Fiscal health is a subject that is, for obvious reasons, of great importance to all law students. It bears even more importance for public interest law students, who must balance their passion for legal advocacy with a need to pay for an expensive legal education.

Today, the U.S News & World Report’s Student Loan Ranger blog, written by Equal Justice Works, tackled the feasibility of pursuing a public interest law career in the midst of low salaries, expensive loans and “Big Law” temptations:

…the Student Loan Ranger disagrees that a career in public interest law is not viable; particularly for lawyers who graduated over the last five years, a combination of Grad PLUS loans, income-driven repayment plans, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness has made a long-term public interest career more financially feasible than ever before.

Law students (and other graduate and professional students) interested in public interest careers should use Grad PLUS loans to cover what remains of their expenses after their grant aid and federal direct Stafford loans have been used up. This means they’ll only be using federal loans, which have important borrower protections and access to the full panoply of federal relief options.

Those options include income-driven repayment plans, including Income-Contingent Repayment (ICR), Income-Based Repayment (IBR), and Pay As You Earn. (The latter will be available December 21, thanks to early implementation by the Department of Education.)

IBR— the best option most law school graduates are eligible for—limits the amount borrowers pay monthly to 15 percent of their discretionary income.

Even better, ICR, IBR, and Pay As You Earn are qualifying repayment plans for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which provides forgiveness after 120 monthly payments (10 years’ worth) made while working full time at any of a broad range of qualifying jobs, including 501(c)(3) nonprofits and for federal, state, local, and tribal governments. The upshot is that attorneys dedicated to public interest careers can make 10 years’ worth of low monthly payments and then apply for forgiveness.

Click here to read the full article, and check out PSJD’s “Funding & Debt” section of the Resource Center to learn more about financing a public interest career.

By: Steve Grumm

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

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

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

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

The summaries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spread the word!  The final deadline on our 2012 Public Interest Employment Market Snapshot Survey is tomorrow, on December 7, 2012. U.S.-based nonprofit and government law offices should participate in this unique survey effort to assess the status of the current public interest legal employment market. Here’s more info and a link to the online survey:

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) is conducting a brief, anonymous survey of U.S.-based nonprofit and government public-interest law offices about 1) recent law student and attorney hiring and 2) hiring expectations for the immediate future. We will use the data to produce a report about what the public interest employment market looks like now and how it may change in the near future.

NALP will release the report in January 2013. The report will be made freely available online. The report will NOT identify any responding organizations by name. We hope the report will benefit the public interest legal community as well as law students and attorneys who are on public interest career paths.  Please participate in the short survey by clicking here.  The (new) survey deadline is Friday, 12/7/12.  If you have questions please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s director of public service initiatives, at sgrumm@nalp.org or 202.296.0057.

By: Steve Grumm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 The summaries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By: Steve Grumm

Catholic Law just hired Kirland & Ellis’s DC-office managing partner as its new dean.  Brooklyn Law did something similar recently.  It’s only two hires, but it’s interesting to wonder whether pressures on the law-school business model will lead to more schools bringing in deans who’ve got law practice management skills.  Here’s the latest from the National Law Journal:

For the second time in the past year, a law school has tapped a new dean directly out of private practice. 

The Catholic University of America on November 27 named Daniel Attridge as the future dean of its Columbus School of Law. Attridge has been the managing partner of Kirkland & Ellis’ Washington office since 1998.

In March, Brooklyn Law School chose Nicholas Allard, then chairman of Patton Boggs’ lobbying, political and election law practice, as its new dean. Leaders at Saint Louis University also named local trial lawyer Tom Keefe Jr. as dean in August, but only on an interim basis.

Attridge’s appointment could signal an increased willingness among university and law school leaders to look beyond the scope of academia, politics and the bench for dean candidates, particularly at a time when the traditional law school business model is under enormous pressure. Catholic University President John Garvey, who previously headed Boston College Law School, said that Attridge will bring something different to the table.

There are just over 200 ABA-accredited schools.  And, again, these are just two hires.  But it’s still worth considering whether schools will look to lawyers with law-practice management skills as they choose current deans’ successors.

Please spread the word.  We’ve extended the deadline on our 2012 Public Interest Employment Market Snapshot Survey.  The new response deadline is Friday, 12/7.  U.S.-based nonprofit and government law offices should participate in this unique survey effort.  Here’s more info and a link to the online survey:

The National Association for Law Placement (NALP) is conducting a brief, anonymous survey of U.S.-based nonprofit and government public-interest law offices about 1) recent law student and attorney hiring and 2) hiring expectations for the immediate future. We will use the data to produce a report about what the public interest employment market looks like now and how it may change in the near future.

NALP will release the report in January 2013. The report will be made freely available online. The report will NOT identify any responding organizations by name. We hope the report will benefit the public interest legal community as well as law students and attorneys who are on public interest career paths.  Please participate in the short survey by clicking here.  The (new) survey deadline is Friday, 12/7/12.  If you have questions please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s director of public service initiatives, at sgrumm@nalp.org or 202.296.0057.

By: Steve Grumm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The summaries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

By: Steve Grumm

credit: rob shenk

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

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

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

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

The summaries:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ABA wants to know.

Anyone with anything to say about the state of legal education: Here’s your chance to sound off.

The task force the American Bar Association formed in August to examine the challenges facing law schools is asking for public input on questions ranging from how the cost of legal education hurts students and the legal profession, to what law schools should seek to achieve during the next 25 years.

The 19-member Task Force on the Future of Legal Education also is moving up the time frame for completion of its work. The group originally was slated to issue its recommendations in spring 2014; now, it plans to submit that report in fall 2013. 

…

“We don’t want people to recite the current set of dilemmas,” Shepard said. “There is a Niagara of discourse on the problems—that’s been laid out in great detail. We’re hoping that people will write to us about the actions they think might be productive.”

The task force isn’t only looking at what the ABA should do, but also at what law schools, universities, bar examiners and other actors might do….

Read the full National Law Journal article.

By: Steve Grumm

I dislike writing about myself, and I dislike pictures of myself even more.  But I had a great time meeting with North Carolina Central University School of Law students last week, and my friend Phil Guzman at NCCU put up a blog post to offer the key points of my presentation. Thanks, Phil, photo notwithstanding.

As Phil notes, it’s important for job-hunting law students to remember that bad job-market news is what makes news.  Media are not nearly as likely to cover the hiring of 10 public defenders as they are to cover the laying-off of 10 defenders.  What does this mean?  It means that job-seekers shouldn’t feel too disheartened if they encounter these bad-news items.  The job market is tough these days – no doubt.  But nonprofit and government law offices are hiring, and we are posting jobs on PSJD every day.

And while it’s tough to wade through bad news, following the news that affects public interest law offices is very important.  Why?  By following funding-related and other developments, job seekers will know where the jobs are.  Jobs follow funding.  So, for instance, state attorneys general throughout the U.S. have been channeling millions of dollars to civil legal aid providers so that they can serve clients with housing problems.  This funding comes from a huge national class-action settlement pertaining to fraudulent foreclosure practices; almost every state AG was engaged in this settlement.  So if I’m looking for a legal aid job, or if I’m looking to propose an Equal Justice Works or Skadden fellowships, I’m looking hard at the housing arena.  (An easy way to keep up with national news is to look at my weekly Public Interest News Bulletin, published every Friday).

Phil also touched on the value of professional networking.  That would require a much longer blog post from me.  Suffice to say, check out our networking (thanks for sharing, Harvard Law) and other job-search resources on PSJD’s Career Central page.