Stay informed with PSLawNet’s weekly aggregation of public interest news stories from around the country.

• 1.8.10 – Albany Times-Union – Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, New York’s highest-ranking jurist, testified in front of the state legislature about the dire need for increased legal services funding.  While the state court system has already, in an unprecedented move, allocated $15 million to shore up funding, Lippman highlighted dramatic shortfalls in IOLA funding and noted that “[w]e cannot and will not stand idly by as legal services programs are forced to shut their doors, leaving our most vulnerable citizens without help in their time of greatest need.”  Link to article.  [Ed. Note: Additionally, the North Country Gazette reports that Jonathan E. Gradess, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association, expressed support at the hearings for bolstering civil legal services funding.  Interestingly, Gradess “also pointed out that calls for a ‘civil Gideon’…would be a ‘pyrrhic victory’ if modeled on the current implementation of…Gideon v. Wainwright.”  This likely reflects the view by many in the indigent defense community that Gideon’s promise has not been achieved because public defense programs are inadequately staffed and under-resourced.]

• 1.8.10 – Arizona Daily Star – in the wake of the Tucson City Council’s decision to slash the city budget by $25 million, the city prosecutor will lay off 3 of her office’s 38 attorneys.  The layoffs “will force the elimination of the Mental Health Court, a highly touted program devoted to keeping mentally ill people out of jail…[and] the elimination of the neighborhood prosecution team, which handles…neighborhood nuisance issues.”  The courthouse administrators and public defender’s office avoided layoffs.  Link to article.

• 1.5.10 – Daytona Beach News-Journal – Equal Justice Works Fellow Shelly Campbell is working to ensure that veterans who face substance abuse problems, homelessness, and psychological disorders are able to access the full range of benefits to which they are entitled.  Link to article.

After the jump, read about legal services funding initiatives, a call from two state’s chief judges to allow limited-scope representation of low-income clients, a re-entry program for recently released federal inmates, and more.

As casualties of the recession, more and more individuals and families are unable to afford legal counsel for civil matters – like home foreclosures, debt collection actions, and divorces – that could have a huge impact on their welfare.  The extraordinary strain on the civil legal services community’s infrastructure, and also on courthouse staffs, has been documented in Washington, DC, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, and elsewhere.

Yesterday’s New York Times reports that in a effort to make more legal services available to New Yorkers in need, the state hopes to attract retired attorneys to a new volunteer program, matching them with legal services providers to work with clients.

“…officials changed the state’s rules this week to add a new category of lawyer, attorney emeritus, that will free lawyers of some burdens of full-time practice, like paying for malpractice insurance, while channeling them to dozens of legal programs around the state that represent low-income people without charge. Until now, lawyers were required to register with the state as either active or retired.”

According to a NYC Legal Aid Society attorney who sees potential in the project, the Society “was turning away eight of every nine people who come to it seeking legal help in civil cases.”  Recruiting experienced practitioners to help narrow the justice gap and to aid clients in efficiently navigating the court system could pay dividends for overextended public interest lawyers, judges, and courthouse officials.

The Indiana Supreme Court recently announced that it would award $1.5 million in grants to legal aid providers in the state in 2010 – the first half to be distributed in January. Read more about this development here.

We posted a link earlier to an article about the increase in the use of food stamps, and accompanying decline in the stigma attached to them. This seemed like a positive response of the social safety net to the economic crisis.  However, the New York Times reported this weekend that there has been a 50% increase in the past two years in the number of people reporting food stamps as their only source of income – no TANF (cash welfare assistance), no unemployment, no nothing. The Times estimates that about 6 million people now survive on food stamps alone. After the major welfare reform efforts of the mid-90s, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) rolls have decreased to about 75% of their 1990s and have not increased substantially during the recession. We also linked earlier to an op-ed on the role of TANF during the recession.

Some policy advocates are increasingly concerned about this reliance on the food stamp program. ‘“The food-stamp program is being asked to do too much,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. “People need income support.”’ The FRAC has substantial resources on the current state of hunger in the United States, as well as federal programs to address hunger. And when food stamps are an increasingly important factor in families’ survival, lawsuits ensuring the timely processing of applications (such as this one in Texas) become ever more important.

The Washington Post on Monday reported on the impact the recession is having on a major funding source for civil legal services providers.  Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts (IOLTA) programs have been a source of revenue for many legal aid organizations in the United States since the 1980s (see IOLTA.org for more on the history and details of the programs). As the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates in the face of the economic recession, revenue from IOLTA programs has plummeted –  “from $371 million in 2007 to a projected $93 million this year” nationally, the Post reports.

This means legal aid providers have seen their budgets cut substantially, forcing everything from service cuts to layoffs and office closures. However, this is in the face of rising demand for civil legal services. The Maryland Legal Aid Bureau has seen a six percent increase in their case load while dealing with an eleven percent budget cut in 2009.

The Brennan Center also has a great analysis of the situation from last February that you can check out to learn more.

Georgetown and UC Berkeley plan to “dovetail their forgiveness policies” with the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 for eligible graduates who commit to public service careers, according to the National Law Journal.  Essentially, the schools will cover the graduates’ payment obligations through the CCRAA’s Income Based Repayment (IBR) program for 10 years, at which time their remaining debt could be forgiven through Act’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness provision.  Students who are able to reap the full benefit of these programs should be able to finance their legal educations for free.

Since the CCRAA’s passage, there has been much discussion about the interplay between its repayment and loan foregiveness provisions and those of other programs, whether law-school based, employer based, and so forth.  GULC and Berkeley are placing CCRAA at the center of their LRAP solar systems, and other LRAP programs will revolve around it.