By: Maria Hibbard

Since it’s intern season here in Washington, D.C., many bright-eyed and bushy tailed students with hopes of potentially working for the federal government are streaming into the city.  I may or may not be one of them!  My name is Maria Hibbard, and I’m the resident PSLawNet Intern and Publications Coordinator for the summer. I’m a rising second year law student at Case Western Reserve University. Since I grew up in Columbus, Ohio and am now in Cleveland for law school, D.C.’s vast system of public transportation and plethora of free summer activities (see the Having Fun on the Cheap page!) definitely has a big-city allure for me as well. I’ll be blogging throughout the summer here while avoiding the D.C. heat in the air conditioned office, of course.

Until recently, the path to employment at a federal agency or department has been a mystical jumble of various opportunities only found through a great degree of research: volunteer internships, compensated internships, fellowships, short-term and long-term programs. Hopefully, this jumble will soon become clearer–when President Obama’s Executive Order 13562 takes effect on July 10, 2012, current students and recent graduates will have three clear paths to federal employment via The Pathways Program. To break it down, everyone loves a list:

• Some aspiring federal employees may have heard of the Student Career Experience program (SCEP) and the Student Temporary Employment Program (STEP); both of these programs are being replaced by the all-encompassing Internship Program. While the program is still administered primarily by the hiring agency, students can possibly earn conversion into a permanent position after the completion of 640 hours of work experience.
• The Recent Grads program is a new opportunity for recent graduates within two years of obtaining any degree. Like the internship program, it is administered individually by the federal agencies, but the one year program provides structured mentorship opportunities, 40 hours of formal training, and the creation of an individual development plan. After 1 year, the graduates of the program can be eligible for conversion to permanent employment at the selected agency.

Starting in July, agencies will have to provide information about both of these programs, their specific opportunities, and application procedures on www.usajobs.gov/studentsandgrads/.

• Finally, the Presidential Management Program, while obviously not new, has been reworked to provide for a more seamless application process and administration (especially after last year’s acceptance snafu). This prestigious program, for professionals of all disciplines, places fellows at the center of federal policy making, provides at least 80 hours of formal training, and encourages the development of a performance plan.

We’ll remind you in July to start looking for opportunities on the reworked federal website; hopefully, the Pathways Program will lead more aspiring students and recent grads down the yellow-brick-“pathway” to federal employment.

By: Steve Grumm

I’m typically reticent to single out individuals’ professional bad acts as object lessons.  Even good people sometimes do bad things.  But in this case the individual is a very public figure and the bad act offers such a valuable lesson for law students and junior attorneys about personal integrity and accurate record-keeping. 

There is a all kinds of news coverage about the fact that the erstwhile Republican leader in the New Hampshire house, who also just graduated from the U. of New Hampshire School of Law, resigned his office and admitted that he falsified his reporting of final-semester internship.  From the Boston Globe: 

Representative D.J. Bettencourt announced Sunday he was resigning from the Legislature immediately while admitting he had misrepresented legal work he performed for another legislator while attending the University of New Hampshire School of Law.

Matters came to a head over the weekend after Representative Brandon Giuda, Republican of Chichester, called on the 28-year-old Bettencourt to resign, accusing him of fabricating law school records indicating he completed a semesterlong legal internship at Giuda’s office despite working there for only one hour.

…

Giuda said Monday he agreed last winter to let Bettencourt work for him in his one-person home office for a legal internship to meet his requirement to graduate from law school. Bettencourt agreed to work every Friday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. for the semester but ended up working only one hour in total, Giuda said.

Giuda said that after he saw that Bettencourt had participated in the law school’s May 19 commencement in cap and gown, he obtained the internship records and learned that Bettencourt had submitted to the university 11 weeks of reports — with details such as court hearings, meetings, and talks with clients that had never happened — giving him the credits he needed to graduate.

‘‘When I saw those, I got a pit in my stomach,’’ Giuda said. ‘‘This wasn’t just cheating. This was premeditated at the same time he’s standing at the podium castigating other people on ethics.’’

[More coverage from the Nashua Telegraph.]

This appears to be an egregious act: simply making up an internship experience on paper that never existed in real life.  The more dangerous kinds of temptations for legal professionals come in trying to keep up with record-keeping requirements.  If there is a lawyer alive who has not, at some point in their careers, struggled to keep up with time records, I’ve not met him.  But, accurate record-keeping and reporting – whether it’s hours worked, time billed, CLE hours, etc. – are central to law students’ and lawyers’ professional obligations.  This is why, lawyer jokes notwithstanding, dishonesty and theft offenses can not just tarnish a professional record, but can end careers.

Brazilian Alliance – a non-profit organization providing legal, educational, and advocacy services to Portuguese-speaking communities in the San Francisco Bay Area – seeks legal interns for the Spring, Summer, and/or Fall. 

Brazilian Alliance wants to give their interns significant work responsibility. Interns will interview and perform legal tasks under attorney supervision, and draft written work products.

Brazilian Alliance’s mission is to provide Social Services to the Brazilians and Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) communities living in the Bay Area by building alliances with local, state, federal, and international community organizations.

To learn more, visit PSLawNet!

By: Steve Grumm

Happy Friday, dear readers.  Earlier this week I participated in a one-day conference focused on the role of New York State’s 15 law schools in addressing the civil justice gap.  Much discussion centered on the recent announcement by NY Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman that 50 hours of pro bono service will be required for admission to practice law in New York.  Most of this blog’s readers will have been aware of how much buzz this announcement has generated.  Ink has been spilled.  Articles and opinion pieces have run in legal and mainstream media.  The old debate about making volunteer service mandatory has been revived. 

Letting alone the “mandatory v. voluntary” policy debate, I think this requirement will prove fairly easy to satisfy.  Pro bono performed in law school satisfies the requirement.  Fifty hours of pro bono over three years is just less than 17 hours per year.  Frankly, that’s easy for any law student.  That said, there are two noteworthy considerations:

1. There will be some burden on law schools (both inside and outside of NY State) to make sure worthwhile pro bono opportunities exist for their students.  Two of the law school deans who attended this week’s program made the point over and over that pro bono also has to mesh with law school’s larger mission of training tomorrow’s lawyers.  So pro bono programs should be efficiently administered, and should offer skill-development chances for students.
2. The pro bono work itself must effectively serve client communities.  And public interest law offices should not be overly burdened in offering pro bono opportunities for students.              

But given that so many schools already have some infrastructure in place for student pro bono, I think the 50-hour requirement will not be too much of a burden on students, schools, or the public interest community.

This week:

• more on NY State’s 50-hour pro bono requirement;
• $300K in grant funding divided among NV legal services providers (and my thoughts on the Las Vegas bachelor party);
• mandatory pro bono in the Caymans;
• addressing legal needs long after Hurricane Irene struck NC;
• fewer death sentences in Ohio, tracking a national trend;
• tracking wrongful convictions nationally;
• for reasons of efficiency and expediency, an early intervention court program for nonviolent offenders in one county courthouse;
• the justice gap, and legal services funding shortages, in Cleveland;
• a 2012 law grad on why he’s chosen a career in indigent defense (hint: it’s not the money);
• a special master appointed in the PA lawsuit over an underfunded indigent defense program;
• one Maryland prosecutor, under the weight of an overwhelming caseload, is pushing hard for $ to hire new attorneys.

The summaries:

• 5.24.12 – more on the recent announcement in NY State about requiring 50 pro bono hours from all bar license applicants.  While the larger policy debate about mandatory vs. voluntary pro bono will continue both in the context of this announcement and more broadly, New York’s top jurist is moving into the implementation stage: “Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman yesterday announced the creation of an advisory committee that will make recommendations on how to implement a new pro bono service requirement set to become a prerequisite in 2013 for admission to the New York bar.”  (Story from Corporate Counsel.)  And here’s more coverage from the New York Law Journal and the Lower Hudson Blog. 

• 5.23.12 – in Nevada, the state bar is divvying up about $300K in grant money among legal services providers.  (Story from KLAS in Las Vegas.)  As a personal aside, I have never told you about the bachelor party I attended in Las Vegas last year.  There are many good reasons for this.  Suffice to say I am still angry with the erstwhile bachelor for deciding that, at 35 years of age, we’d be able to contend with Las Vegas’s many attractions and excitements.  We were not.  The Vegas bachelor/ette party is a young person’s game.  What happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas if “soul-crushing physical exhaustion” can be said to happen in Vegas.  Rather, soul-crushing physical exhaustion flies home on the plane with you and stays in your place for a week.  Never again.

• 5.22.12 – more mandatory pro bono, this time with a tropical-tax-shelter theme.  “All practicing attorneys in the Cayman Islands would be forced to work a certain number of hours for free or pay an annual fee of $2,500, according to a draft of the Legal Aid and Pro Bono Legal Services Bill, 2012.  The draft bill was made public by the attorney general’s office
last week.  According to a summary of the proposal, every attorney-at-law in the Islands to whom a practicing certificate has been issued “shall render pro bono legal services to persons in accordance with this legislation”, or face discipline under the territory’s Legal Practitioners Law.”  (Story from the Cay Compass.)

• 5.21.12 – legal woes caused by a natural disaster can exist long after the disaster itself has dissipated: “A Raleigh law firm is working with Legal Aid of North Carolina to find what problems people still have from Hurricane Irene.  [Irene struck North Carolina in August, 2011.]   The Daily Reflector of Greenville reported that Womble Carlyle and Legal Aid are asking individuals who may be struggling with recovery problems from last August’s storm to call a toll-free hotline. Such issues could include insurance claims, construction scams and mortgage-related problems.”  (Story from the Associated Press.)  

• 5.21.12 – a trend in Ohio which basically tracks national developments: far fewer death sentences as lawmakers, prosecutors, and court officials contend with the high cost of administering capital punishment programs along with changing sentiment about the death penalty’s effectiveness and propriety.  (Here’s the article from the Columbus Dispatch.)  And here’s some related follow-up…   

• 5.21.12 – ….of course one of the long-running criticisms of capital punishment stems from the risk of executing an innocent person.  Here’s an AP report on wrongful convictions: “More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.  There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.  The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.” 

• 5.20.12 – “One of the initiatives that Bibb County commissioners are considering for next year’s spending plan is a $600,000 request designed to expedite the legal process in local courts.  The request, made jointly by the Bibb County District Attorney’s Office and the Macon Circuit Public Defender’s Office, would allow each office to hire two additional attorneys as part of an Early Intervention Program. The program, officials say, would reduce the number of cases in the court system by allowing for a quicker disposition of nonviolent crimes.”  (Full story in the Macon Telegraph, a newspaper with an oddly Tolkienesque tagline: “Middle Georgia’s News Source.”)
   
• 5.20.12 – in Cleveland, the local bar president and board president of the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland make it clear just how much the organization’s funding situation has worsened, and explains how vital a service legal aid is in preserving justice.  (Op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.)   

• 5.20.12 – more Cleveland!  Jeffrey Stein, a 2012 NYU Law grad, explains his decision to pursue a career in indigent defense in the pages of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  “It’s hiring season for public defender offices, which means it’s also the time when law students pursuing jobs in indigent defense enjoy the privilege of justifying their chosen career to skeptical — and, inevitably, disappointed — relatives (“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather make $160,000 as a first-year associate at a firm?”), friends (“But what if you know they’re guilty?”) and professors (“Ah, that’s . . . great.”).  Like the populations we serve, we who devote our professional lives to defending poor people are not a monolithic group. But, to answer your questions, here are some of the reasons I have chosen to commit my life to public defense….”  

• 5.19.12 – in the Pennsylvania lawsuit about alleged underfunding of indigent defense, a special master has been appointed to help sort things through.  (Story from the Citizens Voice of Luzerne County.) 

• 5.18.12 – in Charles County Maryland, the state’s attorney is pressing hard for funding to hire new attorneys.  “…[P]rosecutors are so overworked that they soon will have to pick and choose which cases to pursue in court, State’s Attorney Anthony B. Covington warned the Charles County commissioners Tuesday.  He asked the commissioners to give his office a $989,000 budget increase, or 41 percent, which would include enough to hire five new prosecutors in fiscal 2013, which begins July 1. Over three years, his office will require a $1.7 million increase, enough to hire a total of eight new attorneys and at least one researcher, he said. (Story from Southern Maryland News Online.)

by Kristen Pavón

Yesterday, we hosted our Summer Success: Getting the Most from Your Summer Public Interest Experience webinar. Our presenters, Deb Ellis, the former Assistant Dean for Public Service at NYU School of Law, and Lindsay M. Harris, the EJW fellow and Immigration Staff Attorney at Tahirih Justice Center, provided some great tips on how interns/externs/volunteers can maximize their summers. If you were “there,” thanks for attending! 🙂

In case you missed it, the webinar recording should be available in the next week or so. In the meantime, here are just a few of the highlights:

• Act as though your summer position is an extended interview.
• Be realistic about your expectations for feedback (meaning, don’t expect to get comments and notes on every single assignment).
• Make your supervisor your mentor.
• Be indispensable and take advantage of all learning opportunities (some organizations take note of attendance and non-attendance).
• Keep track of your summer work product.
• If you’re in a new city for the summer, have fun! (Check out PSLawNet’s Having Fun on the Cheap page for suggestions!)

Prairie State Legal Services, Inc., a 65-lawyer legal services organization, serving 36 counties in northern and central ILLINOIS outside of Cook County,

is seeking applicants for a STAFF ATTORNEY position in our community legal services office located in BLOOMINGTON.  The successful applicant will participate in a full range of legal activities, including the preparation and
Prairie State Legal Services offers free legal services for low income persons and those over 60 who have serious civil legal problems and need legal help to solve them.conduct of administrative hearings and trials of cases for elderly and low-income persons.

Learn more at PSLawNet!

National Skills Coalition (NSC) is seeking applications to fill a full-time Senior Policy Analyst position in our Washington, DC office. The successful candidate will work with NSC’s Federal Policy Director to help maintain the organization’s expertise in a number of policy areas, and to assist with our efforts to improve those policies within federal legislation, agency regulation and related funding initiatives. The Senior Policy Analyst will also work with Field staff to involve NSC members in those advocacy efforts, and to support their advancement of similar policy goals at the state and local level.

National Skills Coalition is a broad-based coalition working toward a vision of an America that grows its economy by investing in its people so that every worker and every industry has the skills to compete and prosper. We engage in organizing, advocacy, and communications to advance state and federal policies that support these goals – policies that are based on the on-the-ground expertise of our members.

Learn more at PSLawNet!

by Kristen Pavón

Adriana Rodriguez is the EJW Fellow at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid in Laredo, Texas. She is a 2011 graduate of the University of Texas School of Law.

I met Ms. Rodriguez at NALP’s Annual Education Conference last month. She was the speaker at our Public Service Section Luncheon. She gave us great insights into Texas’s legal aid situation and reinvigorated our public interest passion.

She is just one of the many young attorneys doing good work — learn about her and her work here, and get inspired!

Tell me a bit about yourself.

I grew up in Laredo, Texas along  the U.S.-Mexico border.  My parents instilled a strong sense of community service in my brother and me.  I was talkative and very social as a child, and I continue to be as an adult.

When and why did you decide to go to law school?

I decided I wanted  to go to law school in high school.  I, like many, read “To Kill A Mockingbird” and felt inspired and deeply stirred by the character of Atticus Finch.  The life of a lawyer seemed very appealing to me.  As a teenager, I liked the idea of dramatic courtroom moments to help someone find justice, but now, as an actual lawyer, I realize there’s a little more to it.

Did you know you wanted to go into public interest law before starting law school?

I was pretty certain I wanted to do some kind of service oriented lawyering early on.  My pre-law school years as a school teacher in Houston really cemented my commitment to low income communities.  It seemed my students and their families had so many troubles, some of which seemed to have legal remedies .  As a first year law student, I was anxious to learn more about the access to justice issues that kept so many away from the legal help they needed.

What is the legal aid/access to justice situation like in Texas?

Texas is fortunate to have three legal aid service providers across the state.  Unfortunately, there are about 11,000 eligible clients for every 1 legal aid attorney.  Accessing legal services is often much more difficult for Texans who live in rural communities.  The Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Access to Justice Commission advocate zealously for legal aid funds  in Texas despite a struggling economy.  Still, there is much work to be done to improve access to legal services to all Texans.

Can you describe your EJW project at TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID?

My Equal Justice Works Fellowship Project sets out to support survivors of domestic violence and help them achieve some kind of peace at home.  The Project, partnered with the local women’s shelter, assists survivors in attaining protective orders and resolving divorce and custody disputes.  The Project also helps  undocumented survivors apply  for special immigration status through VAWA and U-Visas self-petitions.  Additionally, the Project sets out to bring more pro bono resource s to the Laredo area by recruiting attorneys from Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio to take  these special immigration cases.

How and why did you decide on this particular project?

I remain concerned about the home-lives of my students and the many like them across the country.  After learning more about domestic violence and its long-term effects on families and communities, I wanted to develop a project around the issue.  During my time as a student in Austin, I learned a great deal about the services available  to survivors and their families in Travis County.  I wanted to replicate some of these great ideas back in Laredo, where I knew low-income survivors did no t have the same access to services, especially legal representation.

You mentioned during the public service luncheon that Laredo is not a favorite destination for new attorneys to start their careers. However, you decided to work there anyway. Describe how you came to that decision.

I decided to return to Laredo with this two-year project because I wanted to be a part of the network of support available to survivors in the Laredo area.  I was hopeful that I could increase access to legal services for women who were indigent and unable to access our court systems otherwise.  There are plenty of young attorneys willing to do this difficult work in bigger cities.  I figured I should take my energy back home.

What do you plan to do after your fellowship?

I would like to continue to work with survivors of domestic violence at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

What is one thing you know now that you wish you had known before and/or during law school?

Most law schools don’t teach students how to build rapport with clients.  Some students learn how to do this when they work in law school clinics or while they intern somewhere, but plenty don’t.  As a young attorney, I’ve learned that building a positive  rapport with clients is tremendously important, especially in the domestic violence context.

What advice would you give pre-law or current law students about law school, the job market, and/or public interest work?

I think anyone who aspires to be a public interest lawyer needs to seek opportunities to gain experience and  real perspective about the issues affecting many low income communities.  Reading or hearing about the issues that plague people in our communities is simply not enough.  Volunteer!  Intern!  Just get out there.

Learn more about TEXAS RIOGRANDE LEGAL AID here.

The New Haven Veterans’ VISTA PROJECT is a multi-site collaboration of organizations in the New Haven area that work with Veterans experiencing homelessness and serious mental illness.

The partner organizations will hire three AmeriCorps VISTA members to work on inter-related projects to help end homelessness amongst veterans. One partner organization, the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center, provides free legal services to help veterans overcome barriers to housing, healthcare and income. The CVLC’s model is to leverage relationships with client’s mental health practitioners and volunteer attorneys to help veterans identify and resolve legal problems. The CVLC’s staff and volunteer attorneys provide services on-site at a VA community mental health facility to reduce transportation and scheduling issues for indigent veterans. The CVLC also participates in legislative and law reform efforts to shape public policies to serve veterans in need.

The focus for this VISTA is to create a Public Engagement program to increase participation, ownership and awareness of the CVLC’s mission among the public, volunteers, funders, and other legal services providers. The VISTA will develop a media strategy to increase volunteerism and giving which will include social and traditional media. The VISTA will organize events to recognize volunteers and a mini-conference to bring together legal services organizations serving veterans to identify best practices and high priority issues.

The VISTA will improve the volunteer management system to maximize volunteer satisfaction and participation by creating materials and administrative procedures for continuous volunteer engagement throughout a pro bono assignment. The VISTA will survey veteran interest and create educational opportunities for veterans around common legal issues, for example debt collections and child support modifications. The VISTA will report directly to the CVLC’s Executive Director and will also receive supervision from the CVLC’s staff attorneys and supervising attorney.

Interested? See the listing at PSLawNet!

by Kristen Pavón

In the May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune, Dupont CEO Ellen Kullman said the best advice she received was from her father.

“My dad started and ran a landscaping business. He put me to work watering plants for my grandmother and for our house. His mantra was, ‘If you don’t water it, it’s going to die.’ That was the job I hated most: pouring water on those darn flowers. But my mother and my grandmother had the most beautiful gardens in town.

For Kullman, her father’s advice translated into “investing yourself in what you’re building in order for it to grow.”

For me, the “water the plants” advice also has to do with patience, and is especially relevant in the slowed public interest job market. Just as lovely flowers don’t grow over night, your dream public interest job may not be available the day you graduate.

However, if you stay relevant, work hard, persevere, and create opportunities to build your credibility and skills, you’ll eventually land where you want to be [or, to keep the analogy going — you’ll grow your own strong public interest law flower… or something like that].