  (Full story from the National Law Journal.)

The week in public interest and access-to-justice – short version:

• pushing for higher prosecutor and defender salaries in FL;
• pro bono can pay;
• Legal Services of Eastern Missouri wrestles with high caseloads;
• King County (Seattle) public defense controversy;
• the long-running Missouri public defense controversy continues;
• a report from NY’s access-to-justice task force;
• the importance of legal aid for tenants facing eviction;
• how do Presidential Management Fellows feel about the PMF program?;
• a labor-law win for a law school clinic;
• NLADA launches new legal aid research site;
• Chicago Music Bonus!

The summaries:

• 12.7.12 – “Representatives of state attorneys and public defenders began making a renewed case Thursday for increasing salaries, saying low pay causes many attorneys to leave for private law firms after only a few years. Bill Eddins, state attorney for the 1st Judicial Circuit of Florida (which includes Escambia and Santa Rosa counties) and  president of the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, told a Senate panel that high turnover is reducing the number of experienced prosecutors.”  (Story from NorthEscambia.com.  And here’s more from the Florida Times-Union.)

• 12.6.12 – a Purpose Prize for the retired lawyer who did pro bono foreclosure defense work and sniffed out the “robo-signing” practice (which led to tens of millions of funding dollars for the legal services community): “[In] April 2008, Cox joined Pine Tree Legal Assistance and began representing consumers fighting foreclosures. In 2009, while representing Nicolle Bradbury, Cox discovered that a GMAC Mortgage official was signing thousands of foreclosure affidavits in 23 states, though he had not verified their accuracy. Cox won the case but the impact was more widespread. His findings helped spur 49 of 50 state attorneys general to sue the five biggest mortgage servicers for fraudulent foreclosure practices, leading to a $25 billion settlement.”  (Story from the ABA Journal.)

• 12.5.12 – from the Missourian: “Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (LSEM) has experienced budget cuts, followed by the loss of grant funding, yet continues to assist an increasing number of clients.”

• 12.5.12 – “The leaders of King County’s four public defense agencies today sent a letter to Metropolitan King County Council President Larry Gossett and Councilmember Kathy Lambert, who heads the council’s Law, Justice, Health and Human Services Committee, to voice opposition to a county plan that would dissolve the independent agencies and make public defenders county employees.  Last week, David Chapman, who heads the King County Office of Public Defense, announced that nearly 400 employees of the four agencies — The Defender Association, Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons, Associated Counsel for the Accused and Northwest Defenders Association — could potentially become King County employees by July 1. Chapman’s office assigns cases to the four firms, dividing the nearly $40 million per year the county spends on public defense.  The proposal for the county to hire the public defenders stems from a lawsuit filed in 2006 against the county by Kevin Dolan, a public defender at the Associated Council for the Accused. Dolan said he filed the lawsuit on behalf of employees of the four defender groups who sought enrollment in the county’s retirement system. Since the 1960s, King County has contracted public defense services from the non-profit firms.”  (Full blog post from the Seattle Times.)

• 12.4.12 – from the News-Tribune: “The Missouri public defender system says it is easing off its caseload limits that have led to disagreements over whether they have the time and resources to represent some criminal defendants.  Public defender director Cat Kelly said Tuesday she has instructed local public defender offices to treat the caseload limits with more flexibility. The move has the approval of the Public Defender Commission.”   The Fulton Sun reports that “Missouri public defenders have decided to resume taking indigent cases after Missouri prosecutors last Wednesday threatened to sue the Missouri Public Defender System…. Cathy R. Kelly, director of the Office of State Public Defender, said the decision to resume taking indigent cases came before the lawsuit was threatened by prosecutors last Wednesday.”

• 12.3.12 – “Calling the unmet need for civil legal services among indigent New Yorkers a “continuing crisis,” a new report says increased state funding and greater collaboration is needed between law schools, legal aid providers and law firms.  At best, 20 percent of the demand for civil legal services is being met, leaving more than 2.3 million New Yorkers without representation each year, according to the report, released Friday by the Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services.”  (Full article from Thomson Reuters.  And here’s the task force’s report.)

• 11.30.12 – an op-ed on the importance of  tenants in eviction court having access to legal services: “Millions of Americans face eviction every year. But legal aid to the poor, steadily starved since the Reagan years, has been decimated during the recession. The result? In many housing courts around the country, 90 percent of landlords are represented by attorneys and 90 percent of tenants are not. This imbalance of power is as unfair as the solution is clear.”  (Full piece in the New York Times.)

• 11.30.12 – Presidential Management Fellows are happy with their first days on the job but believe agency supervisors and program coordinators could provide better guidance and mentoring, according to a new study.  Overall job satisfaction among the class of 2011 fellows who participated in a study conducted by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service scored 72.7 points out of 100 points. The study, which included the views of 274 new fellows gathered from November 2011 to December 2011, found that PMFs like and respect their bosses, have realistic expectations of the program and are committed to public service. In particular, fellows who thought their first job assignment matched their skill level and took into account their developmental needs tended to rate the overall program more positively. The class of 2011 includes 420 fellows who work on various assignments in different agencies for two years.”  (Full article on the Government Executive website.)

• 11.27.12 – a labor law win for a law-school clinic. “Eighteen current and former employees of a Long Beach hotel have reached a $130,000 settlement over the denial of meal and rest breaks required by California law, attorneys for the workers announced Tuesday.  The settlement with HEI Hotels and Resorts arose from claims filed with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement by employees of the Hilton Long Beach and Executive Meeting Center, which has been owned and managed by HEI since 2005…. The 18 current and former employees were represented by the UC Irvine School of Law-Immigrant Rights Clinic and Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center.” (Story from the San Jose Mercury-News.)

• NLADA has launched the Civil Legal Aid Research site to “make existing research easily accessible and understandable to busy administrators and lawyers within civil legal aid programs. Therefore, NLADA has created this blog-database that captures the information about successful evidence-based practices and the results of research and posts those findings in an easily accessible web-based format.  In order to support state justice systems and civil legal aid programs in increasing their efficiency and effectiveness, NLADA will share existing and newly determined evidence-based practices with other programs to match their service delivery to those evidence-based practices that have shown most promise to maximize fair and justice results for clients. State justice systems and programs will then be able to focus their resources more effectively and support qualitative, in addition to the already widely done quantitative, assessment of outcomes to further test and tweak these practices.

• Music!  Chicago has me thinking about the electric blues and that has me thinking about Muddy Waters.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.  Before the public interest news, here are some items related to legal education and student debt:

Taken together, I’m intrigued by a batch of law-school news stories reported this week by the National Law Journal.  First, according to preliminary ABA data, law school enrollment has dropped by 15% in the past two years.  Second, two law school deans have been hired out of law firm practice management positions this year.  Third, Vermont Law School (which some are surprised to learn is a stand-alone and not part of the state higher-ed system) is facing a “looming $3.3 million budget shortfall brought on by declining enrollment.”  The school is offering buyouts to staff, and future faculty buyout offers appear likely.

What could this mean?  First, a caveat: the cliché about news being history’s first draft is important.  It’s dangerous to wrongly connect discrete occurrences which are driven by unique circumstances.  But I’m not too far out on a limb to suggest that legal education is about to confront big, big changes.  It’s more a matter of guessing at the magnitude of the changes, and how much tumult will attend them.  Some questions to think about, inspired by the NLJ stories:

1. Are law school classes going to be considerably smaller for the foreseeable future? Letting alone quantity, will there be any impact on the academic/professional quality of matriculating law classes?
2. Do we see the beginning of a trend toward law schools hiring deans with law-practice management experience, and not necessarily academic experience?
3. How could decreased law-school revenue streams impact legal education’s pedagogy?  Schools have been expanding online offerings of late.  They are relatively cheap to run.  Clinical-type programs, on the other hand, are relatively expensive, but they provide invaluable hands-on training.  Could they be threatened?  Or could they be supplemented by other experiential learning opportunities that allow students to, as Vermont Law School’s incoming dean put it, “earn and learn at the same time”?  To say nothing of the possibility of two-year degree programs becoming more popular….

On the education debt front there was an interesting WSJ article this week about how wide and deep are the federal government’s roots in higher-ed lending.  Regardless of where one comes down on the policy debate about the government being the key higher-ed lender, the debate itself is likely to pick up as elected officials look to long-term budget and debt reduction efforts.  Speaking of lenders, also interesting is this Philadelphia Business Journal article about a just-launched venture, CommonBond, that “…plans to use crowdsourcing to raise money from a college’s alumni base to provide education loans to the college’s current students. It intends to provide loans to more than 50 Wharton MBA students in December and expand nationally next year. The company said the loans will have a fixed rate of 6.24 percent and the alumni who supply the money for the loans can expect an annual return of more than 4 percent on their investments.  CommonBond has raised $3.5 million — $2.5 million from alumni to fund loans and $1 million from a super angel to fund its operations.”  My friend Heather Jarvis, who’s a sharp analyst of education lending policy, mentioned recently that she’s seeing new innovations from private lenders.  I think that’s likely to keep happening. 

Okay, the public interest and access-to-justice news in short:

• ABA ATJ grant deadlines;
• higher pay for CT prosecutors/defenders;
• Birmingham’s new PD office getting off the ground (and maybe hiring);
• Seattle’s PD program may get a big overhaul;
• what to look for in the DOJ’s next ATJ director;
• a legal aid office closure outside Philly;
• pro bono abroad;
• Music! 

 The summaries:

• moments before publishing the Bulletin I got an email announcing 2012 recipients of ABA access-to-justice grants and, more importantly, announcing the application process for 2013 grants.  Applications for grants to promote creation of new state ATJ commissions are due on Feb. 15, 2013.  ATJ “Innovation” grant applications (to promote new work from existing ATJ commissions) are due on May 1, 2013.  Details here.

• 11.30.12 – this came up in a prior Bulletin edition, but I’m happy to repeat good news:  “A recent national study has found that pay for prosecutors and public defenders has barely budged since 2004. The situation is only a little better in Connecticut, where the public sector attorneys last got a raise in 2009.  But that’s about to change. Next summer, Connecticut prosecutors and public defenders are slated to receive a 3 percent raise, adding about $1,850 annually to the current entry level salary of $61,900. Veterans with 10 years experience will see salaries increase from about $91,600 to about $94,000.”  (Story from the Connecticut Law Tribune.)

• 11.29.12 – “Jefferson County’s [i.e. greater Birmingham, AL’s] newly created Public Defender Office will be led by Birmingham attorney Kira Fonteneau.  According to al.com, a team of lawyers under Fonteneau will be responsible for representing poor criminal defendants charged in the Birmingham division of Jefferson County’s court system and who otherwise can’t afford an attorney.  Fonteneau said as many as 35 lawyers could be hired as assistant public defenders for that office.”  (Story from the Birmingham Business Journal.)

• 11.29.12 – King County’s [i.e. greater Seattle’s] complicated public-defense system of four separate nonprofit agencies representing about 30,000 defendants annually has been praised by legal scholars….  But the county is pushing a plan that would dissolve the independent agencies and make public defenders county employees, a move proponents say is in response to a lawsuit filed by a public defender. Under the plan, the nearly 400 employees of the four agencies — The Defender Assocation [sic], Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons, Associated Counsel for the Accused and Northwest Defenders Association — could potentially become King County employees by July 1….”  (Story from the Seattle Times.)

• 11.28.12 =- Access-to-justice blogger Richard Zorza reminded me that the U.S. DOJ is looking to fill the captain’s chair in it’s Access to Justice Initiative office: “With the election over, its time to reflect on what kind of person we need to take on the crucial mantle of Larry Tribe and Mark Childress at the DOJ Access Initiative.  It’s a very important job, and needs a strong leader.  There seem to be three areas of needed skill: Knowing the DC Levers…Ability to Draw Public Attention to the Issue…[and] Ability to See the Big Picture and Advance Transformative Agendas.”  (Here’s the full blog post.)  http://accesstojustice.net/2012/11/28/what-we-need-now-at-doj/

• 11.27.12 – it’s noted in passing in this article about budget cuts in suburban Philly, but “Legal Aid of Southeast Pennsylvania is closing its Pottstown office and laying off at least two employees.”  (Full article from the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

• Two pieces concerning pro bono abroad:
  • PSJD blog readers clamor for updates on English and Welsh pro bono happenings.  So here, from the UK-based Access to Justice Foundation, is the “The Pro Bono Yearbook of England and Wales 2012.”
  • 11.22.12 – an interview with Hogan Lovells international pro bono manager, from the TrustLaw website: “Global economic woes have sharpened the need for pro bono work in both low-income and developed countries, according to law firm Hogan Lovells.  In a written interview its international pro bono manager, Yasmin Waljee, tells TrustLaw about the firm’s pro bono work and why it makes sense for law firms to support social enterprises.”  

• MUSIC!  One of my favorite songwriters, Damian Jurado.  Here’s “Museum of Flight.” 

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, ladies and gents.  I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving, and that you’re able to spend the next few days eating leftover turkey and/or vegetarian/vegan turkey-like food products.  And stuffing.  Man, I love stuffing.  (Or “dressing”, if you’re a weirdo and are inclined to call it that.)  Earlier this week, I began taking inventory of all for which I am thankful.  Early in this process, the same thought again and again returned to me.  I wrote it down: “I count the many things I’m thankful for and realize that to be thankful is, in itself, a great privilege.”  Which is to say that, in light of all the people, ideas, and things that enrich me every day, it is truly my pleasure to stop, appreciate them, and feel a sense of humbled gratitude.  I am so, so fortunate.  Many of us are.  We should appreciate this fact more than once a year.  But once a year is a good start.

Yesterday’s Washington Post featured a terrific piece on my favorite Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin.  Historian Walter Isaacson notes that Franklin exhibited both “strands” that make up our national character: the lover of individual liberty, and the community-builder.  (Isaacson didn’t quite get to this metaphor, but I began to see them as the two strands in the double helix of American DNA.)  Franklin’s work ethic, entrepreneurship, and boundless curiosity propelled him to individual success in commerce.  But his civic-mindedness was equally unbounded.   He launched innumerable civic and commercial programs, and was generous in his charitable giving.  Franklin believed in the power of community.

This piece helped me to understand how fortunate I am to be a part of the larger access-to-justice community, which counts among its members those from public interest organizations, law schools, law firms, and other groups.  For most of my professional life I have been able to learn and grow because of the access-to-justice community’s generosity and spirit of fellowship.  So I’d like to thank all of you, professional colleagues and collaborators, advocates, students, and clients, from whom I have taken so much.  It is truly a pleasure to try to repay those debts in the meager ways I do.

Before the bulletin, an important bit of NALP news, and a request for a (simple) favor from me:

• NALP has just release research findings on law-school “bridge-to-practice” programs, which fund recent graduates to gain work experience in short-term placements while the grads search for long-term employment.  These programs have of course grown in number and size in the recession’s wake.  Notably, within our response pool 48% of the bridge-to-practice placements were with public interest organizations, and another 30% were in government.  One wonders what impact the growth in these school-funded programs has had on hiring for full-time positions within the nonprofit and government legal community.  Here’s a report on some of the research’s key findings.
• If you have not yet circulated our 2012 public interest job market snapshot survey to your contacts, please do.  The survey response deadline is Friday, 11/30.  We need your support to make this unique and important survey effort a success.  Here are details and survey link.  Thanks!

This week’s public interest news in very, very short:

• JALA says, “We have a new ED!”
• NYSBA says, “More legal help for vets!”
• ACC says, “More flexibility for in-house counsel to do pro bono!”
• ABA law school accreditation committee says, “No mandatory pro bono!”
• Harvard’s public interest dean says, “The public interest job search is unlike the law-firm job search!”
• Music!

The summaries:

• 11.21.12 – “Jacksonville Area Legal Aid has named attorney James Kowalski Jr. as executive director, replacing Michael Figgins, who resigned in January to become the executive director of Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.”  While this is the case for most legal services executive directors today, Kowalski is walking into a tough gig.  JALA has experienced a big funding decline and has laid off attorneys, as the Jacksonville Daily Record piece documents.

• 11.20.12 – in a press release, “The New York State Bar Association Tuesday called for providing veterans of the U.S. military with better access to quality legal services. It also recommended the creation of more specialized veterans courts, such as the successful Veterans Treatment Court in Buffalo, the first of its kind in the nation.”

• 11.19.12 – an update from the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) about their work to promote more flexibility in state practice rules (thus allowing in-house lawyers to do more local pro bono), and some insight on how in-house counsel can craft such proposals when advocating for changes in individual jurisdictions.

• 11.19.12 – It appears that a New York-style pro bono requirement for law students won’t be going national anytime soon.
  Several organizations and legal leaders have asked the committee that is updating the American Bar Association’s law school accreditation standards to add a 50-hour pro bono requirement, but that idea got a chilly reception from the committee at its most recent meeting on November 16 and 17. None of the nine committee members in attendance endorsed the idea, which generated only a few minutes of discussion. Those who took a position said that requiring a certain amount of pro bono work is outside the scope of the ABA’s accreditor role.”  Here’s the National Law Journal article, and here’s a link to many of the proposals, which are housed on the National Center for Access to Justice’s website.  Finally, here’s a look at the committee’s actions on other law school accreditation change proposals, from the ABA Journal.

• 11.14.12 – Alexa Shabecoff, assistant dean for public service at Harvard Law School, sets the record straight by responding to a Harvard Crimson article that had pushed for more promotion of public service within the law school.  Shabecoff writes: “Those of us who work in the community of public interest lawyers welcome media interest in the nationwide shortage of legal services for the underserved. We also understand the temptation to write stories that say that part of the problem is that on-campus recruiting by big private firms is so much more robust than on-campus recruiting by public interest employers, but to suggest—as the Crimson has done—that the way for Harvard Law School to address that imbalance is to “set up [on-campus] interview programs for public sector organizations akin to its efforts to facilitate student interviews for private companies” is to miss the mark. The vast majority of such organizations cannot spare the funds to send recruiters to law school campuses around the country. Nor do their hiring cycles lend themselves to the kind of unified recruiting ‘season’ adopted by large law firms.  The task for law schools is to maximize the support available for students who will not be deterred by the fact that it is indeed likely to be somewhat harder—and to take somewhat longer—to land a public service position than to obtain an offer from a private law firm….”

• Music!  Thanksgiving is for many of us tinged with nostalgia.  The return home, the football games (granted, played at a much slower pace) with family and old friends, etc.  So here’s some nostalgia from me – one of my favorite 1990s bands, the Connells, playing “Fifth Fret”.

By: Steve Grumm

credit: rob shenk

Happy Friday, folks, from a blustery Washington, DC.  Two items of general interest before moving into to the public interest news:

• A development concerning state bar admissions and immigration status: “An organization calling itself the DREAM Bar Association (DBA) is launching a national campaign on behalf of undocumented immigrants who want licenses to practice law after meeting all state requirements.  Sergio Garcia, a [California-based] law school graduate who has an application for legal residency pending, traveled…to Washington, D.C. to join other undocumented law school graduates and law students for a Nov. 13 press conference. Garcia’s right to a California law license is under consideration by the state Supreme Court.”  More interestingly, the U.S. DOJ opposes admission to the bar for undocumented persons.  (Read the full New American Media article.)
• For the data wonks among us, the Census Bureau has released a report contrasting the latest official measures of U.S. poverty against the measures that are produced by the “Supplemental Poverty Measure.”  The SPM is uses a different (and more modern, frankly) methodology to measure poverty. 

Okay, on to the public interest news (of which there is much):

• Mandatory pro bono in the ABA’s law school accreditation standards?
• LRAP expansion in CO
• Clinic funding at SUNY Buffalo
• Rolling out a new foreclosure prevention program in OR
• Cy pres in PA
• Pro hac vice in NY (Vivat lingua Latina!!!)
• Controversial expansion of pro se form use in TX
• Possible defender layoffs in NOLA
• Editorial supports bolstering NY’s indigent defense program
• Federal courts fear the fiscal cliff
• MO’s defender program chief fires back against a prosecutor’s criticism
• Extending an indigent defense funding mechanism in MN
• Sandy’s hobbled some NYC legal aid providers
• CT prosecutors & defenders to see pay bump;
• MI’s state house okays bill to create statewide indigent defense program
• Atlanta’s Justice Café provides flat-fee services to moderate-income clients
• Super Canuck Music Bonus!

The summaries:

• 11.16.12 – Our headlining public interest item this week involves a group of proposals to modify an ABA law school accreditation standard so as to include a pro bono requirement for law students.  There are several slightly different proposals in the mix.  I haven’t had time to analyze them in any depth, but here are links to the proposals, courtesy of David Udell of the National Center for Access to Justice(who co-authored one of the proposals):
  • David Udell (National Center for Access to Justice) and Deborah Rhode (Stanford Law)
  • Erwin Chemerinsky (Dean, UC Irvine Law)
  • Bob Gillett (Legal Services of South Central Michigan)
  • David Stern (Equal Justice Works)
  • Jo-Ann Wallace and Don Saunders (National Legal Aid & Defender Association)

• 11.15.12 – LRAP expansion in Boulder.  “University of Colorado regents Thursday approved expansion plans for a law school program that helps graduates pay off their student loans if they take modest-paying public service jobs — especially in the state’s rural areas. The nine-member Board of Regents unanimously approved future plans for the law school’s loan repayment assistance program, which includes an ambitious $10 million fundraising goal to support an endowment.”  (Story from the Daily Camera.)

• 11.15.12 – a SUNY Buffalo Law School clinic is raising money to fund two positions for students to focus on aiding victims of domestic violence.  (Full story from the Buffalo Law Journal.)

• 11.15.12 – a new foreclosure prevention program in Oregon.  “Free legal assistance is now available to eligible low-income homeowners and renters facing foreclosure, Oregon Housing and Community Services announced today.  The state agency has contracted with Legal Aid Services of Oregon (LASO) to develop and deliver the new program.”  (Story from the Statesman Journal.)

• 11.15.12 – the expansion in the use of cy pres funds to support legal aid in PA is a very welcome development for Pittsburgh’s Neighborhood Legal Services Association.  “[T]he Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently promulgated new rules that encourage the use of unused funds in State cases to help provide legal services to low-income Pennsylvanians. The rules require that 50% of residual funds be designated to Pennsylvania’s Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (PA IOLTA), a non-profit program that provides funding for civil legal aid. The remaining 50% either go to the PA IOLTA Board or to other charitable organizations such as NLSA that promotes the interests of the lawsuit’s objectives.”  (Blog post from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.) 

• 11.14.12 – New York is allowing out-of-state lawyers to provide pro bono assistance to Sandy victims on a pro hac vice basis.  (Story from Thomson-Reuters.) 

• 11.14.12 – “Despite widespread outcry among family lawyers, the Texas Supreme Court yesterday approved a set of pro se divorce forms for indigent couples with no children or real property. The high court will accept public comments about the forms through Feb. 1, 2013, and may modify the forms in response.  In explaining its decision, the high court wrote in its Nov. 13 order that it ‘is confident that these forms will be a useful tool in addressing the burgeoning population of litigants who cannot afford representation and are unable to obtain representation through a legal service provider….’  [I]n a dissenting statement, Justice Debra Lehrmann wrote that she’s concerned the court’s endorsement of the forms will increase pro se litigation by people who can afford lawyers, and it may ‘lull people who could and should receive the benefit of experienced counsel into believing that the form will adequately protect their interests’.”  (Story from the Tex Parte Blog.)

• 11.13.12 – facing continued fiscal struggles, including a possible 33% funding cut in city funding, the NOLA public defender’s office may lay off attorneys.  From Gambit: “The office receives most of its $7 million annual operating budget from a combination of state funds and local court fines, but the local cut will mean the office — which represented about 80 percent of the city’s criminal defendants in thousands of felony and misdemeanor cases last year — will have to fire eight lawyers from its current staff of 55….”

• 11.12.12 – the Albany Times-Union editorial board comes down squarely in favor of statewide indigent defense reform to get away from the current, patchwork county-by-county system.  The board also puts in a plug for continued support for civil legal aid.   

• 11.12.12 – federal judges and court administrators worry that a ride off the so-called “fiscal cliff” could imperil the court system, or at a minimum slow up the wheels of justice.  (Story from the National Law Journal.)  

• 11.11.12 – the head of Missouri’s indigent defense program fires back against a prosecutor’s  allegations of failed leadership.  “Eric Zahnd, president of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, has declared there is no Missouri State Public Defender caseload problem, just an imaginary crisis created by the leadership of the public defender system [“Much public defender work should be contracted out,” Oct. 29].  As proof, he points to the latest audit of the public defender system.  The audit he trumpets, however, does not support his conclusions…. Prosecutorial table-pounding does not change the facts found by each and every one of [recent studies]: Missouri’s public defender system has too many cases and too few lawyers to meet its constitutional obligations. Their findings are in fact supported by the findings of the audit, which states that ‘increases in the MSPD’s growth in caseload has outpaced its growth in staffing resources’ and that over the past 20 years, public defender caseload has increased by 70 percent as compared to staffing, which has trailed at a 58 percent increase.”  (Full piece in Missouri Lawyers Weekly.)  

• 11.9.12 – The Minnesota Lawyer on indigent defense funding: “The Minnesota Board of Public Defense has asked that an increase in attorney registration fees to fund its office be extended through 2015.  The Supreme Court authorized an increase in 2009 and renewed it in 2011.  But Minnesota’s public defenders are handling caseloads that are 170 percent of state and national standards. The petition states that the board will ask the Legislature for funding but does not expect to receive enough to meet its needs, particularly with respect to advanced technology.  When the court approved the last fee increase, it said it would not do it again because the Legislature and the governor should provide adequate funding for the public defender system.  The complete notice is available here. http://www.mncourts.gov/?page=3862&item=56448. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 15 and comments are due Jan. 7.”

• 11.9.12 -Sandy didn’t just create more legal aid clients; she hobbled some legal aid providers: “As thousands of New Yorkers struggle to recover from Superstorm Sandy, three major legal aid providers seeking to help victims have been hampered by their own storm-related damage.  Legal Services NYC, the New York Legal Assistance Group and the Legal Aid Society were shut out of their downtown offices when Sandy struck last Monday and have been operating out of satellite offices or spaces borrowed from other non-profit groups and large law firms.”  Mad props to the NY/NJ legal aid lawyers who fought through their own Sandy setbacks to keep up with casework and intake.  I’m happy to write that there are too many of you to name.  (Story from Thomson-Reuters.)    

• 11.9.12 – Connecticut prosecutors and public defenders are getting a pay bump.  Huzzah!  “A recent national study has found that pay for prosecutors and public defenders has barely budged since 2004. The situation is only a little better in Connecticut, where the public sector attorneys last got a raise in 2009. But that’s about to change. Next summer, Connecticut prosecutors and public defenders are slated to receive a 3 percent raise, adding about $1,850 annually to the current entry level salary of $61,900. Veterans with 10 years experience will see salaries increase from about $91,600 to about $94,000.  Jack Doyle, a prosecutor and president of the Connecticut Association of Prosecutors, the bargaining unit for the 250 prosecuting attorneys in the state, calls the raise overdue. He notes that other state workers have, overall, averaged 3.5 percent annual pay increases over the past decade….  The state’s public defenders, who are not union members and have no say in pay negotiations, get the same raises as prosecutors because of state law that requires equal pay for the two agencies.”  (The Connecticut Law Tribune article is password-protected.) 

• 11.8.12 – The Michigan House approved a bill that would create the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission.  HB 5804 would create a 14-member board that would oversee the state’s underfunded indigent defense system.  The bill passed 71-36 after two substitutes.  According to the version that passed the House, the commission is charged with ensuring adequate funding for defense attorneys, which the bill describes as ‘equal partners with the prosecution, law enforcement, and the judiciary in the criminal justice system’.”   The bill’s gone to the Senate for consideration.  (Blog post from Michigan Lawyers Weekly.)

• 11.7.12 – the latest example of the growth in flat-fee work for clients of modest means: “Many middle-income people seeking a divorce can’t afford to hire a lawyer but aren’t poor enough to qualify for legal aid. Michael and Shelia Manely hope to fill this gap with a new kind of family law firm, the Justice Café.  Located a block from the Fulton County, Ga., Superior Courthouse, the Justice Café will charge $75 an hour for a la carte help in divorces and other family law matters, with no retainer up front, unlike most family law firms.”  (Full story from the Daily Report.)

Music!  Northward to Canada for a great tune from the Tragically Hip.  (Thanks to PSJD Blog friend Bob Glaves for the recommendation.  Good stuff, Mr. Glaves.)

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, ladies and gents.  Quite a week here in DC.  One of the most noteworthy election stories involves the changing faces of the American electorate.  Much ink has already been spilled about the youth (i.e. Millenial Generation), Latino, and women’s voting blocs’ influences on the election.  But it’s not just the voters who are changing.  It’s those whose candidacies are being voted upon.  For the first time, the women’s caucus in the Senate will swell to 20 next January.  And the Senate will also welcome its first openly gay member in the person of Tammy Baldwin.  Change is afoot. 

In other election-related news, here’s some unsolicited financial planning advice: I’m bullish on Frito-Lay sales in Colorado and Washington State.

On to the public interest news.  By way of transition I ask for your help in circulating NALP’s just-launched Public Interest Employment Market Snapshot Survey, a brief, anonymous survey of U.S.-based nonprofit and government public-interest law offices about 1) recent law student and attorney hiring and 2) hiring expectations for the immediate future. We will use the gathered data to produce a report about what the public interest employment market looks like.  We will make the report freely available in January, 2013.  The survey is available here.  Thanks for supporting this unique endeavor. 

This week’s news in very, very short:

• Making the economic case for civil legal aid in the glorious Keystone State;
• Stanford Law students help throw a little chin music at CA’s three strikes law;
• The  op-ed battle over who’s responsible for the tough circumstances confronting Missouri’s public defense program;
• Election Day proves to be Independence Day for New Mexico’s public defense program;
• It’s Pro Bono Week in the UK;
• A new MLP in Houston;
• Wisconsin Law opens a veterans clinic;
• Foreclosure fraud settlement funds channeled to the Legal Aid Society in TN.

The summaries:

• 11.8.12 – making the economic case for civil legal aid in PA: “Poverty legal services fill this void and have a long history of defending the most vulnerable among us from both fraud and abuse, but recent cuts to their funding guarantee that they will be able to help fewer and fewer people and– studies show– that affects all of us.  ‘This is the type of funding that not only rights wrongs but makes clear economic sense,’ explained Al Azen, Executive Director of Pennsylvania’s Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (PA IOLTA), a non-profit program that provides funding for civil legal aid.  A new study by PA IOLTA, shows that over the last fiscal year the work of poverty legal services created $594 million for the Pennsylvania economy, an unheard-of eleven fold economic return on their funding.”  This story’s from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  Unfortunately I can’t find the referenced report from the IOLTA board.  [EDIT: here’s the report, which was released in April.]

• 11.7.12 – “Stanford Law School students and faculty celebrated on election night, after years of hard work paid off when California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, which reforms the state’s tough ‘three strikes’ sentencing law.   The…school’s Three Strikes Project worked with the New York-based NAACP Legal Defense Fund to draft and promote the legislation, which won widespread support among California law enforcement and civil rights advocates. Proposition 36 represents the first time that voters have approved more lenient sentencing for offenders already serving prison time. With the change, offenders who commit nonviolent crimes as their third offense will no longer receive life sentences.”  (Story from the National Law Journal.)

• 11.7.12 – after a Missouri prosecutor blamed the state public defense program’s leadership, and not high caseloads, for the program’s struggles, a return volley: “Missourians deserve undistorted facts when faced with such serious criminal justice decisions. Instead, prosecutors take technical disagreements about how best to calculate public defender case overload — as raised in a new state auditor’s report — and conclude that the report ‘shatters the myth’ that public defenders are overworked. In reality, the report found “MSPD’s growth in caseload has outpaced its growth in staffing resources….”  (St. Louis Post-Dispatch op-ed from the director of the Sixth Amendment Center.) 

• 11.6.12 – “New Mexico voters have approved a constitutional amendment that establishes the Public Defender Department as an independent state agency….  The amendment calls for forming an independent commission that would appoint the state’s chief public defender, who would then oversee the department. Currently, the governor appoints the chief public defender.”  (AP story via KKOB’s website.)

• 11.6.12 – It’s Pro Bono Week in the UK, so there’s been a rash of stories about what is, and isn’t being accomplished by the bar across the pond.  Here’s a little bit about pro bono performed by UK’s “Biglaw” firms: “The value of pro-bono work in the UK is almost half a billion pounds a year, with research from legal recruitment company Laurence Simons finding that the top 20 firms carried out £180m of free work – the equivalent of 1.85 per cent of their budgets – in 2011….  The research, which was released to coincide with pro-bono week, show that the average value of voluntary work for each lawyer was £5,194. However, with the survey suggesting that 52 per cent of lawyers did no pro-bono work at all last year, the figure is likely to be double that amount.”  (Article from The Lawyer.)
  • an op-ed in The Guardian looks critically at how pro bono numbers demonstrate a polarization in the legal profession, and what that could say for the future of promoting access to justice.   

• 11.4.12 – ” Texas Children’s Hospital and the Houston Bar Association’s Houston Volunteer Lawyers recently announced the formation of a medical-legal partnership (MLP) that will provide Texas Children’s low-income patients and patient-families with critical legal assistance. This is the first partnership of its kind to be offered in the Houston area.  Through the program, a dedicated Houston Volunteer Lawyers staff attorney will provide legal advice and representation to Texas Children’s patients and their families with assistance from outside pro bono lawyers. The project is being funded in part by a donation from Walmart, which created a successful MLP with Arkansas Children’s Hospital last year with plans to expand the benefits of MLPs to other major pediatric hospitals nationwide.”  (Story from the Bellaire Examiner.)

• 11.2.12 – Wisconsin Law goes to bat for local vets.  “Legal assistance for Dane County veterans will be available starting Thursday, Nov. 8 when the University of Wisconsin Law School launches the new Veterans Law Center….  The free legal center is funded by a $5,000 Pro Bono Initiative grant from the State Bar Legal Assistance Committee. The project is administered by the UW Law School’s Pro Bono Program and is a collaborative effort with support from the Dane County Veterans Service Office, the Dane County Bar Association, Porchlight, Inc. and representatives from the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison. Habush Habush & Rottier SC recently contributed an additional $5,000 to fund the center.”  (Here’s the story from the Univ. of Wisconsin.)   

• 11/2/12 – funds from the national mortgage foreclosure fraud class-action settlement flow to legal aid in Tennessee: “The Legal Aid Society has launched a new initiative to help Tennessee homeowners dealing with foreclosure and mortgage rescue scams.  The expanded project is funded through an agreement with the state attorney general’s office.  The money is the result of a nationwide settlement between state attorneys general and major banks that engaged in questionable mortgage practices.”  (Story from CBS MoneyWatch.)

Music!  This week’s song is dedicated to campaign TV commercials.  We hardly knew ye.  On second thought, we knew ye all too well and saw ye all too often.  Ye were never welcomed.  Good riddance.

By: Steve Grumm

Bloomberg News

Happy Friday, folks.  If you were affected by the storm earlier this week, I hope you are safe and well.  Sandy delivered a painful reminder of our fragility.  One of the world’s most developed, sophisticated population centers found itself completely subject to nature’s whim.  Humbling.  And tragic for too many people.  On the legal front, the National Disaster Legal Aid website is serving as a resource both for those seeking help and those wishing to render it.  And while the news coverage has focused on the New York/Jersey region, it’s noteworthy that the storm’s impact has been felt far and wide.  I heard from a Cleveland-based legal aid lawyer who’s gone the week without electricity.     

For some post-Sandy escapism, here’s word that a new Star Wars movie is in the making (and that George Lucas is selling his empire to Disney).  Since I grew up loving the original trilogy and watching too many saccharine 80s sitcoms, I’m tempted to greet this development with unmitigated joy.  But I’ve got real questions about the franchise that inflicted Jar Jar Binks upon the world turning itself over to the company that gave us The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.  Be warned, Disney: take good care of this galaxy far, far away.  

This week in very, very short:

• Texas counties pooling resources to provide indigent defense in capital cases
• Mandatory pro bono, Singapore style
• Low-paid FL prosecutors and defenders
• Pushback on pushback on Income Based Repayment
• More on NY’s new 50-hour pro bono rule
• Missouri prosecutor minces no words in assigning fault for indigent defense system woes
• NOLA PD may see big cut in city funding
• We can hear you now.  Corporate lawyers should be freed up to do more pro bono, says Verizon general counsel.
• Even Harvard’s public interest minded law students face a difficult career path
• Great work from Iowa Legal Aid, but times are tough
• Low-paid Pittsburgh prosecutors and defenders
• New masters-in-law course in animal law
• Recent hiring by the Land of Enchantment’s (great state nickname!) public defense program
• Online ATJ in IL
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries

• 11.1.12 – in Texas, counties banding together to provide capital defense counsel: “Parker County commissioners recently voted to join the Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases program, an action that could save the county thousands of dollars during the prosecution of expensive capital murder cases.  The program, funded through the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, represents defendants who are charged with the offense of capital murder and are eligible for the death penalty but cannot afford to hire their own attorneys.  The organization helps participating smaller counties meet the legal requirement to provide access to counsel for those defendants by providing a core team of four — two…attorneys, a mitigation specialist and a fact investigator — as well funds for an investigation…. Of the 240 counties eligible for the program … 193 have agreed to participate so far.”  (Story from the Weatherford Democrat.)

• 11.1.12 – I work hard to offer a global worldview, dear reader.  So here we have news about a potential move to mandatory pro bono in Singapore.  Only 16 hours, though, which is odd.  Here’s some detail from Today Online: “Lawyers could soon be required to contribute a minimum of 16 hours of free legal services, as part of a high powered committee’s proposal to make it mandatory for practitioners to provide legal aid to low-income and disadvantaged Singaporeans….  The scheme will cover legal assistance in four broad areas: Criminal legal aid, civil legal aid, community mediation including other voluntary services in the Subordinate Courts, and legal advisory work to institutions and charities.”

• 10.31.12 – “Florida prosecutors and public defenders can’t keep over-worked young lawyers very long without at least a break-even pay raise to offset the state’s 3 percent pension deduction, lawyers told state budget planners at a public hearing Wednesday….  ‘We have two kinds of assistant state attorneys today,’ said Buddy Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association. ‘We have those that are leaving and those that are looking.’  Jacobs said 56 percent of assistant prosecutors are five years, or less, out of law school, and that the typical young prosecutor starts at $40,000 a year — with $80,000 to $100,000 in college debt…. The state attorney offices have had about 15 percent turnover in each of the past two years, he said.”  (Story from the Florida Current.)

• 10.31.12 – student debt expert Heather Jarvis pushes back on a report that was itself critical of the Income Based Repayment program: “The New America Foundation released ‘Safety Net or Windfall:  Examining Changes to Income-Based Repayment for Federal Student Loans’… arguing that changes to Income-Based Repayment (IBR) should be better targeted towards low-income borrowers rather than “high-income borrowers with graduate and professional degrees.”   The analysis in the report clearly demonstrates what advocates have long known is a weakness in the IBR program—the lowest-income student loan borrowers need more and different help.  But the wealthy certainly do not benefit the most from Income-Based Repayment.  Wealthy students and families have money to pay for education, do not need to rely on student loans, and neither need nor will receive many benefits from Income-Based Repayment.  We have a debt-based system of access to higher education.  Unless or until that changes, student loans enable middle- and lower-income students and families to pay for…advanced degrees.  Middle- and lower-income students…must borrow substantial amounts or decide not to pursue advanced graduate and professional degrees.”
  • Speaking of student debt, the federal “Pay As You Earn” regulations were finalized this week.  PAYE makes two significant changes to the Income Based Repayment program. It first lowers the debtor’s monthly contribution from roughly 15% of disposable income to 10%.  Second, it knocks down the 25-year forgiveness period to 20 years.  (Distinguish this, however, from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness provision, which forgives eligible loan balances after 10 years of payments into IBR.)  (Here’s some coverage from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.) 

• 10.31.12 – New York’s newly implemented 50-hour pro bono requirement for admission to the bar just will not leave the news.
  • New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman delivered remarks to a DC-based audience earlier this week.  The Blog of the Legal Times has coverage: “The pro bono requirement, which is the first of its kind for a state bar, is ‘conceptually unassailable,’ Lippman said, even as he acknowledged concerns raised by law schools and legal services providers about how it would work in practice. He also said that the requirement was not a precursor to a mandatory pro bono requirement for the bar, another concern within the legal community.  Lippman said he hoped other states would consider similar requirements
  • And from the New York Law Journal, we learn that the chief judge expects that few bar applicants will be exempted from the rule’s requirement.

• 10.30.12 – pulling no punches regarding Missouri’s troubled indigent defense system, the state prosecutor association’s president blames the indigent defense program’s leaders, not overwhelming caseloads, for the program’s woes: “Simply put, the current public defender system is broken beyond repair because its top brass has surrendered in the face of its challenges. The only suggestion the public defender leadership ever offers is that they need more money. When the state budget is already stretched too thin, Missourians deserve a better solution….  We need to consider a new model where we reserve state-paid public defenders for the most serious felonies, such as murders and sexual offenses, while contracting representation of misdemeanors and low-level felonies to private counsel who could do the work more efficiently.  (Op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)

• 10.30.12 – the city of New Orleans is funding the district attorney’s office at just slightly less than it did last year, but the public defender’s office will see funding slashed by 33% (from $1.2 million to $800,000.)  Here’s the story from the Times-Picayune. 

• 10.29.12 – loosen up state practice rules so that in-house counsel – who may not be licensed in the states in which they physically work – can do more pro bono.  This is the case made by Verizon general counsel Randal Milch in a Corporate Counsel op-ed.

• 10.29.12 – the Harvard Crimson looks at the difficulties confronted by public service minded law students when they choose between a relatively robust law-firm recruiting system and the more difficult path to public service, which involves a tight, low-paying job market.

• 10.29.12 – a piece on Iowa Legal Aid trumpets the organization’s work on behalf of thousands of vulnerable Hawkeye Staters, but closes on a somber note: “All of that work is being done with fewer people, though. Iowa Legal Aid served nearly 17 percent fewer people than in 2010 because of reduced revenue and reductions in staff. At the end of 2011, the organization had 12 fewer attorneys and 8 fewer support staff than it had at the beginning of 2010. Funding from the Supreme Court was reduced to $172,000 for 2012, which is down from the $828,572 grant received three years ago, and federal funding was cut by 15 percent.”  (Full piece in The Hawkeye.)

• 10/29/12 – citing NALP data, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at how low pay harries the Steel City’s junior prosecutors and defenders, forcing some to moonlight in order to make ends meet.

• 10/28.12 – the pet industry is booming – Big Pet? – and Lewis & Clark Law School has created a masters-in-law certificate program for tomorrow’s animal rights/law lawyers.  From the Columbia Tribune: “Enrollment in the yearlong program [which has an initial class of six students] is expected to grow to 15 or 20 students in three to five years, said attorney Pamela Frasch, assistant dean and executive director of the [school’s Center for Animal Law Studies].”

• 10/26/12 – New Mexico’s public defender program has done a fair amount of recent hiring.  That’s tapering off but they’re still looking for lawyers.  From the Las Cruces Sun-News: “Vacancies in the agency have declined from 20.8 percent in 2011 to 15 percent today.  Moreover…the chief public defender…said she expected vacancies to drop to 8 percent by January.  Her department is filling 70 jobs, she told the Legislative Finance Committee this week. In raw numbers, the public defender has 211 attorneys and 182 support employees. [The chief defender] said she had begun to reduce the vacancy rate because the Legislature increased her budget by $1.2 million last session. Overall, the [program’s] budget is $40.14 million. It stood at $42.6 million in 2010, then legislative cutbacks began because of the national fiscal crisis.”

• 10.26.12 – this Government Technology story is ostensibly about the launching of a successful online, self-help legal aid website in one county.  But it points to a larger trend in Illinois toward empowering low- and moderate-income residents with online legal resources.  

Music!  This week I’m having all kinds of trouble not listening to Centro-matic’s “Patience for the Ride.”  If I had to guess, I’d say the song has to do with the Enron fallout and similar instances of corporate malfeasance.  But as with all well-written songs, it draws upon more universal themes.  And I hear “Patience for the Ride” as an anthem for public interest lawyers who face long odds and powerful opponents.  The song also contains a somehow-unpretentious use of the word “eleemosynary”.  That’s straight badass, is what that is.