Greetings, dear reader. There’s lots to share this week including:  federal hiring reform stats; ACLU criticizing Michigan’s public defender system; the federal hiring freeze and its effect on DOJ hiring;  legal services funding woes; Connecticut Bar Foundation Distinguished Service Awards; an update on the success of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Program; how budget cuts are impacting foreclosure assistance groups in New York City;  Charleston School of Law’s student pro bono requirements; a unique partnership between the Texas Tech School of Law and the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense to improve legal representation for low-income populations; good news about Chicago Bar Foundation’s fundraising efforts;   Maine resident Cushman Anthony honored for his life’s work;  and breath testers in doubt in Vermont, affecting dozens of DUI cases.

This week:

• 5.18.11 – Government Executive’s FedBlog reports on federal hiring reform stats provided by the Office of Personnel Management this week.  Uncle Sam’s been making progress!  OPM reported that “91 percent of federal jobs are now filled based on resumes and cover letters (without a requirement for lengthy essays), up from 39 percent in 2009 … 96  percent of announcements no longer include a requirement to fill out knowledge, skills and abilities statements, [and] the governmentwide average time it takes to fill a position is now 105 days.”

• 5.18.11 – An article in Michigan Live reports that the ACLU is blasting Michigan’s public defender system, citing a 2002-03 Muskegon County armed robbery case as a prime example of the failure of Michigan’s system of court-appointed lawyers for criminal defendants who can’t afford to hire their own.  The ACLU claims that “evidence points to (the) innocence” of Alphonso Sones Sr., who is currently serving two multi-decade terms.  The ACLU recently released a report calling Michigan’s public defender system one of the worst in the nation, criticizing the state for leaving funding and oversight of criminal defense of the indigent to the 83 counties, many of whom leave their systems underfunded and badly run.  Sones’ attempts to overturn his conviction on the grounds did not represent him effectively have failed, but the ACLU seems unlikely to let Michigan public defenders off the hook any time soon.

• 5.16.11 – On Monday, the PSLawNet Blog featured a piece about the federal hiring freeze.  As the Federal Times reported, the Department of Justice is no exception.  The Justice Department’s hiring freeze — which was imposed earlier this year and even prevents the department from hiring to replace most attrition — remains in effect, and spokeswoman Jessica Smith said Justice isn’t sure when it will be lifted. Justice earlier this year said the freeze was necessary to avoid a sudden, dire budget crunch that would force employee furloughs. Smith said those concerns remain.

• 5.16.11 – Legal needs for the low-income are growing, but funding is shrinking for legal services.  The ProPublica Blog featured a piece on providers of civil legal services to the low income having to furlough their staff, triage their clients, and turn away more people in need as a result of the congressional budget compromise reached last month. The umbrella nonprofit group Legal Services Corporation had its funding cut by $15.8 million—about 4 percent of its most recent budget—as a result of last month’s budget compromise. You do reach a point where you can no longer absorb” the cuts, Edwina Frances Martin, said a spokeswoman for Legal Services NYC.  Martin said her organization gets about 14 percent of its budget from Legal Services Corporation and lost about $720,000 in the final federal budget. It’s planning cutbacks large and small—cutting the budget for food at trainings, leaving some empty positions unfilled and implementing furloughs in some field offices.  ProPublica goes on to discuss how Idaho, Virginia, New Jersey, and Maine are facing similar circumstances.

• 5.16.11 –  Featured in the Connecticut Law Tribune,  James Bowers,  Kate Stith and Hugh C. Macgill received Distinguished Service Awards from the Connecticut Bar Foundation last week.  While Bowers, Macgill and Stith have all followed different career courses as practitioners and professors of the law, their journeys began with the realization that justice is not free and access to it is not equal.  “For Bowers, a partner at Day Pitney who has defended high-powered people accused of white-collar crimes, that awareness began when he grew up in the South as a black man in a system built for white people.  For Stith, a Yale University professor and former assistant U.S. attorney in New York, it began with a research paper she wrote as a student at Dartmouth College on the first legal aid program in New Hampshire.  For Macgill, a professor and past dean of the University of Connecticut School of Law, it began early in his career and continues today.” The event also featured an impassioned speech about the need to fund legal services for the poor by New York Judge Jonathan Lippman, chief judge of that state’s highest court, who said, “No issue is more basic to our constitutional reason for being than providing equal justice for all.”

• 5.15.11 – Last month, the PSLawNet Blog highlighted the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Program, an effort by law students to help Iraqis seek refugee status.   This week, The Associated Press also featured the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), highlighting  law students who are helping to resettle Iraqi refugees refugees.  “I think it’s an excellent initiative,” said Larry Yungk, senior resettlement officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington.  Yungk also praised IRAP’s success.  “They’ve been effective. Certainly refugees are here in the United States because of work they did.”  IRAP has been especially effective in handling appeals of cases involving refugees rejected for resettlement in the U.S., having won 90 percent of them.  IRAP’s founder, Becca Heller, is especially proud of the case of a family resettled last fall in New Haven. The family’s application was originally rejected for failure to prove persecution, but IRAP appealed. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security overturned the decision based partially on a medical emergency involving a girl in the family suffering severe seizures, Heller said.  Since then, IRAP arranged for the girl to receive free medical treatment from a specialist and provided car pools to get the family to doctor’s appointments.

• 5.14.11 – The New York Times featured a piece about how budget cuts threaten foreclosure assistance–a dismal outlook.  In New York City, foreclosure-prevention programs have helped more than 3,000 homeowners facing foreclosure over the past three years.  The programs have been financed since 2009 by federal stimulus spending, but that money will run out by the end of this year. That has left lawmakers scrambling to try to find new state financing, while the small army of pro bono lawyers fighting foreclosures waits and worries.  “We are hardly at the end of the foreclosure tsunami,” said Vicki Been, co-director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at the New York University School of Law.  “There continue to be a lot of people losing their homes. The numbers have softened, but the crisis is not over.”

• 5.14.11 – a short piece the Post & Courier catches us up with the progress of the provisionally accredited Charleston School of Law, which has placed public service at the core of its mission.  The school, which opened in 2004 and is on the cusp of full accreditation by the ABA, requires students to perform 30 hours of public service before graduating.   Some students well exceed that mark.  Graduating student Allison Roberts performed 100 hours of pro bono work during here law school career, including a stint gathering facts about Khmer Rouge crimes in Cambodia.

• 5.13.11 – a unique partnership between the Texas Tech School of Law and the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense to improve legal representation for low income populations in the state’s far flung, sparsely populated counties.  The Dallas Morning News blog reports that the Caprock Public Defender Office is the first of its kind in Texas, said Bryan Wilson, grants administrator for the Task Force. The project pairs a law school professor and students in a law school clinic with counties that have few if any attorneys available for court appointments.  “About a dozen counties in the Lubbock area covering a 40,000 square mile area, have signed up for the office to provide representation for misdemeanor and juvenile defendants.”  In Texas, like so many other states, the need is great.  PSLawNet Blog applauds partnerships like this one!

• 5.13.11 – In the Windy City, a piece in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin discusses Chicago Bar Foundation’s fundraising efforts. The efforts have yielded positive results.  “Organizers of the Chicago Bar Foundation’s Investing in Justice Campaign said they are seeing ‘record-breaking success’ in this year’s effort to increase financial support for area providers of legal services to the poor.  During the fundraising campaign, which marked its fifth year with a kickoff in early March, more than 3,300 individual attorneys and legal professionals from 110 participating law firms, corporate legal departments and other law-related organizations contributed more than $1.3 million toward the effort, organizers said.”

• 5.13.11 – Last week, Cushman Anthony, who helped found Michigan Law School’s legal aid clinic, was honored for his life’s work.  Maine’s  Portland Press Herald described his 40-year career that focused on ensuring the rights of people who might not have the resources to hire their own attorneys or take on established power structures. “I went into law because I viewed that as a way to make the world a better place,” Anthony said recently. “I knew I was going to be trying to improve the world.”  Anthony succeeded, according to the Maine Civil Liberties Union Foundation, which on Thursday night presented him the 2011 Justice Louis Scolnik Award at a ceremony at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport.  In his varied and accomplished career, Anthony was not only a clinician, he was a family law practitioner, a  state representative, and a lobbyist for Native American affairs.  Anthony  sums best sums up his life’s work in his own words: “I’ve always identified with the little guy.”

• 5.13.11 – The Vermont Digger reports that with breath testers in doubt, Vermont prosecutors are set to toss dozens of DUI cases after an investigation found a long list of alleged problems with breath testers. David Sleigh, a criminal defense attorney based in St. Johnsbury is partnering with Burlington lawyer Frank Twarog to use a client’s case and those of two other DUI clients to attack the credibility of DataMaster breath testers. The DataMaster breath testers are used by police and the state health lab that certifies and maintains them. Sleigh has witnesses prepared to testify that the health department used unorthodox methods to repair damaged DataMasters and to get them to “pass” routine performance checks over a period of years. The compromised testers raise legitimate questions about whether innocent drivers have been convicted ed of DUIs based on faulty evidence. Equally troubling, though, is the prospect of dangerous drunk drivers getting off the hook and back behind the wheel.

This week: cutbacks at Idaho Legal Aid Services; an interview with Disability Rights Advocates’ ED; Biglaw partners can play bigger role in funding legal services; in one Ohio county, a debate about a debate about creating a public defender’s office; gloomy, gloomy news on law school debt; shakeups in Shasta County’s (CA) prosecutor’s office; the nonlawyer at Legal Aid of West Virginia’s helm.

• 5.12.11 – funding woes are affecting Idaho Legal Aid Services, and more cuts are coming.  From a short AP story on the KMVT website: “Idaho Legal Aid Services, which has already cut hours of its staff and 21 attorneys, has a $250,000 hole in its $2.6 million annual budget. Leaders say employees across the state will take forced days off without pay starting on May 27. The move comes after a bill failed in the 2011 Idaho Legislature that would have shored up its coffers.”

• 5.11.11 –  The National Law Journal recently interviewed  Disability Rights Advocates’ Executive Director Ben Foss about the hot issues in disability law, his decision to become a lawyer and his appearance in a film documentary called Journey Into Dyslexia, now showing on HBO2. For Foss, a former director of access technology at Intel Corp, his recent transition hits home: “I’m severely dyslexic. I was in special ed all through school. My mom used to read out loud to me as a kid. When I went to college, that’s when it all caught up to me. I had to fax term papers home to my mom to have her read aloud to me so I could find my spelling mistakes. As a result, I’ve been part of the disability community for a long time….  [At Intel,] I decided I wanted to build technology for people with disabilities, which is something Intel hadn’t done before. I invented a device called the Intel Reader, which takes a photograph of any printed material and reads it aloud to you right on the spot. I invented it so that I don’t have to call Mom every time I run into syntax.”  Foss also highlighted a few pressing challenges in disability law right now that include access to the virtual world and all transportation systems and veterans with disabilities.

• 5.11.11 – On Wednesday, the PSLawNet Blog looked at a proposal, featured in The American Lawyer, to create a private-bar-funded “Lawyers Foundation” to support civil legal services.  In the piece, Aric Press argues that Biglaw partners could greatly advance the cause of access to justice by endowing and supporting a foundation to help fund both the Legal Services Corporation and other legal services projects.  Press notes that LSC’s funding outlook in Congress is uncertain, but particularly dire given the current fiscal state of affairs and the fact that the federal funder of legal services has enemies on the Hill. While this is a thoughtful proposal, and certainly an attempt to think creatively (which the PSLawNet Blog applauds), the private sector can’t let Congressional appropriators off the hook with respect to funding LSC.

• 5.11.11 – A little less conversation, a little more action? In an article by The Morning Journal, Ohio’s Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office said commissioners need to rethink how to study the pros and cons of whether the county should have a public defender’s office.  Discussion began last month between commissioners and the state public defender’s office to explore if there would be a cost-savings, as compared to paying court- appointed attorneys for indigent criminal defendants. Commissioner Ted Kalo has argued there would be a savings, but Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Gerald Innes is sticking to his guns, contending that some sort of commission should weigh the cost saving options.

• 5.9.11 – Reader warning: the following news is frightening for those concerned about student debt.  An article in the ABA Journal reports that annual law school loans borrowed has jumped 50 percent since 2001. In the last academic year, law students borrowed an average of $68,827 for public schools and $106,249 for private educations.  Compare this with $46,499, or the average amount borrowed for the public school, and $70,147, average for a private school in the 2001-2002 academic year.  For many of us–PSLawNet Bloggers included, these are not just staggering numbers, they’re lived experiences. Wow-zah.

• 5.9.11 – In the Shasta County, California district attorney’s office, many prosecutors are not amused with recent office/case shuffling. And, as a result, The Record Searchlight reports that the restructuring of sorts have prompted one of its senior prosecutors who specialized in homicide cases to leave the office.  Stewart Jankowitz, who lost only one murder case in his approximately 15 years with the office retired last week.  Prosecutors are required to handle an assortment of cases, although some do have specific assignments, such as sex crimes, felony DUIs and white-collar crime, such as embezzlement.  Jankowitz stated that he did not delight in the idea of handling non-homicide cases after his many years of legal experience.  While many will miss him, it’s time to go.

• 5.8.11 – Charleston, West Virginia’s Gazette feature a piece about Adrienne Worthy, executive director of Legal Aid of West Virginia, oversees provisions for legal assistance for the low-income and disenfranchised.  Her story is about what motivates her: responsibility.  Legal Aid of West Virginia currently has 55 lawyers, a statewide staff of 120 and 12 regional offices, but Worthy is not a lawyer.  After graduating from undergraduate school, she answered an ad in a progressive ad bulletin looking for citizen activist canvassers, then for three years went  door-to-door every night from 4 until 9, five days a week, snow sleet or hail, to raise money and organize around environmental, consumer and utility issues.  She then worked at a library and for the WV Women’s Commission.  She knows she has marched to her own drummer in terms of jobs, but her commitment to find how she’s needed is unwavering.  “I am finding it harder to be motivated by the belief that real changes are going to happen,” Worthy says.  “I don’t understand the vision of what we are supposed to do with the changes proposed for the environment, our old and young people. I don’t know what’s going to happen to our clients here.”  She confesses that she’s thought about leaving, but gets inspired by clients who have overcome incredible odds and, through the help of legal services, have been able to make a difference.

The legal services community needs more green!

Aric Press, editor in chief of American Lawyer Media and owner of a wonderfully Dickensian surname, has penned a thoughtful piece, proposing that Biglaw partners (and, we suppose, other well-heeled members of the private bar) could greatly advance the cause of access to justice by endowing and supporting a foundation to help fund both the Legal Services Corporation and other legal services projects. Press notes that LSC’s funding outlook in Congress is uncertain, but hardly rosy given the current fiscal state of affairs and the fact that LSC is something of a political football.  He further notes that, recession notwithstanding, many law firm partners are doing quite-well-thank-you-very-much with respect to the ol’ cash flow.

The arithmetic is compelling. The surviving partners of The Am Law 100 continue to prosper even in the worst economic downturn of the last 25 years. For Am Law 100 equity partners, profits rose by an average of 8.4 percent, and the average compensation for all partners — equity and income — increased by 7.7 percent, to $1 million. I’m told one can live on that, even save a little.

There are 30,888 Am Law 100 lawyers carrying the label partner. On average, across their many offices, they bill roughly 2,000 hours at roughly $500 per hour. Were each to contribute the equivalent of 20 hours of billable time in cash — 1 percent — the resulting stash would reach $309 million. Toss in the 15,000 Am Law Second Hundred partners, and there’s more than enough to underwrite the annual LSC budget even after firms excluded their non-U.S. licensed lawyers.

The PSLawNet Blog supports creative thinking to channel more money to the legal services community.  This certainly includes contributions from the private sector, and this certainly includes the bar.  LSC’s model is, after all, emblematic of a successful private-public partnership.  With that said, a caveat: in our view, the key word when thinking about what makes private-public partnerships work is “balance.”  And for too long, Congress has not been holding up its end.  LSC’s appropriation, in real dollars, has markedly decreased over time.  And this has occurred even as demand for legal services – from domestic violence victims, homeless veterans, and children in need of healthcare – has grown too fast in light of the limited financial and human resources to help these would-be clients.  So if the private bar is to move forward with a formal funding initiative, we hope that it will make a priority of lobbying the folks on Capitol Hill to hold up their end of the deal.

This week’s Bulletin, cats and kittens, is shorter than normal.  But it’s packed with legal services funding news, including: how LSC $ cuts will affect New York programs; Equal Justice Works’s CEO David Stern talks public interest careers; a look at the fiscal challenges confronting Western Massachusetts Legal Services; coverage of the FY2011 federal budget agreement which pared down LSC funding by about 4%; a law school/legal services partnership provides pro bono services to those who serve in uniform; Wisconsin may cut all state funding for civil legal services. 

• 4.14.11 – a New York Law Journal piece looks at the impact the Legal Services Corporation funding cuts will have on Empire State legal services providers.  (Note: the LSC funding cuts are covered in item 4 below.)  From the NYLJ: “Even though a $15.8 million funding cut for the Legal Services Corp. included in a federal budget agreement is smaller than legal aid advocates had feared, the reduced funds will be acutely felt by New York groups already struggling with state funding cuts…. New York City-based Legal Services NYC will suffer the biggest cut in LSC funding, losing $701,411. That will probably mean having to let go of six or seven lawyers or paralegals, according to Raun J. Rasmussen, the chief of litigation and advocacy for the 220-lawyer group.”  The piece goes on to detail how cuts will affect other LSC grantees in New York.

• 4.12.11 – our friend David Stern of Equal Justice Works is profiled in the Washingtonian’s “Capitol Comment” blog.  David explains how his career path took him to Equal Justice Works’s helm, and offers a criticism of legal education’s emphasis on cold, analytical thinking: “Unfortunately, yes, law school strips [the desire to practice in public interest] away in many respects. It tries to teach lawyers to think in sterile, analytical ways without a lot of heart. There’s also a lot of competition in law schools for those coveted six-figure-salary jobs, and so people are malleable, they’re generally young, and all of these activities—the sterile thinking, the going after the coveted job, the very large educational debt—often strips away those public-service aspirations. Our job is to keep those embers burning.”  Bonus trivia: quite aside from being one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for the value of public interest work, David’s a pretty solid softball player.  Good glove, surprising power, and he can pitch.

• 4.12.11 – the Business Journal of Western Massachusetts looks at the fiscal challenges confronting Western Massachusetts Legal Services – “its current budget of $2.5 million is roughly half of what it was just a few years ago” – and the organization’s recent fundraising efforts.

• 4.12.11 – the Blog of the Legal Times reports on the federal budget compromise’s impact on Legal Services Corporation funding (which we also blogged about earlier this week).  From the BLT: “The bipartisan deal on the federal budget includes a $15.8 million midyear cut for the Legal Services Corp., according to new details released on Tuesday. The cut is smaller than the $70 million that House Republicans proposed to take in February from the Legal Services Corp., which is the nation’s largest funding source for civil legal aid to the poor. Still, program officials had hoped to avoid any cut because demand for legal aid has increased during the economic downturn. Legal Services Corp. received $420 million from Congress last year, so the cut represents a 3.8% reduction in its full-year budget. But because the federal government’s fiscal year began Oct. 1, officials will need to find the money with more than half the year already passed.”  Also, here’s LSC’s press release about the funding cut.

• 4.11.11 – the Jacksonville Daily Record looks at a terrific pro bono project that serves Army reservists with legal needs.  In particular, volunteer law students and attorney help reservists, who can be called up to active duty on very short notice, with “the creation of advance directive documents: Durable Power of Attorney, Health Care Surrogate Designation, Designation of Preneed Guardian, a Living Will and a Simple Will.”  The model for this program, set up by Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and Florida Coastal School of Law, is simple and easily replicable.  The “legal teams” consisted of a volunteer attorney and a law student, and they worked off of laptops that had the necessary form templates loaded on to them.

• 4.11.11 – a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog notes that Wisconsin legal services providers face sharp cuts in state funding: “Among the big losers in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget are groups who provide legal services to the indigent in civil cases — all $2.6 million that used to help finance such representation would be cut.”

The good folks at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association put out a short piece this morning explaining how LSC’s FY2011 funding was affected by the shutdown-averting agreement on the Hill last week.  All in all, it could have been a lot worse for LSC; they’ll see a cut of less than 4% between FY2010 and FY2011 funding levels.  From NLADA:

The House and Senate leadership have agreed on an overall spending package for FY 2011 that includes cuts in LSC basic field funding of $15 million plus an additional recision of .2%, bringing the total cut to basic field funding to $15.81 million.  The final FY 2011 overall appropriation for LSC is $404.19 million.  The final appropriation for basic field programs is $378.19 million.  This amounts to a basic field cut of 3.77% for FY 2011.H.R. 1473, the FY 2011 appropriations bill, was released late last night.  The measure contains $38 billion of spending cuts, more than half of which hit programs in education, labor and health.  The LSC cut is significantly less than other cuts in the Justice Department and other functions within LSC appropriations subcommittee. 

The bill is expected to be taken up in both the House and Senate by the end of this week.  The current Continuing Resolution expires Friday, April 15.

LSC also issued a press release today, including a quote from its board chair:

“Every dollar provided for civil legal assistance helps low-income individuals gain access to our justice system. We are grateful that funding cuts will not be as deep as initially proposed, and we look forward to working with the Congress on Fiscal Year 2012 funding to provide even greater access to justice for the growing number of low-income Americans in need of civil legal assistance,” LSC Board Chairman John G. Levi said.

Assuming that Congress finalizes this compromise and avoids a (ridiculously unneccessary and useless-for-spending-reduction-purposes, but we digress) shutdown, the real battle for LSC will begin when lawmakers get to the FY2012 budget.  A House appropriations subcommittee held an LSC funding hearing last week; we aggregated some hearing coverage in item 3 of last week’s Public Interest Law News Bulletin.

Late last week the Blog of the Legal Times noted that, amid all the political fuss related to the federal budget/shutdown debate, LSC is silently twisting in the wind and could wind up facing millions in cuts:

The next week will likely determine whether the Legal Services Corp. is forced to make sharp midyear cuts in its budget, as lawmakers and Obama administration officials attempt to finish negotiations for federal spending through Sept. 30.

…

As part of a broad Republican plan to trim federal spending, the House in February approved a $70 million midyear cut to the Legal Services Corp., the nation’s largest funding source for civil legal aid to the poor. The proposal failed in the Senate, but a cut could still be part of any compromise. The agency’s leadership says the cuts would devastate local grantees nationwide, even as those programs see increases in demand related to foreclosures and the stagnant economy. The agency’s budget is $420 million.

…

Neither Reid nor other Senate Democratic leaders mentioned the agency as among their top priorities…

Substantial cuts in discretionary spending are a certainty in the current negotiations.  Democrats in particular are going to have to pick and choose which programs they defend from cuts.  And while folks are going to bat for popular programs like NPR, we’ve not recently heard elected officials issuing any staunch, public defenses of legal services funding.  A memo last week from Don Saunders, Vice President for Civil Legal Services at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, to legal services executive directors highlights the uncertainty about which federal programs are likely to see cuts:

At this point, there is no public information available on what cuts the Democratic leadership is considering offering to reach a level of $33 billion or what the priorities for cuts are within the Republican House leadership.  We, and our allies, remain very active on the Hill and continue to hear strong statements of support from a variety of Senators and House members for LSC funding.  Unfortunately…we will have to continue to wait for specific information as this how this process will finally be resolved.

As an interesting aside, Senators Brown of Massachusetts and Thune of South Dakota, both Republicans, recently joined executive branch officials and others in helping to raise over $400K for the DC-based Legal Clinic for the Homeless at a charity basketball event.  But the Legal Clinic is not an LSC grantee, and we doubt that either of these senators will stand up to preserve LSC funding at current levels (although Sen. Brown has voiced concern about broad-based cuts to social safety net programs).

The 2011 Major League Baseball season began yesterday, and the Glorious Philadelphia Phillies Baseball Franchise opens its season today.  Alas, the PSLawNet Blog’s dream of securing the world’s easiest job – the fifth man in the Phillies rotation – has not come to pass.  So here we sit at the NALP office, plugging away at the Public Interest Law News Bulletin – until a very, very long lunch break at about, oh, 1:05pm EDT.

Speaking of the Bulletin, here’s what we’ve got: prospects bleak for legal services funding from the New York legislature; news about state/local government revenues across the nation is mixed, at best; news about indigent defense reform in New York is not mixed, it’s bad; meet the federal official who’s responsible to recruit and retain the next generation of civil servants; workplace discrimination hits low-income women hardest, according to a new report; cash bonuses for convictions in a Colorado prosecutor’s office?; just say no to boosting attorney registration fees to support legal aid; legal services funding shortages may kill a popular Florida disability advocacy project; some great public interest funding news at UVA Law; a constitutional showdown in Washington State pits legal services advocates against budget-cutting state officials.

• 3.31.11 – well, we should have known it would be a tough row to hoe.  New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman has been a vocal, and active, advocate for bolstering civil legal services during a time of tremendous client need.  In addition to creating an Attorney Emeritus Program to make it easy for retired lawyers to do pro bono, he has been pushing hard for state funding to beef up the legal services infrastructure.  Well, New York state legislators are working away at a final budget proposal, and things are looking bleak for funding.  From the New York Law Journal:  “Lippman has aggressively sought an additional $25 million for civil legal services in the fiscal year beginning tomorrow, the first installment in a four-year $100 million increase. But that was thrown into doubt by a budget agreement Sunday that slashed another $70 million on top of an earlier $100 million Judge Lippman had offered in the Judiciary’s proposed budget….  Judge Lippman, who had said Monday that the budget cuts could mean “hundreds” of nonjudicial layoffs, declined to discuss specific cost-saving measures under consideration by court administrators. However, it is unlikely that the full $25 million would be available for civil legal services.”

• 3.29.11 – the PSLawNet Blog has frequently covered job cuts affecting state and local government lawyers in the recession’s wake.  Some new census data show how state and local governments are faring in terms of fiscal health.  Short version: some immediate good news, but a lot of uncertainty in the longer term.  From the Washington Post: “State and local tax revenues grew during the last three months of 2010, continuing a recovery from the steep drops that followed the recession, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.  Despite the modest revenue growth, state and local governments are contending with huge budget gaps that have led to service cuts and reductions in pay and rights for public employees…. Though the recovery in state revenues is good news for state and local governments, it has not been sufficient to compensate for the huge revenue losses caused by the recession. States also are coping with fast-increasing costs for Medicaid and higher education, while they are bracing for the loss of about $50 billion in federal stimulus money in the coming budget year.”

• 3.29.11 – the North Country Gazette reports on some bad news for indigent defense funding in the Empire State:  “The just-announced State budget deal cuts funding for the Office of Indigent Legal Services in half according to the Justice Fund.  ‘This ill advised compromise cut threatens to gut reform before it begins,’ lamented Edward Nowak, chair of the Justice Fund board. ‘The injustices resulting from New York State’s failure to fulfill its duty to provide adequate representation to people charged with crime or threatened with loss of their children have gone on too long,’ he added.”  According to the story, New York State has historically farmed out indigent defense responsibilities to its counties, leaving a patchwork system filled with qualitative inconsistencies.  The Office of Indigent Legal Services is part of a recent effort to put the state’s weight behind indigent defense reform.  But due to the funding cut, it’s now a smaller part.

• 3.29.11 – the Washington Post’s “Federal Player of the Week” is a woman whose work will affect hundreds and hundreds of law students who aspire to federal government careers: “Juanita Wheeler has a big job ahead of her.  In December, President Obama issued an executive order that called for reforming the way our government recruits and hires student interns and recent graduates. Wheeler’s task now is to set up the new processes that federal agencies will use to bring young talent into the federal fold….  As head of federal student programs at the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM), Wheeler oversees the intern and student hiring and recruiting under the newly created ‘Pathways Program’ She also helps manage the Presidential Management Fellows Program, a two-year leadership development initiative for entry level individuals with advanced degrees, now operating in approximately 80 agencies.”

• 3.29.11 – a National Law Journal article looks at a new report on the issue of low-income women suffering from workplace discrimination: “Discrimination lawsuits brought by working professionals tend to draw public attention, but it’s low-wage workers who suffer the harshest consequences in those circumstances, according to a report by the Center for WorkLife Law at University of California Hastings College of the Law.  The report, titled ‘Poor, Pregnant, and Fired: Caregiver Discrimination Against Low-Wage Workers,’ analyses [sic] 50 workplace discrimination lawsuits — most resolved during the past five years — brought by low-wage workers. It highlights ways in which employers violate workers’ rights.”

• 3.29.11 – we blogged earlier this week about an interesting story coming out of the Denver suburbs: a controversy is brewing about a county prosecutor’s past policy of awarding financial bonuses which were tied in part to her prosecutors’ successes in getting convictions at trial.  The concern is that pinning a financial award to winning in court may motivate a prosecuting attorney to forgo plea deals in order to secure more convictions.  It could essentially give a prosecuting attorney a financial interest in the cases they handle.  Most recently, a public defender moved to have a prosecutor working for District Attorney Carol Chambers removed from a case on account of concerns about a financial conflict.  Here’s some coverage:
  • a 3.29.11 Denver Post article covers the motion: “A motion questioning an Arapahoe County prosecutor’s ability to try a felony kidnapping case in light of District Attorney Carol Chambers’ controversial bonus criteria survived its first hearing Monday.  Eighteenth Judicial District Court Judge Carlos Samour Jr. gave the defense more time to subpoena documents from Chambers’ office detailing the bonuses paid last year that rewarded felony prosecutors who tried at least five cases and won conviction in 70 percent of them.”  Chambers disputes the notion that her prosecutors have financial stakes in cases and noted that budget constraints will prevent any future bonus awards anyway.  (The bonuses totaled over $164,000 in 2010 and averaged $1100 for felony prosecutors.)
  • 3.25.11 – here’s some earlier coverage, including  a video story, from Denver-based TV station KUSA.  In it, Chambers is adamant in defending of the bonuses, noting that they were offered not just to trial lawyers but also to support staff.  She also argues that courtroom success was but one criterion in the bonus calculations, and that attorneys did not know it was a criterion at all.

• 3.28.11 – on the Minnesota Lawyer’s “J.D. Rising” blog, a former legal services attorney opposes the state high court’s order for a $100 increase in attorney registration fees that will channel funds to the Board of Public Defense and the Legal Services Planning Committee.  While the need for additional funding in both the criminal and civil legal aid communities is obvious, writes Leah Weaver, she believes that cobbling together funding via the fee increase takes some of the burden off of the parties who should carry it.  “I am opposed to the fee increase because I believe it gives the Governor and the Legislature a pass on dealing with the real crisis facing our courts. As Justice Stras wrote in his [concurring opinion re the court’s fee increase order], ‘it is not the responsibility of lawyers alone to disproportionately fund a core, constitutionally-mandated service of government through a fee that was designed solely to regulate our profession.’ But by extending the fee increase, the Court allows Governor Dayton and the Legislature to continue not to make court funding a priority.”

• 3.28.11 – the Florida Times-Union reports that funding shortfalls at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid threaten a path-breaking project that provides advocacy for the hearing impaired.  Sharon Caserta, a Class-of-2005 Equal Justice Works Fellow now working as a staff attorney at JALA, “has become recognized as a trailblazer statewide for protecting the rights of the deaf and hard of hearing.  Trouble is brewing, though. The career Caserta sprouted five years ago…could be fading away as funding becomes scarce. The prospect has…Legal Aid Executive Director Michael Figgins and Florida Association of the Deaf President June McMahon bracing themselves.  Figgins said the program costs $150,000 annually, but this year Legal Aid has come up $75,000 short. The biggest part of the problem, he said, is the Florida Bar Foundation’s trust accounts are still struggling from the recession.”

• 3.28.11 – the Daily Progress reports on UVA Law’s use of some legal services grant funding: “The University of Virginia School of Law will use a $150,000 grant to help provide legal services to the region’s poor.  The grant from the Jessie Ball DuPont Fund will be used to develop the Access to Justice Partnership, which officials hope will ultimately draw on pro bono services from roughly 75 private attorneys and about as many law students annually.  Law school officials will collaborate with the local bar, the Legal Aid Justice Center and the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society.”  This isn’t the only public interest funding news from UVA Law.  Earlier this week we blogged that the school’s Public Interest Law Association raised over $375,000 to fund summer public interest work for rising 2 and 3Ls.

• 3.27.11 – a constitutional showdown about the fate of a state-funded food stamp program could portend many battles between public interest lawyers and state governments as the latter push to shrink budget deficits by cutting social services.  The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports that Columbia Legal Services is leading the charge to stop Washington State from discontinuing the Food Assistance for Legal Immigrants (FAP) program.  Here’s the posture of the federal class-action litigation: “[A federal judge] on Tuesday denied the state’s request that she reconsider her preliminary injunction last month forcing the state Department of Social and Health Services to fully restore…FAP. The program, which had been cut on Jan. 31, serves more than 10,300 households and provides benefits to immigrants who are ineligible for federal food stamps.  The state had hoped to save an estimated $7.2 million for the remainder of the current biennium and about $60.5 million for the next one by terminating the FAP.  But [the court] found that by cutting off food assistance to a certain class of legal immigrants while continuing to operate and partially fund the federal food assistance program – which serves some immigrants – the state may be in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.”  The facts driving this case are a bit nuanced, but as noted in the article a similar federal case originated in Hawaii last year.  And it’s our bet that, as state governments leave no stones unturned in looking to cut expenses, we’ll see more such actions filed by legal services providers elsewhere in the U.S.

This week: the NYT profiles an EJW Fellow doing holistic defense work; Project Salute is serving Michigan veterans; a legislative proposal to fund legal services for foster children in Nevada; how badly will the Granite State cut funding to New Hampshire Legal Assistance?; a slight bump in charitable giving in the 2010, according to the Nonprofit Research Collaborative; an LSC $ cut could badly gum up the works in Connecticut’s legal services system; the incoming ABA president comes out swinging for legal services funding.

• 3.24.11 – the New York Times runs a nice profile of Equal Justice Works Fellow Michelle Parris, who graduated from law school in 2010 and is completing her fellowship with the Bronx Defenders.  Parris’s project focuses on providing holistic services to Bronx Defenders clients, helping them to avoid homelessness, to access health care, and to steer clear of the criminal justice system in the future.  (For those wondering why an Equal Justice Works fellow is working with a defender when fellows traditionally focus on civil justice matters – some advocates now see the provision of ancillary, civil legal services as being intertwined with, and maybe even essential to, providing successful indigent defense services.  We recently blogged about a Crime Report story on the traction that holistic indigent defense programs are gaining.)  On an unrelated, and lighter, note, we’ve also blogged from time to time about the fact that many lawyers feel comfortable working in either prosecution or indigent defense.  No so Ms. Parris!  When asked about working as a prosecutor: “No, never! I can’t imagine being in the position of prosecuting someone. Our job is to essentially look at the best in a person. Just because a person made mistakes doesn’t mean they’re not redeemable.”

• 3.24.11 – the Detroit Free Press offers an update on Detroit Mercy’s innovative veterans clinic: “University of Detroit Mercy School of Law’s (UDM Law) Project SALUTE is traveling across the State of Michigan in a mobile law office (a recreational vehicle custom designed, built and generously donated by General Motors Corporation) providing free legal advice to low-income veterans on their federal veterans’ disability and pension benefits claims. Utilizing a grant from the State of Michigan, Project SALUTE will host a veterans’ legal clinic in Detroit on Wednesday, March 30, 2011 … The state grant is also being used to establish a freestanding Veterans Clinic at the school dedicated to specifically addressing veterans’ disability and pension benefits matters.”

• 3.23.11 – as state governments are tightening budgetary belts, we’ve seen a number of efforts made in the legal services community to ensure that the poor and vulnerable don’t suffer too much in the name of fiscal austerity.  The Reno Gazette Journal reports on a proposal to shore up legal services funding for children in Nevada’s foster care system: “Former Nevada Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley is promoting a bill in the Legislature to increase fees at county recorders’ offices and funnel the money to legal services for abused or neglected children … The bill would raise a surcharge for recording a document, deed, map or survey to $3 from its present $1, and direct the additional money to provide legal services to children in the foster care system … Three nonprofit organizations — Nevada Legal Services, Washoe Legal Services and Buckley’s organization, the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada — would gain from the revenue.”  According to an official at the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, half of the roughly 3000 children in the foster care system do not have representation.

• 3.23.11 – speaking of state funding and legal services, the Nashua Telegraph reports on the potential impact of budget cuts on New Hampshire Legal Assistance as legislators wrangle with the Granite State’s two-year spending bill.  In a Tuesday night mark-up session, some NHLA funding was reinserted into a proposed measure.  But NHLA is still looking at a significant cut: “Among the spending changes approved as add-ons to the plan was $250,000 so that New Hampshire Legal Assistance would not close its only office in the North Country. The spending plan from the House panels reduces grants to the legal aid group by $1.4 million, and advocates have warned this could lead to closing offices in Nashua and Concord.”

• 3.23.11 – The Atlantic picks up on a new report showing a slight, post-recession uptick in charitable giving:  “As the U.S. economy recovers from the recent recession, so is charitable giving. In 2010, 43% of charities reported more contributions than in 2009, according to a survey (.pdf) conducted by the Nonprofit Research Collaborative (“NRC”). Of the charities surveyed, 24% reported approximately the same level of giving, while 33% reported a decline.”

• 3.21.11 – the Connecticut Law Tribune reports that potential LSC funding cuts could wreak havoc in the Constitution State because its main case intake program relies on federal dollars: “A proposed $70 million cut in federal legal aid would devastate a Connecticut clearinghouse that assists 15,000 clients a year and further hobble three other agencies still reeling from a dramatic drop in state-based funds, officials said.  Janice Chiaretto, executive director of Statewide Legal Services, said her agency is receiving about $2.7 million this year in federal Legal Services Corp. funding. The proposed cut would mean a $500,000 reduction, or the equivalent of half a dozen staff positions and thousands of clients assisted. Statewide Legal Services is the only Connecticut agency to receive the federal funds, but others would feel the loss because many of their cases are pre-screened and referred by Statewide.”  Funding for the state’s legal services community has been greatly reduced as a consequence of the recession.  “[O]verall budgets at the Connecticut legal aid agencies are still down 18 percent from 2007 levels.”  Fifty lawyers at Connecticut Legal Services are taking once-a-month furloughs to help make ends meet.

• 3.18.11 – a piece in North Carolina’s Asheville Citizen Times shows that it’s not just the ABA’s current president, but also its president elect, who’s going to bat for legal services funding.  President-elect Bill Robinson, at a recent engagement in Asheville, said, “The proposed cuts to legal services are going to hurt the most vulnerable citizens in our society…What has defined us as a constitutional democracy has been access to justice…If our most vulnerable citizens can’t get access to justice, access to our courts, then justice for all of us is compromised.”

This week: the ABA president on an underfunded justice system; death, taxes and educational debt; the Lone Star State reckons it needs legal services funding; ditto the Tennesseans; ditto ditto the Pennsylvanians; the National Law Journal runs a multi-article feature, putting its finger on the pulse of civil legal services; a San Francisco prosecutor shines during a dark time; and she gets paid, unlike some prosecutors in L.A., the ABA says, “Fund legal services!”; and New Yorks’ prosecutors and defenders get some loan repayment help.

• 3.17.11 – writing in The Hill’s Congress Blog, ABA president Stephen Zack laments that funding shortages hamper access to the justice system.  Courts are underfunded, the legal services community is facing Congressional funding cuts despite overwhelming demand for their services, and it is difficult for law graduates to make a living as “Main Street” lawyers.  (There’s more from the ABA and Zack specifically on legal services funding cuts a few stories down.)

• 3.16.11 – one of the chief concerns among new public interest lawyers is loan repayment.  On the issue of how policymakers and the general public perceive the problem of student debt, a new report dispels the notion that a borrower must be financially comfortable if they are not in default.  From Inside Higher Ed: “Much of the discussion about college student debt revolves around the 15 percent of borrowers who default on their loans…”  And this leaves many with the impression that the other 85% are in decent shape.  “Yet a study released Tuesday by the [Institute for Higher Education Policy] suggests otherwise, showing that a majority of borrowers at least delay some loan payments, and a full quarter (26 percent) actually go into delinquency on their debt at some point during their first five years of repayment.”  The study looks at a cohort of grads whose repayment periods began before the federal Income Based Repayment program became available.  Nevertheless, we find the report’s findings compelling.  They highlight the fact that many borrowers who do not actually default still struggle with educational debt.  In a great blog post our friend Heather Jarvis notes the following about graduate students as reported in the study: “Although graduate and professional borrowers were less likely than other borrowers to have been delinquent or defaulted on their student loans, 42% couldn’t manage to make timely payments without either postponing their payments, becoming delinquent, or defaulting on their student loans.”

• 3.15.11 – the Fort Worth Star-Telegram runs an editorial in support of state legislative proposals that would boost legal services funding, mainly via increases in court filing fees.  The editorial notes that the state’s two most significant legal services revenue streams – federal funding and IOLTA revenues – are, respectively, likely to shrink and already shrunken.  Anticipating cuts in Legal Services Corporation (LSC) funding, “Legal Services of Northwest Texas already is planning to eliminate paid law school internships and not fill six attorney vacancies.”  A state appropriation to shore up legal services, which was made last year, is out of the question this year.  So the newest proposed solutions are the best bets: “This session, a bipartisan collection of bills has been filed to generate the revenue IOLTA accounts aren’t. Proposals include increasing District Court civil filing fees by $10 ($6.6 million over the 2012-13 biennium); adding costs for filing county records and for misdemeanor convictions in justice and municipal courts ($58 million to $68.9 million, split between legal aid and indigent criminal defense); and dedicating court-ordered restitution in consumer-protection lawsuits to legal aid in consumer cases (possibly more than $1 million).”

• 3.15.11 – in a Tennessean op-ed, Gary Housepian, executive director of the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, makes the case for LSC funding.  Housepian writes that not only are federal dollars very efficiently used by LSC grantee programs like his, but those dollars also allow grantees to raise private sector funds to boost service capacity.  Housepian acknowledges that government funds are scarcer, but argues that we can not sacrifice equal justice.  An essential component of [equal justice] is the availability of legal aid, especially to those most vulnerable to losing the absolute necessities of life. Providing access to justice to every American is not a luxury; it is an obligation.”

• 3.14.11 – the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that state funding for civil legal services would remain close to current levels under Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget proposal.  “[Corbett] proposes to keep $5.05 million in legal services, funded through a Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) that involves federal funds targeted to urban or rural areas in economic distress, at the same level. He also proposes that funding for the Department of Public Welfare to contract with the Pennsylvania Legal Aid Network (PLAN) to provide low-income people legal assistance be held at $3.01 million, down from $3.04 million in this fiscal year.”  But, because it seems that no good news about legal services funding can exist these days without some offsetting bad news, a filing fee revenue stream that had channeled some money to legal services is set to expire in early 2012.  And of course there is uncertainty about federal funding via LSC.

• 3.14.11 – the National Law Journal runs an extensive, multi-article report on the state of the legal services community, exploring the need for assistance among clients, funding uncertainties, political considerations, etc.  Among others, the NLJ’s “Power of Hope” report includes:
  • A story on work done by Maine’s Pine Tree Legal Assistance to empower a domestic violence victim;
  • A history of the Legal Services Corporation’s funding roller-coaster ride; and
  • An interview with one of LSC’s most vocal critics, Kenneth Boehm of the National Legal and Policy Center. 

• 3.14.11 – The Recorder in California has a nice profile of San Francisco prosecutor Sharon Woo, who had sent warning signals to superiors about strange events at the city’s crime lab.  Those strange events blossomed into a full-on scandal, as a crime lab technician admitted stealing narcotics.  Woo successfully managed the thorny, politically charged fallout, and has emerged as a star in the office.  Woo has been promoted by the new district attorney to the “newly created position of chief assistant for operations.”

• 3.14.11 – speaking of California prosecutors, a Los Angeles Times article begins this way: “Malibu resident Ashley St. Johns-Jacobs, 40, typically rises before 5 a.m. to get to her job at the Los Angeles city attorney’s office by 8 a.m. After a full day prosecuting misdemeanors, she often brings work home.  What she doesn’t bring home is a paycheck. With no position open, she has been working as an unpaid intern for nearly a year in hopes of eventually getting hired when a job opens up.”  The piece goes on to look at the phenomenon of would-be employees taking unpaid positions during an economic recovery that has been stingy about producing new jobs.  “Interns” are exempted from labor wage regulations, but is an “intern” an “intern” if they are essentially doing the work that a professional would do?  As you may guess, it depends on the nature of the “internship.” 

• 3.11.11 – “In written testimony submitted to the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies today, American Bar Association President Stephen N. Zack called on Congress to fund the Legal Services Corporation at $450 million, citing increased need for assistance for the poor and working class during tough economic times.  ‘Appropriations for the Legal Services Corporation is not just about funding another federal agency.  This is about providing legal services for the 57 million Americans at or below the poverty line, including 19 million children, who are eligible for assistance,’ said Zack.”  Here’s an ABA press release, and here’s the text of Zack’s testimony.

• 3.10.11 – prosecutors and public defenders in New York State may now benefit from federal John R. Justice Act loan repayment assistance funds, which are being administered by the state’s Higher Education Services Corporation.  Here’s a press release with more info.  The application deadline is May 1, 2011.

The National Law Journal has just published “The Power of Hope,” which it bills as follows: