If legally empowering immigrant woman and girls is your thing, today’s Job of the Day could be for you! The Tahirih Justice Center is a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting women and girls seeking justice in the United States from gender-based violence. Through direct legal services, client-based public policy advocacy and public education, Tahirih uses a holistic approach to address the needs of their clients.

From the PSJD job listing:

The Tahirih Justice Center is a national non-profit organization that supports the courage of immigrant women and girls who refuse to be victims of violence by providing holistic legal services and advocacy in courts, Congress, and communities. Through pro bono holistic legal services and public policy advocacy, Tahirih protects women and girls seeking protection from gender-based human rights abuses such as domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, honor crimes, and forced marriage. Tahirih is a Bahá’í-inspired organization and works to create a world where women and girls can live in safety and with dignity. Winner of the 2010 Meyer Exponent Award which recognizes outstanding nonprofit executive directors and the 2007 Washington Post Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management, Tahirih has a staff of 35 with offices in Falls Church, VA; Houston, TX; and Baltimore, MD.

The Family Law Attorney provides in-house legal representation to Tahirih clients with family law matters in the Virginia Court System. She/He supervises the family law department’s paralegal and legal interns as necessary and oversees the family law department’s service seeker, intake and case acceptance processes.

Tahirih’s ideal candidate will have 2-5 years of family law experience, knowledge of immigration law, experience working with female survivors of trauma. For more information on qualifications, salary and application instructions, view the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required).

By: Steve Grumm

Hi, folks. We at NALP have just opened collection on our 2012 public interest employment market survey.  (Response deadline: 11/30.)  The survey will provide us with information about current and future hiring expectations in nonprofit and government law offices, with respect to both summer law students and attorneys.  Please spread the word to your contacts at U.S.-based nonprofit and government law offices by forwarding this blog post or using the below language.  Thanks much!

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 survey deadline is Friday, 11/30/12.  If you have questions please contact Steve Grumm, NALP’s director of public service initiatives, at sgrumm@nalp.org or 202.296.0057.

Interested in protecting tenants and homeowners facing foreclosure in New York? If so, check out today’s Job o’ the Day:

The Legal Aid Society of Mid-New York, Inc. has a staff attorney position in Utica, New York, for the Home Ownership Protection Program (HOPP). The staff attorney will serve Oneida, Madison, and Herkimer Counties. LASMNY is seeking an experienced attorney admitted to practice in New York State. The staff attorney will be responsible for providing a full range of legal representation and counseling to individuals facing foreclosure of their home and to tenants facing homelessness as a result of a foreclosure.

The following factors, among others, are considered as qualifications for the position:

• Academic training and performance;
• The nature and extent of prior legal experience;
• Knowledge and understanding of the legal problems and needs of the poor; prior working experience in the client community or in other programs to aid the poor;
• Ability to communicate with persons in the client community,
• Cultural similarity with the client community.

For more information on salary and application instructions, view the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

By: Steve Grumm

Bloomberg News

Happy Friday, folks.  If you were affected by the storm earlier this week, I hope you are safe and well.  Sandy delivered a painful reminder of our fragility.  One of the world’s most developed, sophisticated population centers found itself completely subject to nature’s whim.  Humbling.  And tragic for too many people.  On the legal front, the National Disaster Legal Aid website is serving as a resource both for those seeking help and those wishing to render it.  And while the news coverage has focused on the New York/Jersey region, it’s noteworthy that the storm’s impact has been felt far and wide.  I heard from a Cleveland-based legal aid lawyer who’s gone the week without electricity.     

For some post-Sandy escapism, here’s word that a new Star Wars movie is in the making (and that George Lucas is selling his empire to Disney).  Since I grew up loving the original trilogy and watching too many saccharine 80s sitcoms, I’m tempted to greet this development with unmitigated joy.  But I’ve got real questions about the franchise that inflicted Jar Jar Binks upon the world turning itself over to the company that gave us The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.  Be warned, Disney: take good care of this galaxy far, far away.  

This week in very, very short:

• Texas counties pooling resources to provide indigent defense in capital cases
• Mandatory pro bono, Singapore style
• Low-paid FL prosecutors and defenders
• Pushback on pushback on Income Based Repayment
• More on NY’s new 50-hour pro bono rule
• Missouri prosecutor minces no words in assigning fault for indigent defense system woes
• NOLA PD may see big cut in city funding
• We can hear you now.  Corporate lawyers should be freed up to do more pro bono, says Verizon general counsel.
• Even Harvard’s public interest minded law students face a difficult career path
• Great work from Iowa Legal Aid, but times are tough
• Low-paid Pittsburgh prosecutors and defenders
• New masters-in-law course in animal law
• Recent hiring by the Land of Enchantment’s (great state nickname!) public defense program
• Online ATJ in IL
• Super Music Bonus!

The summaries

• 11.1.12 – in Texas, counties banding together to provide capital defense counsel: “Parker County commissioners recently voted to join the Regional Public Defender for Capital Cases program, an action that could save the county thousands of dollars during the prosecution of expensive capital murder cases.  The program, funded through the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, represents defendants who are charged with the offense of capital murder and are eligible for the death penalty but cannot afford to hire their own attorneys.  The organization helps participating smaller counties meet the legal requirement to provide access to counsel for those defendants by providing a core team of four — two…attorneys, a mitigation specialist and a fact investigator — as well funds for an investigation…. Of the 240 counties eligible for the program … 193 have agreed to participate so far.”  (Story from the Weatherford Democrat.)

• 11.1.12 – I work hard to offer a global worldview, dear reader.  So here we have news about a potential move to mandatory pro bono in Singapore.  Only 16 hours, though, which is odd.  Here’s some detail from Today Online: “Lawyers could soon be required to contribute a minimum of 16 hours of free legal services, as part of a high powered committee’s proposal to make it mandatory for practitioners to provide legal aid to low-income and disadvantaged Singaporeans….  The scheme will cover legal assistance in four broad areas: Criminal legal aid, civil legal aid, community mediation including other voluntary services in the Subordinate Courts, and legal advisory work to institutions and charities.”

• 10.31.12 – “Florida prosecutors and public defenders can’t keep over-worked young lawyers very long without at least a break-even pay raise to offset the state’s 3 percent pension deduction, lawyers told state budget planners at a public hearing Wednesday….  ‘We have two kinds of assistant state attorneys today,’ said Buddy Jacobs, general counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association. ‘We have those that are leaving and those that are looking.’  Jacobs said 56 percent of assistant prosecutors are five years, or less, out of law school, and that the typical young prosecutor starts at $40,000 a year — with $80,000 to $100,000 in college debt…. The state attorney offices have had about 15 percent turnover in each of the past two years, he said.”  (Story from the Florida Current.)

• 10.31.12 – student debt expert Heather Jarvis pushes back on a report that was itself critical of the Income Based Repayment program: “The New America Foundation released ‘Safety Net or Windfall:  Examining Changes to Income-Based Repayment for Federal Student Loans’… arguing that changes to Income-Based Repayment (IBR) should be better targeted towards low-income borrowers rather than “high-income borrowers with graduate and professional degrees.”   The analysis in the report clearly demonstrates what advocates have long known is a weakness in the IBR program—the lowest-income student loan borrowers need more and different help.  But the wealthy certainly do not benefit the most from Income-Based Repayment.  Wealthy students and families have money to pay for education, do not need to rely on student loans, and neither need nor will receive many benefits from Income-Based Repayment.  We have a debt-based system of access to higher education.  Unless or until that changes, student loans enable middle- and lower-income students and families to pay for…advanced degrees.  Middle- and lower-income students…must borrow substantial amounts or decide not to pursue advanced graduate and professional degrees.”
  • Speaking of student debt, the federal “Pay As You Earn” regulations were finalized this week.  PAYE makes two significant changes to the Income Based Repayment program. It first lowers the debtor’s monthly contribution from roughly 15% of disposable income to 10%.  Second, it knocks down the 25-year forgiveness period to 20 years.  (Distinguish this, however, from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness provision, which forgives eligible loan balances after 10 years of payments into IBR.)  (Here’s some coverage from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.) 

• 10.31.12 – New York’s newly implemented 50-hour pro bono requirement for admission to the bar just will not leave the news.
  • New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman delivered remarks to a DC-based audience earlier this week.  The Blog of the Legal Times has coverage: “The pro bono requirement, which is the first of its kind for a state bar, is ‘conceptually unassailable,’ Lippman said, even as he acknowledged concerns raised by law schools and legal services providers about how it would work in practice. He also said that the requirement was not a precursor to a mandatory pro bono requirement for the bar, another concern within the legal community.  Lippman said he hoped other states would consider similar requirements
  • And from the New York Law Journal, we learn that the chief judge expects that few bar applicants will be exempted from the rule’s requirement.

• 10.30.12 – pulling no punches regarding Missouri’s troubled indigent defense system, the state prosecutor association’s president blames the indigent defense program’s leaders, not overwhelming caseloads, for the program’s woes: “Simply put, the current public defender system is broken beyond repair because its top brass has surrendered in the face of its challenges. The only suggestion the public defender leadership ever offers is that they need more money. When the state budget is already stretched too thin, Missourians deserve a better solution….  We need to consider a new model where we reserve state-paid public defenders for the most serious felonies, such as murders and sexual offenses, while contracting representation of misdemeanors and low-level felonies to private counsel who could do the work more efficiently.  (Op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)

• 10.30.12 – the city of New Orleans is funding the district attorney’s office at just slightly less than it did last year, but the public defender’s office will see funding slashed by 33% (from $1.2 million to $800,000.)  Here’s the story from the Times-Picayune. 

• 10.29.12 – loosen up state practice rules so that in-house counsel – who may not be licensed in the states in which they physically work – can do more pro bono.  This is the case made by Verizon general counsel Randal Milch in a Corporate Counsel op-ed.

• 10.29.12 – the Harvard Crimson looks at the difficulties confronted by public service minded law students when they choose between a relatively robust law-firm recruiting system and the more difficult path to public service, which involves a tight, low-paying job market.

• 10.29.12 – a piece on Iowa Legal Aid trumpets the organization’s work on behalf of thousands of vulnerable Hawkeye Staters, but closes on a somber note: “All of that work is being done with fewer people, though. Iowa Legal Aid served nearly 17 percent fewer people than in 2010 because of reduced revenue and reductions in staff. At the end of 2011, the organization had 12 fewer attorneys and 8 fewer support staff than it had at the beginning of 2010. Funding from the Supreme Court was reduced to $172,000 for 2012, which is down from the $828,572 grant received three years ago, and federal funding was cut by 15 percent.”  (Full piece in The Hawkeye.)

• 10/29/12 – citing NALP data, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looks at how low pay harries the Steel City’s junior prosecutors and defenders, forcing some to moonlight in order to make ends meet.

• 10/28.12 – the pet industry is booming – Big Pet? – and Lewis & Clark Law School has created a masters-in-law certificate program for tomorrow’s animal rights/law lawyers.  From the Columbia Tribune: “Enrollment in the yearlong program [which has an initial class of six students] is expected to grow to 15 or 20 students in three to five years, said attorney Pamela Frasch, assistant dean and executive director of the [school’s Center for Animal Law Studies].”

• 10/26/12 – New Mexico’s public defender program has done a fair amount of recent hiring.  That’s tapering off but they’re still looking for lawyers.  From the Las Cruces Sun-News: “Vacancies in the agency have declined from 20.8 percent in 2011 to 15 percent today.  Moreover…the chief public defender…said she expected vacancies to drop to 8 percent by January.  Her department is filling 70 jobs, she told the Legislative Finance Committee this week. In raw numbers, the public defender has 211 attorneys and 182 support employees. [The chief defender] said she had begun to reduce the vacancy rate because the Legislature increased her budget by $1.2 million last session. Overall, the [program’s] budget is $40.14 million. It stood at $42.6 million in 2010, then legislative cutbacks began because of the national fiscal crisis.”

• 10.26.12 – this Government Technology story is ostensibly about the launching of a successful online, self-help legal aid website in one county.  But it points to a larger trend in Illinois toward empowering low- and moderate-income residents with online legal resources.  

Music!  This week I’m having all kinds of trouble not listening to Centro-matic’s “Patience for the Ride.”  If I had to guess, I’d say the song has to do with the Enron fallout and similar instances of corporate malfeasance.  But as with all well-written songs, it draws upon more universal themes.  And I hear “Patience for the Ride” as an anthem for public interest lawyers who face long odds and powerful opponents.  The song also contains a somehow-unpretentious use of the word “eleemosynary”.  That’s straight badass, is what that is.

Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, a nonprofit organization with offices all over the state, provides free civil legal services to eligible low-income residents in 114 counties. The downtown Dallas office is currently looking for a recent law graduate to fill a staff attorney position in the Housing, Consumer Protection, and Economic Benefits Unit.

From the PSJD job description:

LANWT seeks a dynamic, self-starting attorney who has vision, initiative, and a demonstrated commitment to public interest law to fill a staff attorney position in the Housing, Consumer Protection, and Economic Benefits Unit of its downtown Dallas office. In addition to providing daily representation in non-family civil legal matters, the successful candidate will demonstrate a commitment to identifying and taking advantage of opportunities for strategic advocacy and to engaging in outreach to and collaboration with low-income persons, including community groups that are made up of or serve the indigent. LANWT particularly seeks an attorney who can spearhead the systemic advocacy for low-income consumers of the Dallas office, as well as accept cases for and collaborate with the Unit’s existing special projects in public housing advocacy, wage-and-hour litigation, and representation of the homeless.

A staff attorney must be able to gather evidence, advise clients about their rights, draft legal documents, and conduct civil lawsuits. A staff attorney must interview clients and witnesses with cultural competence, as well as handle other tasks in representing clients. A staff attorney represents clients in court and before quasi-judicial or administrative agencies of government. The staff attorney also interprets laws, rulings, and regulations for clients and the client community.

The deadline to apply is tomorrow, 11/2/2012! For more information on salary, qualifications and application instructions, view the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

A recent report by the New America Foundation highlighted a perceived flaw in the Income Based Repayment program, namely that IBR will benefit not only low-income borrowers, but also high-debt, middle income borrowers, i.e. those who earn comfortable salaries but are also saddled by very high debt loads.  So there’s a question about whether a federal program can or should sustain itself when its benefit go to those who make a decent buck.

Heather Jarvis, student debt expert and friend of the PSJD Blog, pushes back on her blog:

The New America Foundation released “Safety Net or Windfall:  Examining Changes to Income-Based Repayment for Federal Student Loans” by Jason Delisle and Alex Holt, arguing that changes to Income-Based Repayment (IBR)should be better targeted towards low-income borrowers rather than “high-income borrowers with graduate and professional degrees.” 

The analysis in the report clearly demonstrates what advocates have long known is a weakness in the IBR program—the lowest-income student loan borrowers need more and different help.

But the wealthy certainly do not benefit the most from Income-Based Repayment.  Wealthy students and families have money to pay for education, do not need to rely on student loans, and neither need nor will receive many benefits from Income-Based Repayment. 

…

We have a debt-based system of access to higher education.  Unless or until that changes, student loans enable middle- and lower-income students and families to pay for the advanced degrees required to work in many higher-income professions.  Middle- and lower-income students and families must borrow substantial amounts or decide not to pursue advanced graduate and professional degrees.

Income-Based Repayment enables lower- and middle- income students to borrow and successfully repay high student loan balances, and borrowing and repaying a high student loan balance is the path from a lower- or middle-income family to high-income employment.  The person who benefits the most from IBR comes from a family of modest means, borrows a lot to earn advanced degrees, and makes payments based on income every month for many years.  The more that student loan borrower earns, the more he or she will pay. 

Are you a recent law graduate interested in advancing socioeconomic justice? If so, check out this recent job posting from the Greenlining Institute:

Established in 1996, the Greenlining Academy works to empower and develop the next generation of multiethnic leaders to advance racial and economic equity and create positive social change. The goal of the Greenlining Legal Academy is to recruit and train the next generation of leaders, advocates, and policy-makers to protect and promote the interests of California’s diverse and vulnerable communities. The Legal Academy trains law students and recent law school graduates to become effective, ethical, and creative agents for social change. Students learn practical skills such as negotiating, writing and oral advocacy by applying their skills in real time. Students are given immediate and frequent exposure to government officials, community leaders and corporate executives to experience how policy-making happens from “the inside”.

…

The Greenlining Academy believes today’s leaders must have fluency across divisions of race, culture, class, sector and geography and must be adept at utilizing their networks to create social change. The Academy boasts an Alumni network of over 350 members that is a vital component of the Academy’s success. Academy alumni have gone on to work in the social benefit, public and private sectors and hold leadership positions in government, nonprofit organizations, business, law, education and consulting. Over 80% of alumni reported that their Academy experience greatly advanced their professional development and confidence in pursuing leadership roles within their communities.

The Greenlining Legal Fellowship is a year-long program that teaches recent law school graduates how to be ethical, competent legal advocates, utilizing clinical legal education methodology. Legal Fellows will be assigned to one or more areas of Greenlining’s consumer protection advocacy and will develop expertise in those areas under the direction and guidance of Greenlining’s legal team and the Academy Director.

The opportunity is available for those who have completed law school. Applicants should be expecting to graduate and take the 2013 California bar exam OR  a recent law school graduate who is a member of the California Bar Association. The salary for this position is $42,400, plus health and dental benefits, and up to $2,000 reimbursement for Bar examination fees.

For more information on the Greenlining Legal Fellowship, view the full job listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

Last Friday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor participated at the Equal Justice Works Conference and Career Fair.  The good folks at the Blog of the Legal Times have coverage of a Q&A session wiht the justice, who herself was a prosecutor in NYC:

In a speech late last week to law students, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor encouraged them to serve their communities, both as attorneys and as citizens.

It was that notion of service that led Sotomayor to consider a career in the law, she said during her October 26 presentation to the Equal Justice Works annual conference and career fair in Arlington, Va., which drew more than 1,000 law students from about 200 law schools.

“The law, regardless of how you practice it, if you practice honorably, you are doing service, and it was a service that appealed to me because it was a service I felt like I could contribute something to.” said Sotomayor. Judge David Tatel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asked her questions onstage before members of the audience got a chance during a question and answer period.

Sotomayor conceded that she did not have lofty intentions when she made early career choices, but that she based her decisions on what she needed at each stage to develop skills to do meaningful work. She added that if the students in the audience think their job is the only form of public service available to them, they are narrowing themselves.

“Being an involved citizen requires not just doing a job, it requires being more involved in the broader issues of your community, of insuring you’re a good citizen in multiple different ways.”

…

Our neighbors at public interest law firm Mehri & Skalet are seeking their 2013 Find Justice Fellow.  Interested in civil rights, employment, housing and/or consumer law?  Give this this a peep.

Mehri & Skalet, PLLC is a law firm that litigates class actions to protect individuals from unfair or discriminatory practices. Our areas of practice include civil rights and anti-discrimination law, consumer protection, fair housing and lending, antitrust, wage and hour, and the False Claims Act. We focus on developing systemic reforms to improve the workplace and the marketplace. The Mehri & Skalet Find Justice Fellowship provides a promising new attorney with an introduction to our practice.

…

To further our mission of public justice, we created the Mehri & Skalet Find Justice Fellowship in 2009, which offers a new attorney the opportunity to join the firm and gain experience on the wide range of cases that we pursue. The Find Justice Fellow works on all aspects of our practice, including the investigation of new cases, client relations, research, discovery, motions, negotiations, litigation strategy and court hearings.

The Fellowship duration is for two years, beginning in the Fall of 2013. Compensation will be $50,000 per year with full health benefits.

Not too shabby.  Check out the full job posting (PSJD login required).

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center is seeking a pro bono director…

APALC seeks a pro bono director to oversee volunteer involvement projects and partnerships, with the goals of cultivating volunteer resources (legal and non-legal) to further APALC’s work and reinforce APALC’s support base by providing opportunities to be involved in APALC’s mission. Under the supervision of the Vice-President of Programs & Communications, the director will work with APALC’s program, development and communications teams to provide strategic vision for the organization’s pro bono work and to strengthen APALC’s volunteer capacity.   The director is responsible for the cultivation of relationships with key pro bono stakeholders (e.g., law firms, law schools, bar associations, etc.) and the day-to-day management of APALC’s volunteer program. This position is full-time and exempt.

Read the full job listing on PSJD (login required).