LSC, like a lot of government funded entities, is both championed and pilloried by elected officials in Washington, depending on who is speaking.  Today, LSC’s interim president and board chair made the case for an appropriation boost – from the current $420 million in FY10 to a requested $516.5 million in FY11 – by emphasizing the greatly expanded 1) pool of eligible (low-income) clients and 2) demand for the services of legal aid attorneys, particularly on matters affecting families’ economic security, such as umemployment and home foreclosures.

Testifying in front of a House Appropriations Subcommittee, Victor M. Fortuno, LSC’s interim president, said

Just as the weak economy has severely impacted the poor, it has placed a great strain on the resources that support legal aid programs. Non-federal funding for legal aid programs is declining, and LSC-funded programs are concerned about their ability to provide increased services in 2010 and 2011 … The justice gap is a harsh reality in our nation and the downturn in our economy has dramatically increased the number of people needing civil legal services. 

Participate in the National Association for Law Placement’s 2010 Public Sector & Public Interest Attorney Salary Survey.  Every two years, NALP conducts this unique survey to gather important data on attorney salaries, benefits packages, and loan repayment assistance programs.  Public interest law offices have relied upon data from past surveys in resetting salary scales, negotiating union contracts, implementing loan repayment programs, and in other ways.

Who should participate?

• Civil Legal Services Organizations
• Public Defender’s Offices
• District Attorney/Local Prosecutor’s Offices
• All other nonprofit, public interest law offices (e.g. those organizations that promote civil liberties, human rights, advocate for the homeless, etc.)

A hard copy of the survey was mailed to public interest organizations throughout the country on January 28, 2010.  The survey is also available electronically here: https://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/9c6eg423bc.    (Please complete either the hard-copy or electronic version, not both.)  All survey participants will receive a free electronic copy of the report when it is released later in the year.  The survey response deadline, which was 2/23/10, has been extended to 3/19/10.

Please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s Director of Public Service Initiatives, with any questions: sgrumm@nalp.org or 202-296-0057.

This spring, the Michigan Supreme Court will hear a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union arguing that Michigan’s indigent defense system is unconstitutionally failing to provide fair and competent representation. Simultaneously, legislation is being considered in the state to alter funding arrangements and boost oversight. Most critically, it would shift the state from a county-based indigent defense system (like the one recently criticized by the NLADA in Idaho) to a state-wide system with equitable funding and standards for training and caseloads. The bill was introduced in December and was the subject of a public hearing by the House Judiciary Committee; however, it has seen no action since then.

Michigan’s indigent defense system relies heavily on private court-appointed attorneys – some 75% of cases in Detroit are taken by these lawyers, with the remainder being represented by attorneys with the Legal Aid & Defender Association. The funding at issue here is the rates being paid to the court-appointed attorneys, many of whom make this work the whole of their practice. The reimbursement rates are so low that many attorneys end up taking on excessively high caseloads and have very little time to actually meet with clients. For example, the rate guidelines only pay for one jail visit (and that is only $50), which means many defendants who are held in jail before or during a trial have very minimal access to their attorney. NPR ran a good story in August detailing the funding levels and the negative impact they have on representation.

It will be interesting to see if the Michigan Legislature acts before the Supreme Court hears the case this spring, or whether they wait to ensure their actions comply with whatever the court decides the minimum requirements must be. This issue is an increasingly common one in many states, and in other countries as well. We discussed very similar concerns in Canada earlier in January, where the funding crisis led to a boycott by court-appointed lawyers (in a heartening update, the boycott has ended after an agreement was reached to raise rates 40% for all cases and 66% for murder and arson over the next five years).

Please note that previous Public Interest News Bulletin stories are archived on PSLawNet.  Also, for a summary of news stories affecting the larger legal industry, see the  NALP Industry News Weekly Digest.

• 2.17.10 – West Virginia Record – Legal Aid of West Virginia and FamilyCare Health Centers have collaborated to form the state’s first medical-legal partnership, through which an LAWV attorney will be onsite part-time at medical clinics to provide legal assistance to low-income patients and to educate medical staff.  Medical-legal partnerships, originally put into operation in Boston, “integrate legal services into the health care setting to help low-income patients navigate the complex legal systems that often hold solutions to social, economic, and environmental determinants of health. For example, when a patient is entitled to obtain Supplemental Security Income and cannot pay for his medication without it, lawyers and doctors can effectively work together to help address the patient’s needs.”  Link to article.

• 2.16.10 – Business Week –   the Obama Administration is emphasizing accountability and performance-based metrics in its approach to managing the federal civil service.  Also vitally important, though, is ensuring that government’s higher ranks are populated with strong leaders.  “Although there are certainly many strong leaders in the Senior Executive Service, the government’s top tier of career executives, and the broader civil service, there is general agreement among senior leaders in the government and experts who have studied the issue that more attention needs to be placed on the selection, assessment, and development of leaders.”  Link to article.

• 2.16.10 – Dallas Morning News – DNA-based exonerations of those convicted of crimes raise a question about whether prosecutors’ limited resources should be devoted to tracing an improper conviction all the way back to a root cause, or whether the exoneration itself suffices to right the past wrong, ending a need for additional inquiry.  Link to article.

• 2.16.10 – American Lawyer Daily – in AmLaw’s “Deferred Associate Diaries” feature, a Class of 2009 law school graduate whose start date at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP was deferred provides an occasional update on his public service placement with the Public Interest Law Project’s Oakland office.  His most recent entry, made on February 16th, is here, and his first entry, made on December 23, 2009, is here.

• 2.15.10 – American Spectator – a former Georgetown University Law Center student who enrolled during the “golden era for well-paid corporate legal work,” reviews the phenomenon of deferred associates taking public service placements and speculates that, after their exposure to public service work, some deferred associates may seek to remain in those settings rather than returning to Biglaw.  Link to article.

• 2.15.10 – Rome News-Tribune (Georgia) – the Georgia Supreme Court just heard arguments in a case in which two men accused of a 2007 murder are seeking to have the charges dismissed because delays in the public defense system have resulted in the men remaining in jail without a trial.  One of the dilemmas the high court confronted was the possibility that delay and inaction on the part of a criminal defense lawyer might lead to an ironic result that ultimately would benefit their client because charges would be thrown out.   Link to article. 

• 2.14.10 – Herald-Palladium (Southwest Michigan) – the indigent defense system in Michigan, which now essentially is a patchwork of programs that vary county by county, is under attack from critics who “charge that the [state] legislature and governor are shirking their responsibility to pay for and operate a system that works.  The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit in 2007 to spur indigent defense reform, and a bill has been introduced in the state House to “create a state-run public defender system to enforce minimum standards.”  Link to article.

• 2.13.10 – Minneapolis Star Tribune – Dakota County, Minnesota is trying to help criminal defendants who “make too much to qualify for a public defender — but not enough to afford legal representation.”   County judges just approved a plan through which “lawyers will volunteer their services on arraignment day and stay available [at reduced rates] to any low-income person charged with a crime who has not hired a private attorney or has not qualified for a state-paid public defender.”  Link to article. 

• 2.12.10 – Casper Star-Tribune (Wyoming) –  a bill to create a statewide civil legal services system has gotten through state House’s Judiciary Committee and will be taken up by the full body.  Funding for the system would come from a proposed $10 increase in court filing fees.  The system was first proposed by the state’s Access to Justice Commission, under the leadership of Wyoming Supreme Court Justice James Burke.  During the Judiciary Committee hearing, many from the legal community expressed support for the new measure, but a representative for the state’s agricultural interests voiced skepticism on account of the possibility of a legal services program initiating litigation against farmers.  Link to article.

An op-ed piece in the American Spectator talked about the fact that some deferred law firm associates who have taken public interest placements for the year have realized they may not want to return to law firm life after their placement ends. The author reports that some of his friends in these positions have found that 1) they can get by on less money than they thought, and 2) they are really enjoying the substantive work in public interest law.

“These new lawyers have found that their new jobs are more fulfilling and more interesting, and — more importantly — they’ve seen that they can live on a smaller salary.”

While this is just an opinion piece that seems to rely on the author’s conversations with close friends, not a representative survey of deferred associates, this is an interesting development as firms, public interest employers, and other law grads looking for public interest work all try to discern the evolving changes in the legal economy.

The response deadline for this one-of-a-kind, national survey is approaching.  Please spread the word in the public interest community.  Below is some background info and a link to the online version of the survey… 

Public Interest Law Offices: please participate in the National Association for Law Placement’s (NALP) 2010 Public Sector & Public Interest Attorney Salary Survey.

What is the Survey?

Every 2 years, NALP conducts this unique survey of public interest and government law offices to gather important data on attorney salaries, benefits packages, and loan repayment assistance programs.  Public interest law offices have relied upon data from past surveys in resetting salary scales; negotiating union contracts; advocating for legislative changes to salaries and expansions of loan repayment programs; and more.

The survey is endorsed by the Legal Services Corporation, the National District Attorneys Association, the National Legal Aid & Defender Association, and others.

Who should participate?

• Civil Legal Services Organizations
• Public Defender’s Offices
• District Attorney/Local Prosecutor’s Offices
• All other nonprofit, public interest law offices (e.g. those organizations that promote civil liberties, human rights, advocate for the homeless, etc.)

How to Participate

It is very easy to do.  The survey is now being mailed by hard copy to public interest law offices throughout the country.  It is also available electronically here: https://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/9c6eg423bc.    (Please complete either the hard-copy or electronic versions, not both.)  All survey participants will receive a free electronic copy of the report when it is released later in the year.

Please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s Director of Public Service Initiatives, with any questions: sgrumm@nalp.org or 202-296-0057.

In many respects the legal “public interest community” (amorphous as it may be) is set apart from the law firm world.  Recruiting and hiring are done quite differently, for instance, among nonprofits and government offices compared to large law firms.  But there is some overall cohesion in the industry at large.  The Great Recession has shown us that no law office has been immune from its effects.  Indeed, the closely-knit relationship between “Biglaw” and the public interest community on pro bono issues became evident as firms adjusted pro bono programs to assist nonprofits with changing client needs, and also in the phenomenon of deferred law firm associates taking public service placements in public interest offices.  Also, those large firms that kept up their financial backing of the public interest community have been absolutely vital pillars of support as other traditional public-interest revenue streams tapered to a trickle.

What does this mean for aspiring and current public interest advocates?  It means that there are a lot of good reasons to keep your finger on the pulse of the larger legal industry.  In some contexts there is a close relationship, even a symbiosis, between law firms and their public interest partners.  So your practice could be directly impacted, as could the financial fortunes of your employer.

Here’s some good news about keeping up with the news: NALP makes it easy for you to check in on happenings in the industry at large.  Every Friday, the esteemed Jim Leipold, NALP’s executive director (and your author’s boss), circulates the NALP Industry News Weekly Digest, which is freely available NALP’s website.  We’ll also begin posting a link to it in our weekly PSLawNet Public Interest News Bulletin.

Reminder: all content from past editions of the Bulletin is archived here on PSLawNet.

• 2.11.10 – Press Release from Office of Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna – using proceeds from a court settlement stemming from an unfair-lending-practices lawsuit against Countrywide Financial, the attorney general will direct $1.8 million to restitution, debt counseling, and other support services for Washington homeowners.  Of that $1.8 million, $320,000 will go to the Washington State Bar Association “to fund the Home Foreclosure Legal Aid Project, which provides pro bono legal services to homeowners facing foreclosure.”  Link to full press release. 

• 2.11.10 – National Law Journal – the presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court warned that 300 staffers may have to be laid off in March on account of a $79 million deficit.  More layoffs could follow later in the year.  The president of the L.A. County Bar Association is arguing in favor of releasing funds from a construction bond account to shore up the court system, predicting long trial delays and a backlog if staffers are laid off.  Link to article.

• 2.10.10 – Boston Globe (Op-ed) – newly elected U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R., MA) was incorrect when he stated that “federal employees are making twice as much as their private sector counterparts” while he argued for a freeze on federal hiring and pay raises.  First, comparing salaries generally between the public and private sectors is misleading because there are no low-paying, minimum wage jobs in the public sector, and federal workers tend to be older and better educated than their private sector counterparts.  Further, “[d]irect comparisons show professionals in government routinely make far less than their private sector counterparts.”  Second, shrinking the federal workforce is an ill-considered proposal.  “The unintended result of such [hiring] freezes is to leave a federal workforce that is wildly uneven in its capabilities.”    Link to article.

• 2.9.10 – Minneapolis Star-Tribune – in an act of recession-era fiscal belt-tightening, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty unilaterally “unalloted” $2.7 billion in state funding that had been budgeted to support various initiatives, including social services programs.  A Ramsey County judge had put the kibosh on the governor’s efforts, ruling that his move violated the constitutional separation of powers.  The governor, with support from three law professors, will take his case to the state’s high court in March.  Link to article.  [Ed. Note: this sequence of events exemplifies the tension between state (and local) governments’ efforts to right their own foundering fiscal ships while continuing to offer a social safety net for increased numbers of poor citizens.  As was reported on the MinnPost news site in late January, another target of unallotment was the state’s General Assistance Medical Care program.  After the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis threatened a lawsuit, the state postponed the program’s discontinuation.]

• 2.9.10 – Hartford Courant [Op-ed] – Connecticut’s legal services programs have been walloped by a drop in IOLTA revenues and declines in other funding sources.  Now, the state judiciary, an initial supporter of state funding to shore up the legal aid infrastructure, “has proposed diverting $1.5 million of funds that were appropriated for legal aid to the poor to help cover a rescission of $7.8 million in the judicial budget.  The governor, General Assembly and judicial branch must find a way to ensure this $1.5 million reaches legal aid. Legal aid staff members have responded to the crisis with heart. Faced with pay cuts and uncertainty, they continue to fight for thousands of domestic violence victims, elderly people pressured by creditors, low-wage workers not being paid, disabled children seeking an education, disabled people seeking state and federal benefits.”  Link to piece.

• 2.9.10 – Baltimore Sun – the recent snowstorms in the mid-Atlantic have left more than snowdrifts piling up.  In Baltimore, and in counties throughout Maryland, court closures are clogging up the criminal justice system as hearings and trials back up while some defendants spend additional nights in jail until they can get to a judge for a bail hearing.  While some prosecutors and defense attorneys are doing all they can to keep up with trial prep, judges and court personnel must weigh a number of factors in making decisions on closures, including the ability of witnesses and jurors to safely travel to courthouses.  Link to article. 

• 2.9.10 – Vicksburg Post (Mississippi) – in Warren County, a proposal to create a public defender’s office has met with support from the local district attorney, who cited potential cost savings as the county would have to contract with fewer appointed counsel for indigent defendants.  Also, a consultant hired by the county to review its jail capacity noted that a public defender’s office may be able to expedite cases and keep more defendants out of jail, easing the burden on the jail facility.  Link to article.

• 2.9.10 – Oakland Tribune (California) – the Public Interest Law Project and Bay Area Legal Aid have sued the Alameda County’s Social Services Agency to stop the termination of a portion of some General Assistance welfare recipients’ benefit payment that is directed toward home rental expenses.  Link to article.  [Ed. Note: this is not the first time that public interest advocates have opposed General Assistance reductions imposed by Alameda County, which has been trying to take the General Assistance program out of the red by cutting benefits.  See San Francisco Chronicle coverage of the County’s legal victory regarding a three-month cap that it imposed on some General Assistance recipients who were deemed to be “employable”.] 

• 2.9.10 – National Law Journal –  Harvard Law School’s newly created Public Service Venture Fund will support graduates on public service career paths by dividing “$1 million per year among qualified graduates who start their own nonprofit organizations or seek jobs at government agencies or public interest groups.”  The addition of this program is one of a series of modifications that Harvard has made in its offerings to support aspiring public service lawyers.  The school has added a fellowship program to financially support grads who were unable to find work and who desired to work for one year in a public interest setting, and, due to budget constraints, it has temporarily done away with an initiative to waive third-year tuition for students who commit to five years of public service work upon graduation.  Link to article, and see Harvard’s announcement. 

• 2.8.10 – WSBT Television Station Website [CBS Affiliate in Indiana] – in April the Michigan Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of indigent defendants whose constitutional rights, the ACLU claims, have been violated because of Michigan’s poor indigent defense infrastructure.  Through the lawsuit, the ACLU “asks the state to step in and fix the problem: to make sure each county provides the funding, policies, and oversight so every defendant gets justice.”  Link to article.  [Ed Note: past coverage related to apparent troubles in the Michigan indigent defense network is available via the National Law Journal and the Michigan Citizen.]

• 2.8.10 – San Jose Mercury News (California)- the Santa Clara County District Attorney, who had appeared to direct her staff to take action amounting to a full boycott of a judge on criminal matters last month, has softened her stance a bit, indicating that it will not oppose the judge’s participation in some misdemeanor criminal proceedings.  The D.A.’s decision to boycott the Judge Andrea Bryan, which came after Bryan had ruled that a prosecutor from the D.A.’s office committed misconduct, was highly controversial in the local legal community.  Link to article.   [Ed. Note: past coverage by the San Jose Mercury News is available here.]

• 2.8.10 – Daily Record (Jacksonville, FL) – the Northeast Florida Medical Legal Partnership, one of a handful of advocacy programs that take a more holistic approach to serving low-income client communities, is expanding its services with the addition of Holland & Knight, LLP as a new organizational partner.  Link to article.

President Obama’s budget plan for Fiscal Year 2011 contemplates an increase in legal staff and FBI personnel at DOJ, according to Government Executive.  Overall, the federal workforce will shrink slightly (from 2.15 to 2.11 million), but will remain larger than it was in 2007.  The Commerce Department is facing the largest cuts (some of which will come on account of the 2010 Census having been completed).  Other agencies that will likely see staff gains: Defense, Homeland Security, and Health & Human Services.

Equal Justice Works is currently featuring a series of posts on their blog on the role lawyers are playing in the economic recovery. Aaron’s introduction talks a a bit about the foreclosure crisis and how it is very much a legal crisis as well. The second post discusses the foreclosure crisis in more detail, and addresses the critical role volunteer lawyers and law students are having in the face of declining non-profit budgets. It’s a neat series that is highlighting some of the reasons for hope in the midst of ongoing economic turmoil.