By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday Wednesday, dear readers, from a dreary Washington, DC.  I did quite a bit of grumbling before arriving at the office this morning.  A car running through a puddle splashed me but good while I was jogging.  And at 8am I still didn’t manage to beat the last-minute food rush at the super market.  But now, here I sit with coffee, a bagel, and some quiet.  “Hell is breakfast with other people” is a humorous variation on a quote from John Paul Sartre.  And this morning, a quiet breakfast is perfect.  But as Thanksgiving approaches, I eagerly look forward to sharing a table and a meal with others.  Between the people who inhabit my life, the comforts I enjoy, and the work I do, I have much to be thankful for.  And I will try hard amidst the food and the football (yay!) and the minor holiday stresses to keep feelings of gratitude at the fore.  I hope that you will do the same.  Happy Thanksgiving.   

But you’re not here for sappy rumination.  This is what we’ve got:

• a restrictive cy pres decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals;
• troubles plaguing Michigan’s indigent defense system;
• public defender’s office in Sonoma County, CA feeling $ strains;
• Defense Department to kick a little funding toward pro bono programs for service-members;
• speaking of service-members, this veteran who joined a DA’s office isn’t, well, human;
• LSC cut to hit the Pennsylvania Legal Action Network hard;
• ditto for the two Wisconsin LSC grantees;
• ditto ditto in Virginia;
• A law graduate work program in Utah will have students offering “low bono” services.

This week:

• 11.21.11 – cy pres news from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, coming down against an award that would have gone (in part) to the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA).  From the Recorder: “The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Monday rejected a class action settlement that called for AOL Inc. to give $110,000 to random charities, sending a message that courts should be more careful in doling out money under the cy pres doctrine.  A unanimous panel said the charities had nothing to do with the plaintiffs’ email privacy claims and that too much money was being funneled to Los Angeles groups, despite a class spread out across the country. And the court expressed skepticism about whether judges or mediators should make recommendations on how large sums of money get paid out when the money doesn’t go to the class members.”  

• 11.21.11 – Michigan’s indigent defense system has been foundering.  This is the gist of a Michigan Public Radio story looking at the much-maligned, county-by-county public defense framework in the Great Lake State.  A 2008 report from the National Legal Aid & Defender Association found that the quality of indigent representation varies greatly from county to county, and that overall the state ranks 44th in total indigent defense funding.  In the report’s wake, the ACLU of Michigan has filed a lawsuit to improve the system, and the governor formed a commission to find solutions.

• 11.21.11 – public defense funding woes in Sonoma County, CA.  From the Press-Democrat: “The recession has increased demand in Sonoma County for court-appointed lawyers at a time when the public defender’s office is short-handed.  Retirements and a round of layoffs have reduced the number of lawyers available to serve indigent clients to the lowest level in years. The office is down to 27 lawyers and 18 support staff representing clients in criminal, civil and juvenile courtrooms.  At the same time, caseloads have spiked. Attorneys made 115,000 court appearances in fiscal 2009-2010 compared to about 71,000 appearances a decade earlier.  This month’s loss of two attorney positions through budget cuts forced Public Defender John Abrahams to suspend misdemeanor court coverage and focus on more serious felony cases.” 

• 11.21.11 – good news for service-members who need legal services.  From the National Law Journal: “The U.S. Senate this week is expected to vote on a measure that would help fund programs that provide pro bono legal services to active military personnel. The amendment was introduced by sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)… The amendment would allow the Defense Department to designate up to $500,000 of its $184 billion fiscal year 2011 operation and maintenance budget for programs similar to those set up by the ABA and the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan.”  $500,000 isn’t exactly a huge chunk of change in the larger appropriations scheme, but it’s signifies a recognition that service-members can be hamstrung when confronted with legal problems on the home-front.

• 11.20.11 – speaking of service-mmebers, a veteran of operations in Afghanistan has recently returned to the U.S. and taken up a post in a local D.A.’s office.  Nothing terribly newsworthy about this, right?  Well the veteran, Andy, isn’t a person.  Andy’s a pooch.  When Assistant District Attorney Jason Beato – who is human -joined the DeKalb County (Georgia) prosecutor’s office after service in the Army, he brought with him Andy, a bomb detection dog whom Beato had adopted when Andy’s primary handler was injured.  Of Andy’s service abroad, Beato says, “For all practical purposes he [was] a team member—he just can’t talk and that’s about it—and he sheds a lot more.”  Andy will likely go to work in the D.A.’s office doing courthouse security work – and probably boosting morale along the way.  good story. Read more in the blog post from the Champion Newspaper.  

• 11.20.11 – “Legal aid: The need is there, so should the funding” is the verb-deficient title of an otherwise well-intentioned editorial from the Patriot-News in the Glorious Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  The editorial laments the recent LSC cut coming on top of legal services funding cuts on the state level: “The Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network expects a $2 million cut in federal funding plus frozen allocations, and funding cuts on the state level during past years have put the organization close to what the appropriation was in 1976…. Legal Aid predicts the funding imbalance means another 10 percent staffing cut, and this is after the service already is at bare bones. It also could mean closing at least two offices statewide.”

• 11.19.11 –  the circumstances are similar in Wisconsin. Both Badger State LSC grantees (Wisconsin Judicare and Legal Action of Wisconsin) are bracing for LSC funding cut’s impact.  This will come on top of a complete loss of state funding.  From the Capital Times in Madison: “The 2011-13 state budget cuts, which took effect this year, stripped Judicare of $350,000 per year in funding, about 17.5 percent of last year’s budget, and cut about $1.3 million a year in revenue for Legal Action. The federal cuts will strip $176,000 more from Judicare’s budget, and $540,000 from Legal Action’s.”

• 11.18.11 – the LSC cut will impact the Virginia Legal Aid Society to the tune of about 7% of its budget, or $180,000.  According the VLAS executive director David Neumeyer (as quoted in the Suffolk News Herald), “Keeping up with the demand for our services is already a huge challenge, and now with this cut I’m afraid we’ll have to turn away even more people who have nowhere else to turn…. This loss of funding will mean we cannot increase capacity and will need to start reducing staff size in 2012 if we do not bring in significant new income,” he said. “Private giving, like donations, foundations and United Ways, are the only hope we have of making up part of the loss, because government funding will not increase for the foreseeable future.”

• 11.18.11 – the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law is launching a program through which recent grads will provide legal services to moderate-income clients.  From the Salt Lake City Tribune:  “The…new University Law Group is intended to expand the availability of legal services and service-learning opportunities, according to law dean Hiram Chodosh.”  This is a variation of the law school “bridge” programs which provide work-experience opportunities for recent grads who face a tough employment market.

Should the grievances motivating the “Occupy” movement cause corporate law firms to rethink their role in the financial services industry?  Are attorneys who counsel banks and investment outfits really acting as counselors, or merely as facilitators?  Interesting questions.

Writing in today’s National Law Journal, Columbia Law School professor Katherine Franke argues that “the [Occupy Wall Street] protests should motivate us to consider anew what it means to be a professional lawyer, particularly in a climate where our expertise is being used to provide cover for otherwise unethical financial practices.”

Franke writes:

By and large, it’s investment bankers who have been in the protesters’ crosshairs, but the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demonstrations also offer an opportunity to consider what role lawyers may have played in the creation of these sophisticated financial instruments, enabling the overreaching decried on the OWS protesters’ placards. Behind every credit default swap or short of subprime mortgage-backed assets sit legal counsel sanctioning these practices. The greed that has motivated bankers to sacrifice the public’s interests for short-term personal gain has been made possible, in no small part, by the work of lawyers.

…

As legal educators, we are reminded to teach our students that being a “good lawyer” must include the cultivation of responsible moral judgment. Implicit in the OWS protests is a condemnation of an approach to lawyering that regards all legal rules simply as the price of misconduct discounted by the probability of enforcement: Skirting too close to, if not over, the limits of law is seen as the cost of doing business, or as my colleagues trained in economics call it, “efficient breach.”

This kind of zeal at the margins was wholeheartedly condemned by the likes of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who taught us that responsible lawyers play a regulatory role with regard to their clients: “Instead of holding a position of independence, between the wealthy and the people, prepared to curb the excesses of either, lawyers have, to a large extent, allowed themselves to become adjuncts of great corporations and have neglected the obligation to use their powers for the protection of the people.” These words of Brandeis are as true today as they were when he wrote them in 1914.

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  The News Bulletin took a break last week, so I didn’t get a chance to offer Veterans Day thanks to my favorite vet: Thanks Dad!  This week we return with a broad range of content.  Sadly the most significant story is that of the congressional cut of $56 million in Legal Services Corporation funding.  In summary here’s what we’ve got:

• Themes emerge from ABA’s October pro bono summit;
• Large LSC funding cut;
• A look at “veterans court” programs;
• Best places to work in federal government;
• Funding woes facing NC legal aid lawyers;
• More LSC: a development in the LSC/CRLA legal proceedings;
• More more LSC: 5 additions to the Pro Bono Task Force (including a friend of mine!);
• LAFLA + TCC = SoCal MLP;
• USAJobs Version 3 stumbles out of the gates;
• Funding news about Minnesota legal aid lawyers, defenders, and prosecutors;
• The worst of the foreclosure crisis yet to hit NY courts;
• Demand for Maryland Legal Aid Bureau’s services going nowhere but up;
• The Big Easy’s public defender seeks more local funding; and
• Practice-area specialization in law firm pro bono: yea or nay?   

This week(s):

• 11.16.11 – in the L.A.-based Daily Journal, O’Melveny & Myers’s managing counsel for pro bono David Lash recaps his experience at a first-ever Pro Bono Summit hosted by the ABA last month: “We agreed upon and built on a number of themes:
  • Pro bono involvement by the private bar leverages meager resources right now;
  • Professionalization of the pro bono legal services delivery system is critical to maximizing that leverage;
  • Pro bono programs will be only as effective and help only as many clients as the size and strength of the country’s legal aid providers will allow;
  • The advantages of technology must be better tapped …to bring more services to more people in more areas.”

• 11.15.11 – the week’s biggest news is bad news.  Congress has cut Legal Services Corporation funding by over $56,000,000 (about 14%).  Here is National Law Journal coverage, and here is a press release from LSC.  The most recent news, that of the House and Senate passing the bill and of its expected signature by President Obama, comes from The Hill.  No good comes from this.  Programs will be forced to cut staff and reduce services at a time when more and more Americans need legal assistance.  One partially mitigating factor is that some LSC grantee programs planned to absorb a budget-cut shock in their budgets.  But that doesn’t change the underlying reality: a cut in legal services funding at a time of acute need means fewer poor people will be served.  And there will be fewer lawyers to serve them.  Indeed, the NLJ article reports: “In 2010, the groups had 9,059 employees, including 4,351 lawyers. But they shed 445 staffers – including more than 200 lawyers – during the first half of 2011.”

• 11.15.11 – Should some veterans’ offenses be adjudicated in a specialized civilian court?  A piece in the The Atlantic explores this question: “Nearly 80 veterans courts have sprung up across the country over the past four years, and 20 more are expected to open by the end of this year. Many courts accept only nonviolent offenses. Some, like Dallas County, also take violent crimes on a case-by-case basis. Most consider only those veterans who are struggling with mental-health or substance-abuse problems. Many of the judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and court administrators have served or have family in the military, and some volunteer for the courts before or after normal hours. (One attraction of veterans courts is their low local cost, a result of this volunteerism and the provision of counseling by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.)”

• 11.15.11 – want to know who’s happiest working for Uncle Sam?  The Partnership for Public Service has released its 2011 “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” report.  There are no specific ratings for lawyers’ job satisfaction, but the report offers general insight about which agencies cultivate happy, motivated workforces. 

• 11.14.11 – according to the Public News Service, there are hard times on the horizon for both legal services and indigent defense lawyers in the Tar Heel State.  The state cut 20% of its funding to Legal Aid of North Carolina.  “The cuts have forced [LANC] to close four offices and lay off 60 attorneys….  The hourly rate for public defenders was cut as well, and a lapse in funding expected in March of next year will force those attorneys to work without pay until the fiscal year begins again in June.”

• 11.14.11 – the Legal Services Corporation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) scored a legal victory in its effort to gain access to otherwise confidential client information held by California Rural Legal Assistance attorneys.  From McClatchy’s “Suits and Sentences” blog: “The subpoenas [that OIG sought to enforce] will enable investigators to troll through some 37,000 case files, as they search for evidence that California Rural Legal Assistance attorneys may have strayed into politics or in other ways [run afoul of LSC restrictions on grantee program activity]. The legal-aid organization has already turned over some 6,000 pages and several megabytes of data; now, they will have to turn over client names and other information as well.”

• 11.14.11 – more LSC news.  From a press release: “John G. Levi, Chairman of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), today announced the addition of five new members to the Board’s Pro Bono Task Force.  The new Task Force members are Judge Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Deborah Leff, Deputy Counselor for Access to Justice at the U.S. Department of Justice; Larry S. McDevitt, Chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service; Linda K. Rexer, Executive Director of the Michigan State Bar Foundation, and Angela C. Vigil, Partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP and the firm’s Director of Pro Bono and Community Service for North America.”  Hey, that’s my buddy Angela!  Good choice.  The task force is playing an important role for LSC because a message that came from Capitol Hill in the appropriations process is that engaging the private bar must be a priority.  LSC has long done this but I suppose that the funding cut will necessitate a re-exploration of the best ways to harness private bar support.

• 11.9.11 – Fun with abbreviation: in SoCal, LAFLA and TCC have formed an MLP.  From a press release: “The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) and The Children’s Clinic, “Serving Children and Their Families” (TCC) in Long Beach have formed the Greater Long Beach Medical-Legal Partnership to provide an integrated approach to health-related, legal challenges faced by low-income individuals and families in their everyday lives, particularly in the areas of housing, family law and public benefits.”

• 11.8.11 – Government Executive catches us up on the federal government’s efforts to solve glitches in the new USAJobs website: [An official] announced that the number of resumes uploaded to the redesigned website is fast approaching 1 million. Many users have complained that not all the information on their resumes is being properly uploaded to their online applicant profile.  [The official] explained that though all the information is there, users cannot see the resumes in their entirety. The USAJobs team will be addressing these visibility issues in the coming week, along with a continued focus on password-reset complaints, which remain the topic generating the most help desk tickets.”

• 11.7.11 – Minnesota Public Radio catches us up on funding difficulties confronting civil legal services lawyers, public defenders, and prosecutors in the North Star State.  Some takeaway (and note that Hennepin County is where Minneapolis sits):

• [S]tate funding makes up one-third of [Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance’s] budget. This year, the state reduced its contribution…by $1.6 million.  [MMLA] has already had to cut positions because of decreases in funding from their other public and private sources…. In 2009…they had 73 attorneys; at the beginning of 2012, they’ll be down to 55.
• Unlike Legal Aid, the State’s Board of Public Defense got a slight increase in their state funding…. but it’s not enough to make up for past years of budget cuts [according to Hennepin county’s chief defender]…. [H]e doesn’t have enough lawyers to keep up with caseloads that are more than double the amount recommended by the American Bar Association.
• [Hennepin County Attorney Mike] Freeman said county attorneys haven’t received pay raises in several years. And his office hasn’t hired a new attorney in the last 10 years, he said.

• 11.7.11 – a Thomson Reuters piece conjures up a scary prospect: the full impact of the foreclosure crisis has yet to hit New York courts.  “The flood of foreclosure cases created by the subprime mortgage fallout and high unemployment rates is expected to clog cash-strapped New York courts for the next several years, a New York judge told members of the state Assembly….  [T]he number of homeowners in foreclosure cases who are unrepresented by attorneys has risen from 63 percent in 2010 to roughly 67 percent in 2011….And cuts to the state court budget have decreased the number of judicial hearing officers available to preside over foreclosure settlement conferences, which were made a mandatory part of foreclosure cases in 2009….According to a 2010 report from the New York State Unified Court System, the number of foreclosure cases pending in 2010 rose to 77,815, up from 54,591 the year before.”

• 11.6.11 – a story in The Capital, based in Annapolis, MD, highlights the swelling demand for services at the Maryland Legal Aid Bureau, as well as the changing demographics of its client community.  “[A]s the economy has slowed…former middle-income wage earners are flocking to Maryland Legal Aid to take seats next to the traditional low-income clients…. Legal Aid…has seen its annual caseload increase from about 40,000 in 2007 to nearly 70,000 in the fiscal year that ended in June….”  MDLAB has seen huge increases in unemployment and other public benefits cases.  One nitpick: the article refers to a “shortage of lawyers willing to work in lower-paying public service roles.”  Come again?

• 11.5.11 – the Times-Picayune on indigent defense funding in New Orleans:  “The head of the Orleans Parish public defender’s office…asked City Council members to increase the agency’s budget for next year, saying the state cannot bail the agency out of its $1.9 million shortfall. Derwyn Bunton, the chief public defender, said his office is looking at cost-cutting measures and whether some of the clients can afford to pay for part of their legal representation. But the sheer magnitude of cases at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court and cutbacks from the state will leave the agency with a deficit next year unless the city provides more money….”

• 11.4.11 – on his “Access to Justice” blog, Richard Zorza explores whether law firms should focus on an area (or areas) of pro bono practice in order to build institutional expertise and deliver high-quality, efficient representation.

by Kristen Pavón

In a press release today addressing a 14 percent reduction in funding for 2012, Legal Services Corporation’s Chairman John G. Levi echoed the access to justice crisis concerns and warnings we’ve all heard before.

Federal funding has long been the cornerstone for legal aid, and essential to fulfilling our nation’s promise of equal justice for all.  We all understand that the rule of law is in jeopardy when the protections of the law are not available to increasingly large numbers of low-income citizens—especially victims of domestic abuse, the elderly and people facing the loss of  their homes. The nation’s poverty population has never been this large, and, as a consequence, requests for civil legal assistance are increasing.

He also outlined three ways LSC is trying to do its part in promoting access to justice:

1. Expanding partnership and collaborations
2. Using the newly established Pro Bono Task Force to identify innovative practices that can help increase pro bono services
3. Exploring how to more effectively use technology

There are lots of great and innovative ideas out there about pro bono and how to address our access to justice crisis and many conversations have taken place — now is the time for implementation. Let’s do.

Read Levi’s entire statement here.

If you work for an LSC-funded organization, how are you adapting to the funding cuts? How, if at all, will you fill the gaps?

Terrible news.  From a National Legal Aid & Defender Association email:

Last night House and Senate conferees agreed to a spending package that would fund the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) at $348,000,000 for FY 2012.  This figure represents a reduction in overall funding for LSC of $56,190,000, or 13.9 percent.  The entire cut comes from funding for basic field programs, amounting to 14.8 percent of the critical funding used by LSC grantees to provide access to justice in the United States.  The figure represents a split in half of the difference between the level the Senate appropriated for FY 2012 of $396.1 million and the House level of $300 million. 

It appears that, despite a heavy educational campaign by supporters of legal services aimed at conservative members in the House, the pressure on House Republican conferees resulting from the earlier deep cuts in the House appropriations bill led to their insistence upon this level of cut before they would agree to a final overall spending deal funding the Commerce, Justice and Science functions of government.   Despite the expressed strong support of conferees Barbara Mikulski and Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Senate, and Chaka Fattah in the House, the intransigence of House leadership on this issue led to the unfortunate compromise resolution.

 The package is expected to pass the House and Senate this week.  The Conference Report containing the agreements is not open to amendment on either the House or Senate floor.  Thus, the LSC figure contained with the Report is likely to be the final spending figure for FY 2012. 

by Kristen Pavón

The Guardian reported yesterday that the legal profession is bracing itself for an increase in pro se litigants as a result of the legal aid budget cuts, which are set for 2013.

. . . [W]ith £350m set to be lopped off the legal aid budget in 2013, removing funding for areas such as divorce and housing cases, turning up to court without a brief is about to become a lot more common.

A report on litigants-in-person to be published on Friday acknowledges this, setting out measures for minimising the chaos that will be caused by the coming surge of “DIY lawyers”.

Here are a few of the solutions lawyers are considering to address this surge:

• Prevention of legal battles through public legal education
• Increased reliance on and use of experienced volunteers, including law students, unemployed lawyers and retired lawyers
• Creating a more formalized pro bono structure in law firms (rely on peer pressure rather than a pro bono mandate)

Pretty general suggestions if you ask me… Read more here.

Thoughts?

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers. From my perch at the NALP Global Headquarters I’m looking out at a gray-but-still-beautiful autumn morning.  Well, actually now I’m looking out at a trash truck picking up garbage from a restaurant.  So much of urban beauty is in the eye of the beholder.   

This week: LSC funding movement on the Hill (or in French: le Hill); how Virginia prosecutors and defenders are weathering funding challenges; speaking of, are layoffs coming to the Chicago PD’s office?; the lawyers representing “Occupy” protestors; DV funding for New Hampshire Legal Assistance; controversy surrounding a proposal to put caseload limits on Washington State defenders (story from the glorious city of Yakima, which I once called home). 

• 11.2.11 – our friends at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association offered a useful update about Legal Services Corp. appropriation developments in Congress: “Yesterday the Senate approved by a vote of 69 to 30 a package of three appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) appropriation bill for FY 2012.   The measure includes an appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation of $396.1 million for next year.  This amounts to a 2 percent cut from the current level of $404.2 million…”  Read on for discussion of how this may be reconciled with the much lower House LSC appropriation.
• The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog opened up debate about the importance of funding LSC.  You can read the blog post and some commentary (which is pretty good by Internet standards) here.

• 11.1.11 – a piece in the Virginian-Pilot provides numbers on how Virginia prosecutors and PDs are handling funding challenges.  Some data points:
• “In Virginia, the State Compensation Board decreased the budgets for commonwealth’s attorneys statewide by 10 percent in 2010.”
• “Norfolk has lost five prosecutors since last July, dropping the number of attorneys from 44 to 39, Commonwealth’s Attorney Gregory Underwood said.”
• “Chesapeake Commonwealth’s Attorney Nancy Parr said in an email that she…lost two attorney positions, which she said she was able to do through attrition rather than layoffs.”
• “A handful of open positions in the Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office have remained unfilled, prosecutor Earle C. Mobley said.”
• “Virginia Beach public defender Peter Legler said his office has gone several years without raises but has not lost any attorney positions.”

• 10.31.11 – layoffs among Chicago public defenders?  Quite possible.  From the Sun-Times: “Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle sent out the first wave of layoff notices Monday to roughly 100 employees under her authority, a spokesman said….The layoffs will hit a range of offices under her control, from the public defender’s office to the highway department….County Public Defender Abishi Cunningham didn’t have a precise count of workers in his office receiving notices today but said he hopes the county and the unions will work out a deal as they did before.  ‘We’re still negotiating,’ Cunningham said, adding that he initially thought he was going to have layoffs in his office at the start of this year but negotiations avoided that through furloughs.”

• 10.30.11 – a McClatchy piece looks at the role of lawyers assisting “Occupy” protestors throughout the country.  Noting that many protestors are running into legal entanglements, the piece goes on, “The resulting legal skirmishes have spurred the largest mobilization of pro bono protest attorneys since the anti-war movement of the 1960s and ’70s. ‘It’s probably bigger than the anti-war movement, because there are so many simultaneous demonstrations. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ said Carol Sobel, co-chair of the Mass Defense Committee of the National Lawyers Guild.  Some of the volunteer lawyers draft and file motions, or simply monitor the protests as legal observers. Some advise the activists on how to negotiate with city leaders. Others show up in court – usually on short notice – to represent jailed protesters at their initial court appearances.” 

• 10.29.11 – New Hampshire Legal Assistance received good funding news: the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women renewed a grant which allows NHLA to serve DV victims.  The Nashua Telegraph reports: “The grant, $540,000 over two years, is the prime funding source for the statewide program that offers civil legal services to low-income victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence….”  It’s been a tumultuous funding year for NHLA (as has been the case with so many other programs), so this is certainly welcome news.  (Congrats, John and company!)

• 10.29.11 – the Yakima Herald-Republic reports on the controversy surrounding the Washington State Supeme Court’s consideration of a proposal to put upward limits on public defender caseloads:  “In an effort to make sure indigent clients are receiving adequate legal representation, the state Bar Association recently recommended limiting the number of cases public defenders can handle at any one time.”  The story focuses on arguments against the proposal by Washington cities, including Yakima, which don’t have a way to finance the costs that could attend the rule’s promulgation.  (Unsolicited autobiographical tidbit: I spent a post-college year volunteering with a legal services program in Yakima.  Such a wonderful, formative experience.  And I sure miss hiking the eastern Cascades.)   

From a National Legal Aid & Defender Association email:

Yesterday the Senate approved by a vote of 69 to 30 a package of three appropriations bills, including the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) appropriation bill for FY 2012.   The measure includes an appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation of $396.1 million for next year.  This amounts to a 2 percent cut from the current level of $404.2 million.   The entire 2 percent comes from basic field funding.  Both LSC management and the Office of Inspector General are funded at the same levels as FY 2011.

The House Appropriations Committee has previously allocated $300 million for FY 2012, a cut of $104.2 million (27.5 percent) from FY 2011 levels.  It appears likely that negotiations between the House and Senate on the three appropriations bills passed by the Senate will proceed without any final House floor action on the CJS appropriations bills.  The bill also includes funding packages for the Agriculture Department and Transportation – HUD.

The Senate bill was passed under budget level authority agreed to by the House and Senate during the debt ceiling debate last August.  The House bill passed the committee under significantly lower overall budget authority included in the House budget resolution authored by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI).   If House-Senate negotiators stick with the overall $1.043 trillion spending ceiling previously agreed upon in August, the process could proceed relatively smoothly toward a reconciliation of the two bills.   Negotiations could begin as early as today.  However, a number of House members have indicated their opposition to the overall spending ceiling adopted in August, and such opposition could slow down negotiations on the Senate package that includes LSC funding.   

by Kristen Pavón

The National Law Journal summarized some of the Commission’s findings in an article today.

The last time the Commission took a hard look at mandatory minimums was in 1991. This time around the Commission reviewed over 73,000 cases from 2010 and previous years.

. . . [T]he Commission unanimously believes that certain mandatory minimum penalties apply too broadly, are excessively severe, and are applied inconsistently across the country,” said the Commission Chairwoman Judge Patti Saris in a statement.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• More than 75 percent of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were convicted of a drug trafficking offense.
• Hispanic, followed by black offenders accounted for the largest groups of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty.
• Black convicted offenders are the racial group least likely to earn relief from mandatory minimum sentences for assisting the government.

And a few of the Commission’s recommendations:

• Congress should reassess some statutory recidivist provisions for drug offenses.
• Congress should tailor the “safety valve” relief mechanism (allows sentencing below the mandatory minimum) to include other low-level, nonviolent offenders convicted of other offenses carrying mandatory minimums.
• Re-evaluate and examine “stacking” of mandatory minimum penalties for some federal firearm offenses.

I’m sure there’s more to come from this report… Initial thoughts?

by Kristen Pavón

So, you may know that PSLawNet lists articling opportunities for Canadian law students. Articling is akin to an apprenticeship for law graduates, and it’s a prerequisite for practicing law in Canada.

In Ontario, an articling task force was created in response to a shortage of articling positions, especially those more oriented to social justice.

. . . 12.1 per cent of those [law graduates] seeking articles in the 2010-11 licensing year went unplaced, a big jump from a rate of 5.8 per cent three years ago.

The access-to-justice issue in Canada is twofold: First, sole practitioners, small firms and legal clinics do most of the legal work for low- and middle-income people and they do not have the resources to provide articling opportunities. Second, most articling opportunities are with medium and large firms that do not address social justice issues.

The task force’s final report should be out in June 2012. Read more here.

How would having an apprenticeship system in the U.S. affect our access-to-justice gap? Let me know your thoughts!