The Solicitor General/Appeals section of the Ohio Attorney General’s office is looking for new lawyers, recent graduates, or attorneys with limited experience to apply for the 2013 -2014 Simon Karas Fellowship! The Fellow works with the Ohio Attorney General’s Solicitor General, Deputy Solicitors, and other top lawyers in their office on Ohio’s major appellate cases, which often involve constitutional questions or hotly debated public policy concerns. Many of the cases are headed to the U.S. Supreme Court or are already there.

The office’s recent cases provide examples of the kind of work the Karas Fellow will accomplish. From the PSJD job listing:

• Ohio has a busy practice in the U.S. Supreme Court. Our U.S. Supreme Court practice covers a wide variety of cases. In Bobby v. Dixon, for example, we successfully defended the constitutionality of a criminal interrogation under Miranda. In Levin v. Commerce Energy, the Court agreed with us that, under principles of comity and federalism, challenges to state tax laws must be filed in the state courts. We have also filed amicus briefs in a number of highprofile cases: Williams v. Illinois (admissibility of expert testimony about the results of DNA testing in criminal trials); Merck v. Reynolds (fraud claims under federal securities laws); and Doe v. Reed (First Amendment challenge to state law requiring public disclosure of ballot petitions).

• In recent years, the Fellows have worked on other U.S. Supreme Court cases involving double jeopardy, school vouchers, free exercise of religion, federalism and state immunity, interstate commerce, and more.

• The Karas Fellow also assists with cases in the Ohio Supreme Court, where we appear often, both as a party and as an amicus. To name only a few, our recent cases have involved the standard for imposing civil penalties under Ohio’s environmental enforcement laws, the constitutionality of Ohio’s Smoke Free Work Place Act, the eligibility requirements for seeking recovery for wrongful imprisonment, the constitutionality of Ohio’s bifurcation statute in civil trials involving punitive damages, the liability of mortgage servicers for fraudulent acts connected with the nationwide mortgage crisis, and the admissibility of physician apologies in medical malpractice cases. We are also defending the State against multi-million dollar lawsuits that allege state constitutional challenges to certain state taxes.

• We also brief and argue many cases in the Sixth Circuit, and the Karas Fellow assists with those appeals as well. This past year, our Karas Fellow presented oral argument in the Sixth Circuit in a case concerning the constitutionality of a juvenile criminal sentence.

The deadline to apply is October 19, 2012. Check out the full listing, including qualifications and salary, on PSJD.org (log-in required).

by Ashley Matthews

Does law school have you feeling down?

If so, you’re not alone. According to a recent National Law Journal special report  on stressed out students, roughly 40% of law students show signs of depression by their 3L year – surpassing the rate of depression among medical students. Although law school has always had a demanding reputation, the financial pressure to get a job and repay loans in a tough economy has student anxiety at an all-time high.

This upsurge in stress has led to an increase in “wellness” programs at law schools around the country. Whether through on-campus yoga sessions or meditative seminars, these programs offer holistic guidance on coping with stress as a law student.

In addition to information about the wellness trend on law school campuses, the National Law Journal features an article on managing law school workloads and a law school survival guide with advice from “recovering law students”.

There’s help outside the confines of your law school campus as well. The Jed Foundation partnered up with the Dave Nee Foundation – which was created after the 2005 suicide of a Fordham University School of Law student – to launch LawLifeline, a website featuring helpful articles on mental health, and how to combat disorders like depression and anxiety.

Click here to read the full National Law Journal special report!

Catholic Charities Legal Services is looking for a staff attorney to join its office in Miami! From the PSJD job posting:

The successful candidate will be a dynamic and experienced professional, with a demonstrated commitment to the poor, the disadvantaged, and the mentally ill, within the immigrant and refugee communities; a high regard for human rights and the dignity of all persons regardless of national origin; and dedication to a more just immigration system and a humane detention policy. Additionally, he or she will enjoy the challenge of a fast-paced, multi-cultural work environment.

The staff attorney will: provide legal consultation on a variety of legal issues; represent individuals in immigration court proceedings; train and supervise pro bono lawyers; maintain a select caseload of complex immigration; perform legal research; and much more. Language proficiency in Spanish or Creole/French is preferred.

View the full listing at PSJD.org (log-in required)!

by Ashley Matthews

With budget cuts and staff reductions to legal aid organizations widening the barrier to access legal information, many states are coming up with innovative ways to reach their most vulnerable populations.

Most counties in Illinois, for instance, are launching online legal self-help centers for low-income residents. From the State-Journal Register in Springfield, Illinois:

A free online legal self-help center will be accessible to anyone with a computer connected to the Internet. Public access computers also are available at the Carlinville Public Library.

The center will provide legal information in civil matters for people who can’t hire a lawyer and can’t find either a pro bono attorney or a legal aid lawyer to help them. It also contains non-court-related information on topics like Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation and others.

Joseph Dailing, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice, which helped plan the project, said users go first to a common website for all 91 such centers statewide. From there, they can access an individual county home page. That page contains information on six topics selected locally, he said.

The Macoupin legal self-help center is one of 91 throughout Illinois, each in a separate county.

“In the larger counties, such as Sangamon, the centers are in the circuit court clerk’s offices in the courthouses,” Dailing said. “They are in libraries in the smaller counties.”

Although anyone with computer access can use the center, Dailing said topics featured on the site “are the kinds of legal problems typically encountered by lower-income individuals.”

The online centers were funded by the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, and the sites are maintained by Illinois Legal Aid Online. While the site will offer general legal information about common legal subjects like divorce and foreclosure, it will not provide any legal advice.

We weren’t much aware of Constitution Day’s existence either.  Turns out it’s a relatively new federal day of observance, and is wrapped up with a previous federal holiday which was known as Citizenship Day.  As it also turns out, today is the 225th anniversary of the Constitution’s signing (Sept. 17, 1787).  So do a little dance, make a little love, and get down tonight in celebration of such things as the separation of powers and the ever-exciting Arisings Clause.

Calling all aspiring Skadden Fellows.  A reminder that the proposal/application deadline is October 1, 2012.   Use PSJD’s fellowship application tools to polish up your proposal now.  Good luck!

Good news for public-interest minded students at Stanford, Harvard, NYU and Yale law schools! Today, the Ford Foundation announced a commitment to fund 2013 summer public interest placements for about 100 law students from these prestigious law schools.

From the National Law Journal:

Public interest fellowships typically pay stipends just large enough to cover basic costs. By contrast, the Ford fellows will receive $15,000 for summer work at an array of high-profile public interest organizations, including the Brookings Institution, the Environmental Defense Fund and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The foundation has committed $1.75 million for the inaugural year.

“This program opens up a new pathway for law students to gain practical and transformative experience working on many of the defining social justices issues of our age,” said Ford Foundation president Luis Ubiñas. “We believe it will offer them invaluable knowledge and understanding that will inform their careers, whether public or private, while bringing fresh talent to organizations working to advance fairness and freedom.”

The fellowships will go to “high performing” 1Ls and 2Ls at the designated law schools, which were selected because of their history of partnership with the Ford Foundation, he said.

Interested in international law and women’s rights? Today’s job of the day is just for you!

The International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) in Washington, DC is looking for law clerks to start in the summer of 2013. From IRAdvocates:

International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) builds and supports the capacity of women, human rights, labor, and legal organizations to develop and promote innovative legal strategies to hold multinational corporations accountable for labor, human rights, and environmental violations. IRAdvocates does so by supporting direct legal advocacy both in the U.S. and abroad, and by working with local partner organizations to develop and undertake precedent-setting legal actions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. IRAdvocates believes that only when multinational corporate actors are subject to meaningful and enforceable legal mechanisms both in the country
where the violation occurs and abroad can individual human rights be fully realized.

Law clerks will be expected to research legal issues relating to multinational corporate accountability litigation, specifically the Alien Tort Statute and the Torture Victims Protection Act. In addition, clerks will draft legal memos and help out with depositions.

Check out the full listing on PSJD.org (log-in required).

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, folks.   It’s been a light news week, and I’m traveling.  So you’re spared from my typical musings, ramblings and editorializing.  Here’s the access-to-justice and public interest news in very short:

• defense lawyers association backs NM measure to convert public defense program to independent state agency;
• Honoring lawyer pro bono/public interest contributions in NY;
• from UT, a look at the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake;
• new U.S. poverty data;
• in CA, Riverside County’s public defender blasts budget decisions that amount to “amputations”, not just cuts;
• the rotten state of IOLTA funding in FL
• back in CA, a unique new clinic at UC  Davis Law;
• Michigan’s state house considers creating a commission to promote public defender standards;
• public defender reality TV in NY;
• public defender caseload standards to take effect in MO.

The news in less short:

• 9.14.12 – “Criminal defense lawyers are helping to finance a campaign for a ballot proposal to make the New Mexico Public Defender Department an independent state agency.A campaign finance report shows the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers contributed $10,000 last month to a newly formed political committee that’s promoting voter approval of the proposed constitutional amendment.  (Here’s the short AP story.)

• 9.12.12 – the New York Law Journal honors its “Lawyers Who Lead by Example”: We asked the legal community to nominate their colleagues who demonstrate a sustained commitment to improving the lives of poor or nearly poor New Yorkers. We received about 70 nominations, all of them worthy.  Our 14 honorees for 2012 are truly part of the solution, demonstrating the highest level of commitment to their profession and their communities, tapping their training, business acumen, creativity and humanity to solve legal problems for those in need.  This year the Law Journal expanded the range of categories. Our 2012 honorees include one law firm; eight private attorneys; an in-house lawyer; three public interest attorneys who reached beyond the borders of their programs to bring attention and resources to the cause, and a law school clinic.”

• 9.12.12 – a piece in the Salt Lake Tribune looks at the Legal Aid Society’s nine decades of work on behalf of low-income Utahans.

• 9.12.12 – The U.S. Census Bureau released 2011 poverty data this week (press release).  The poverty rate remained essentially unchanged between 2010 and 2011.  Here’s a little more from the Census Bureau.

• 9.11.12 – Riverside County’s new budget is balanced, but hardly fair, in the view of the public defender: “Public Defender Gary Windom protested what he characterized as a draconian cut to his office, which earlier this summer laid off three people. Lawyers in the office represent people accused of crimes who cannot afford their own attorneys.  ‘These cuts are not cuts, they are amputations,’ Windom said. Windom said he was particularly concerned about a $1.5 million reduction for a unit that represents people who face the death penalty, if found guilty. He said that unit handles 20 death penalty cases a year and the cut would cripple the program by gutting 50 percent of its revenue.  Windom also objected to an additional $1 million cut to the public defender’s office budget overall.  And he questioned a projection that a new $50 fee charged to the accused when county lawyers are assigned to them would generate $1 million for the office.” (Article from the Californian.)

• 9.11.12 – the rotten state of legal services funding in Florida.  “[Florida Bar Foundation Executive Director Jane Curran] said that the Foundation’s revenues, generated by short-term interest on trust accounts, shrank from $44 million in 2007, before the recession, to $5.58 million last fiscal year, which ended June 30. ‘Our funding cuts alone … will result in the layoff of 120 legal aid lawyers,’ Curran said.”  (Story from the Daytona Beach News-Journal.)

• 9.11.12 – at UC Davis Law, a clinic focused on the state high court.  “The only course of its kind in the country, the California Supreme Court clinic is designed to train select students in the art of researching and writing briefs for the state’s highest court.  Some law schools in California and other states have similar programs that focus on the U.S. Supreme Court, but none is devoted to a state high court.
  [T]he students will provide pro bono representation to individuals and organizations in both criminal and civil matters pending before court. The class will enter a case either as co-counsel to a party or as an amicus curiae…”  (Article in the Sacramento Bee.) 

• 9.10.12 – a short article on Michigan Public Radio’s website: “Michigan’s public defender system is consistently rated one of the worst in the country. But this week, the House Judiciary Committee will consider creating a commission to establish standards for indigent defense.”

• 9.10.12 – public defender reality TV. “The special, Criminal Defense: And Justice for All, was scheduled to air in two half-hour episodes beginning Tuesday [9/11] at 10 p.m. Eastern Time on the National Geographic Channel. Filmed over a span of three weeks, the shows offer a day-in-the-life look at several lawyers as they defend their clients.  The show’s executive producer…says most television programs focusing on criminal justice are based on the police or prosecution point of view. ‘The idea of having access to the work of public defenders is something that has almost never been shown before to the public,’ he tells the ABA Journal in an interview.  Law-and-order policies get lots of public debate, he points out. Now viewers will get ‘an opportunity to see how the policies that are talked about in the abstract and in the public square affect individual people’s lives’.”  The two episodes were filmed as a pilot and have the potential to become a series.”  (Full story from the ABA Journal.) 

• 9.7.12 – in Missouri, a new public-defender caseload standard to take effect on 10/1: “Boone County public defenders might have to decline immediate representation for some clients under a formula set to take effect Oct. 1 that will cap their monthly caseload.”  (Story from the Columbia Tribune.)

The following government programs have 3L deadlines coming up soon:

• Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General – Fellowship Program (Paid, Deadline 09/14/12)
• Oregon Department of Justice – Honors Attorney Program (Paid, Deadline 09/14/12)
• Federal Trade Commission – Bureau of Competition Entry Legal Attorney Program (Paid, Deadline 09/15/12)
• Comptroller of the Currency – Law Department Chief Counsel’s Employment Program (Paid, Deadline 09/17/12)
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – Louis D. Brandeis Attorney Honors Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/17/12)
• Federal Communications – Office of General Counsel 2013 Attorney Honors Program (Paid, Deadline 09/21/12)
• Department of Energy – Office of General Counsel Attorneys Honors Program (Paid, Deadline not yet established was 09/23/11)
• Office of Personnel Management – Presidential Management Fellows Program (Paid, Deadline not yet established was 09/25/11)
• Housing & Urban Development – Office of General Counsel Legal Honors Program (Paid, Deadline 09/28/12)
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – 2013 Legal Division Honors Program (Paid, Deadline 09/30/12)
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission – Atomic Safety & Licensing Board Panel Judicial Law Clerk Program (Paid, Deadline 09/30/12)

• Health & Human Services – Office of Counsel to the Inspector General Legal Extern Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/21/12)
• The White House Internship Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/23/12)
• Environmental Protection Agency – R8 Office of Regional Counsel Volunteer Intern Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/30/12)
• Sacramento County CA District Attorney’s Office – Law Student Internship Program (Unpaid, Deadline 09/30/12)

For more information on these listings and more, check out The University of Arizona College of Law’s 2012-2013 Government Honors & Internship Handbook. Please note that the Handbook is available to subscribers only. Don’t worry, though – most law schools are already subscribed.  Just talk to your Career Services counselor for your school’s username and password.