Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public–and Happy New Year! It’s been awhile, so there’s plenty of news to bring you all up-to-speed with. I’ll jump right into it, beginning with a new blog post aggregating various responses to the featured piece from the December 21 digest (a critique of law school’s role in our democracy by Prof. Moyn of Yale Law).

Best wishes for 2019!
Sam

Immigration, Asylum, and Citizenship

• Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced that “asylum-seekers presenting themselves at the southern border will be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings, a process that often takes several years.”
• CNN reported on how the federal government shutdown is interfering with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. The Washington Post ran a similar story.
• In Shelby County, TN, the County Attorney announced publicly his conclusion that a new state law requiring local authorities to obey federal requests to hold immigrants until federal agents can arrive does not apply to the county.
• In Minnesota, incoming Attorney General Keith Ellison named Josh Keller, Executive Director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, as his Chief Deputy Attorney General.
• The San Diego Tribune reported that “with as few as eight remaining eligible children moving toward possible reunification, the focus of [the family reunification effort] has shifted to restoring the rights of the migrants and to preventing such a crisis from happening again.”
• In San Francisco, CA, local public radio profiled the city’s Immigration Defense Unit, established last year to represent people threatened with deportation.
• In New York, Governor Cuomo announced his administration will “expand[] its first-in-the-nation legal defense project for immigrants to include social and health care services for families and rapid response to raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.”
  • Also in New York, the State Office for New Americans hired 20 full-time immigration attorneys to offer free legal services to immigrants.
• In Portland, ME, CentralMaine.com reported that as “the city and state are among the few that offer shelter and financial assistance to [] immigrants while their asylum cases are being processed…the arrival of so many asylum seekers has overwhelmed local services, including the city’s emergency shelter for homeless families.”

Government Hiring

• The Hill reported that new congressional representatives are facing difficulties setting up their offices–and hiring staff–while taking office during the federal government shutdown.
• Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that “Democrats are on a hiring spree for lawyers to help investigate Donald Trump in 2019.”
• In British Columbia, the Province Attorney General invited all law students in the province to visit his office.

Student Debt

• Forbes.com picked up the story that 99.5% of applicants to-date have been rejected by the student loan forgiveness program, amplifying the issue (already mentioned in previous editions of this digest). (Forbes also predicted that “the future of student loan forgiveness may change [in 2019].”) USA Today ran a similar story.
• Senators Doug Jones, Catherine Cortez-Masto, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren “submitted a letter to more than 100 stakeholders around the nation requesting feedback that can advance policies for student borrowers of color and work to make higher education more equitable.”
• In an opinion column, the Washington Examiner reported on research suggesting that “58 percent of independents and 47 percent of Republicans ‘strongly agree’ that student loan debt levels are at ‘crisis’ magnitudes,” urging Republican lawmakers to allow “[a]n employee signing up for a new 401(k) plan at work [to direct] his employer match…to his student loan until it’s paid off.” This idea is similar to–yet differences in crucial ways from–legislation recently proposed by Senator Wyden (mentioned in a prior edition of this digest), which would allow employers to make matching contributions to employee retirement accounts as employees paid off their student debt.
• Inequality.org profiled the “grassroots organizations [] pushing for sweeping change [concerning student debt] on a national level.”

Legal Technology

• Congress passed the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary (OPEN) Government Data Act, which technology groups say will “ensure that the federal government releases valuable data sets, follows best practices in data management and commits to making data available to the public in a non-proprietary and electronic format.”
• Industry commentators predicted that “it’s likely that a Democratic-led House will reinvigorate a push for a federal data privacy regime. But it’s unlikely that such a big piece of legislation will have an easy path through Congress.”
• In Pennsylvania, legal groups launched mycleanslatepa.com — a website that aims “to help people figure out if they are entitled to get their criminal records sealed under [a] new law [that took effect in late December].”
• According to an online survey by the Harris Poll, “[j]ust over two-thirds of Americans…state they would definitely use online legal services to save money.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• The American Board of Trial Advocates adopted a resolution supporting the work of the Legal Services Corporation.
• In Newark, NJ, the City Counsel approved a right-to-counsel law to ensure low-income tenants facing evictions have free legal representation, making Newark the latest city to join the right-to-counsel-for-evictions movement (mentioned in prior editions of this digest).
• In Minneapolis, MN, the Volunteer Lawyers Network published a study tracking more than 300 eviction cases finding that 96% of “fully represented” tenants won or settled their cases, while only 6% of tenants without lawyers left housing court with a clear eviction record.
• In Ontario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin published a video feature discussing a recent report from the Province’s auditor general “rais[ing] several concerns about how a half-billion dollars in legal aid funding is deployed in [the] province.”
• In Iowa, the Vice Chair of the Iowa Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission gave an interview to the Des Moines Register in which she discussed

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Utah, Governor Herbert proposed expanding the state’s public defender system budget more than fourfold— move the San Francisco Chronicle observes “comes after the state was sharply criticized in a 2015 report by the Sixth Amendment Center [as] one of just two states that left public-defender funding entirely up to local governments.”
• In Oakland County, MI, “[c]ounty officials have taken the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission to court, arguing that the county needs more money to hire additional staff [and] seeking a court order that says they don’t have to comply with the state regulations until the county receives a grant to cover the cost.” (The work of the Indigent Defense Commission to reform Michigan’s indigent defense system has been mentioned extensively in previous editions of this digest.)
  • Meanwhile, in Livingston County, MI, the Indigent Defense Commission’s new standards translated into a 25% pay raise for six of seven public defenders.
• In Faulkner County, AR, Arkansas Online reported that “the Faulkner County Quorum Court has diverted more than $350,000 in restricted funds from the 20th Judicial Circuit public defender’s office to other programs. The prosecuting attorney’s office, which got part of the money, has agreed to return $23,500, but the Quorum Court has declined to reimburse any of the remaining money. That refusal leaves the public defender’s office without enough money to hire an investigator or a legal secretary to assist part-time defenders[.]”
• In Louisiana, State Public Defender Jay Dixon “told legislators some of the state’s public defender districts are at risk of becoming insolvent in a year or two if the state doesn’t provide more funding.”
• In St. Louis County, MO, the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals referred a case to the State Supreme Court that challenges structural reforms to the state’s public defender system, including a maximum caseload for individual defenders and a directive to focus attorney resources on defendants languishing in jail.
• In Washington County, NY, the County Public Defender reported that based on end-of-year statistics his office would be in compliance with new caseload standards imposed as part of a court settlement devised in 2014 which came into effect in the last six months of 2018.

Criminal Justice Reform

• The Associated Press reported about how “at least eight new reform-minded prosecutors will take office in cities around the country after winning their local elections by promising to be more compassionate toward drug addicts and more evenhanded in the treatment of minorities.”
• In St. Louis, MO, incoming District Attorney Wesley Bell announced his office “will no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases, among other changes…Bell wants to change the cash bail system, opposes the death penalty and pledged to hold police officers accountable if they step out of line.” The new district attorney has also fired some staff and suspended others pending termination hearings.
• In Dallas, TX, incoming District Attorney John Creuzot told reporters that his office may not prosecute “first-time marijuana offenders and simple criminal trespass [cases], ” asking his office to “join with me in another era of criminal justice reform.”
• In Arlington, Fairfax, and Loudoun Counties, VA, “liberal challengers are taking on prosecutors whose views they see as retrograde and excessively punitive.”
• In the Yukon, the Yukon Legal Services Society applauded the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision that “imposing mandatory victim fine surcharges on offenders is unconstitutional.”
• In Baltimore, MD, the public defender’s office called for an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department’s alleged “widespread practice of wrongly expunging internal affairs files of officers accused of misconduct.”

The Organization

To prepare for the 2019 program, Equal Justice Works and Legal Services Corporation are actively recruiting students to fill 30 exciting positions nationwide.

The Position

Selected participants will begin the summer with intensive training from poverty law experts on housing, domestic violence, public benefits, migrant farmworkers, Native American, and family law. After the training, the law students will return directly to their host site to continue their 8-10 week placement.

Selected student fellows will work with esteemed LSC-funded civil legal aid organizations to build their legal skills in various areas, such as:

• Direct legal services: Intake, client and witness interviews, advocating for clients, attending hearings, assisting attorneys in legal representation, legal research, and writing.
• Outreach and education: Developing and distributing fact sheets, developing and delivering training on legal topics or on how to access legal services.
• Capacity building: Organizational assessments, compiling best practices, organizing focus groups, leading planning committees.

Salary: Law Students receive a $5,000 for 8-10 weeks of service.

See the full post on PSJD: https://www.psjd.org/opportunitydetails?OppID=87852

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I hope you all have a chance to take a break from things in the near future, but in the meantime, some news. One big story is featured immediately below. For the other, check out the “Student Loans” section, where a new Senate bill aims to make it easier for debtholders to save for retirement via employer matching contributions, the DoE released new PSLF data, and a report from a new non-profit purports to expose misfeasance in the way the federal government has administered the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

Editor’s Feature: “Law Schools are Bad for Democracy”

In a strongly-worded piece, Professor Samuel Moyn of Yale Law wrote an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggesting that legal education misdirects aspiring lawyers’ desire for social change into judicial activism and provides “social-justice work [that] harmonizes [] easily with elite credentialing for power and wealth.” Multiple responses followed, including this one from Dean Raymond of the University of Wisconsin Law School (printed as a letter-to-the-editor in the Chronicle), and this blog post from Prof. Lubet of Northwestern Law.

Immigration, Refugee, & Citizenship Issues

• The National Catholic Reporter profiled the logistical and procedural hurdles pro bono attorneys face while trying to represent individuals with pending asylum claims detained by federal authorities.
• Southern California Public Radio also focused on logistical hurdles for asylum seekers, reporting that “California’s high cost of living could push families out of the very places offering the most help.”
• In Denver, CO, the city “officially opened a fund in November for people who can’t afford legal representation in their immigration cases.”

Student Loans

• Senator Wyden introduced the Retirement Parity for Student Loans Act, which “would permit 401(k), 403(b) and SIMPLE retirement plans to make matching contributions to workers as if their student loan payments were salary reduction contributions.”
• The Department of Education released new Public Service Loan Forgiveness Data. Politico used this data to report that “[a]s of September 30, only 206 borrowers have had their student loans discharged under [PSLF]. More than 32,000 borrowers had their applications denied ‘due to not meeting program requirements’ and another 11,892 were denied for ‘missing information.'” MarketWatch reported further on the subject.
• Meanwhile, CNBC profiled one recently-rejected PSLF borrower who has launched a lawsuit against her loan servicer.
• The American Federation of Teachers and the Student Borrower Protection Center released Keeping the Promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a report that purposes to detail how “servicers have created roadblocks for borrowers at each step in the process of qualifying for PSLF”–and to provide a roadmap for holding the federal government and its contractors accountable for “irreparable harm to millions of borrowers.” The Washington Post reported further on the subject.
• Following a court order, the Department of Education prepared to erase $150 million worth of student debt under the “Borrower Defense to Repayment” rule, a move that “will benefit about 15,000 lenders and students who were taken advantage of by “for-profit” colleges.”
• In California, a state senator announced plans to introduce a bill “lift[ing] state income taxes on newly forgivable student loan debt.”
• In Pennsylvania, “a federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit alleging widespread abuse by student loan servicer Navient Corp. can go forward.”

Access to Justice – Civil

• The ABA announced its approval for iQualify Lending as a financing method for client legal fees. Under iQualify’s system, “the attorney can provide the client with an application form that’s submitted to iQualify Lending offices, and within a matter of minutes, qualified lenders will submit bids to the client to help finance the legal fees…The result is that the client is now able to pay their legal fee in full, upfront, [and a]ll loans made to the clients are non-recourse to the attorney.” (See also ABA Formal Opinion 484: “A Lawyer’s Obligations When Clients Use Companies or Brokers to Finance the Lawyer’s Fee“.)
• Meanwhile, the ABA Journal expressed skepticism that novel financing structures can help: “[t]he access-to-justice gap doesn’t exist because of absence of loans (sic) or the lack of technology or the intractable billable hour. It exists–and continues to grow–because the cost of life in America has increased dramatically while wages for most Americans have been stagnant or even falling for decades.”
• In West Virginia, the newly-appointed Director of the state’s Access to Justice Commission discussed his vision for the commission with WVNews.com. (The state’s A2J commission recently came under the administration of the West Virginia University College of Law, as previously reported in the Digest.)
• In New Jersey, the State Senate passed legislation which would “direct the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs to fund a portion of the legal services provided to homeless veterans and veterans at risk of homelessness.”

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Indiana, the Public Defender Commission sought funding for a pilot project that “would pair public defenders [representing parents in Department of Child Services court cases] with social workers.”
• In Louisiana, a professor of political science published a thorough and thoughtful critique of Louisiana’s newly-revised system for funding indigent defense, created earlier this year after criticism of the old system (as discussed in prior digest editions).

Criminal Justice Reform

• In Canada, the National Magazine reported on how the “Jordan Rule” capping the duration of criminal trials is affecting the administration of justice: “[n]ow that [the] backlog of pre-Jordan cases has been larged cleared…Crown and defense lawyers alike report that trial times aren’t speeding up.” Instead, the Magazine reported “a trend…of courts holding defence counsel responsible for questionable delays that violate the Jordan limits…imposing an extra burden on the defence as an ‘escape hatch’ to evade Jordan stays.”

Pro Bono

• In South Carolina, the State Supreme Court “has created a new honor for attorneys who provide over 50 hours of pro bono legal service each year.”

Music Bonus

Dee1, “Sallie Mae Back”

The Organization

The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) has successfully helped Haitians enforce their human rights since 2004. IJDH partners with the Haiti-based Bureau des Avocats Internationaux(BAI) to support grassroots struggles for justice in Haiti and in the powerful countries abroad where decisions about Haitians’ rights are often made. IJDH and BAI combine traditional legal strategies with organizing, emerging technology and public advocacy to address the root causes of instability and poverty in Haiti. 

We fight with routinely excellent legal work, but also with creativity, humility, inspiration and humor, and a supportive work culture. We effect broad changes with modest resources by nurturing large advocacy networks.

The Position

IJDH is offering a two-year legal fellowship for an emerging lawyer passionate about supporting justice struggles in the Global South. The Fellowship is part of the Bertha Foundation’s Bertha Justice Initiative, a global network of progressive lawyers that provides solidarity and training to movement lawyers around the world.  The Bertha Foundation supports 4-8 fellows at BAI in Haiti, and one fellow at IJDH. The Fellowship at IJDH will focus on developing skills necessary for lawyers from the Global North to support social change movements and progressive lawyers in the Global South and build effective transnational advocacy movements.

The IJDH Bertha Fellow will work closely with IJDH and BAI teams in the U.S. and Haiti on advocacy and legal work, including our groundbreaking project holding the UN accountable for introducing cholera to Haiti. The Bertha Fellow will also serve as a support to the BAI Fellows in Haiti and a liaison between the BAI and the broader Bertha Network.

See the full post on PSJD: https://www.psjd.org/opportunitydetails?OppID=87589

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! Things continue to be busy here at NALP. Looking forward to checking in with you all more in the New Year. In the meantime, here’s some news:

Immigration, Refugee, and Citizenship Issues

• Professors Robertson (Case Western) and Manta (Hofstra) published an article alleging that the manner in which the Trump administration is working to de-naturalize citizens with criminal histories “carr[ies] a disturbingly high risk of mistakenly taking away citizenship from someone who committed neither crime nor fraud.”
• In California, the 9th Circuit conducted an en banc hearing of a case concerning whether the Fifth Amendment’s right-to-counsel guarantee extends to children facing deportation.
• Pro Bono attorneys from Hogan Lovells, in partnership with the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (DC) and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (TX), filed a challenge to the Trump administration’s attempts to keep asylum seekers from entering the United States.

Legal Technology

• In Chicago, IL, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) launched two new websites: www.a2j.org and www.a2jauthor.org. The sites are designed to allow anyone to create and host A2J Guided Interviews that help self-represented litigants complete legal forms or work through legal decisions.
• A survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Your Lawyers Online suggested that 69% of Americans would be willing to use online legal services if it would save them money.

Student Loans

• In Michigan, Eastern Michigan University has launched a program that aims to re-enroll former undergraduates who were unable to continue due to financial challenges by forgiving student debt when students perform community service.

Public Benefits

• In Massachusetts, the state is studying a series of changes to court rules and procedures after Northeast Legal Services revealed that district courts in the Salem area had been routinely “sign[ing] off on settlement agreements and judgments that force many low-income debtors to make payments of of public assistance, Social Security, or workers’ compensation payments.”

Pro Bono

• In Michigan, the State Bar launched its “A Lawyer Helps” Pro Bono Honor Roll, recognizing Michigan attorneys who provide 30 or more hours of pro bono legal services in a calendar year.

Access to Justice – Civil

• Martha Bergmark, a former LSC President, argued in the pages of USA Today that the new Congress should increase funding for the Legal Services Corporation and make other structural reforms to help narrow the justice gap.
• In West Virginia, West Virginia University College of Law became the home of the state’s Access to Justice Commission. According to WVU, “[o]nly two commissions in the country are administered by law schools.”
• In Cleveland, OH, Cleveland Legal Aid launched a fundraising campaign which aims to raise $10-$15 million over the next four years, 80% of which will go toward new programming at the organization.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Montana, the Office of the State Public Defender

Criminal Justice Reform

• In King County, Washington, the County Prosecutor, Sheriff, Deputy Policy Chief, and a representative of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center announced plans to “work with Legislators to expand the statue of limitations for sex assault crimes.”
• In Solano County, CA, a longtime deputy public defender was appointed to a vacant seat on the County Superior Court bench.

Judicial Appointments

• “Vice President Mike Pence cast a tiebreaker vote in the Senate on Tuesday to confirm a federal appeals court nominee who received a “not qualified” rating from the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary… a second confirmed nominee to the appeals court, Leonard Steven Grasz, [also] received [a] not qualified rating[].” 

Music Bonus!

Brass Against the Machine, “Cult of Personality” (Living Colour Cover)

The Organization

The Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization (LSO) provides legal representation to individuals and organizations in need of legal services but unable to afford private attorneys. Students, supervised by Law School faculty members and participating attorneys, interview clients, write briefs, prepare witnesses, try cases, negotiate settlements, draft documents, participate in commercial transactions, draft legislation and regulatory proposals, and argue appeals in state and federal courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Connecticut Supreme Court.

The Position

LSO seeks to hire 20-25 Summer Fellows to work with clinical faculty in order to continue this client representation. These are paid positions, with a salary of $7,080 for 12 weeks of full-time work ($14.75/hour). The Fellowship will run from May 21 to August 16, 2019, with some flexibility as to start and end dates. Part-time work or full-time work for a portion of the Fellowship period may also be possible. 

LSO clinics perform a wide range of exciting work, including litigation in state and federal court and before administrative agencies, transactional work on behalf of community organizations, and policy and legislative advocacy at the local, state, and federal levels. For 2019, LSO seeks Summer Fellows for the following clinics:

• Advanced Sentencing Clinic
• Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic
• Ludwig Community and Economic Development Clinic
• Criminal Justice Clinic
• Housing Clinic
• Veterans Legal Services Clinic
• Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic

See the full post on PSJD: https://www.psjd.org/opportunitydetails?OppID=87219 

Organization 

Lambda Legal is the nation’s oldest and largest legal organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and everyone living with HIV.

Since 1973, Lambda Legal has used impact litigation and other advocacy tools to decriminalize same-sex relationships; challenge discrimination against LGBT people and people living with HIV in the workplace, the home, in schools, in health care, and in the military; and protect LGBT families, including by winning and defending marriage equality. Supporters across the country contribute to a growing budget of approximately $27M. Clients are not charged for legal representation or advocacy and Lambda Legal receives no government funding. Headquartered in New York City, Lambda Legal has regional offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and Washington, D.C.

Position 

Lambda Legal welcomes applications for the 2019-2021 Tyron Garner Memorial Fellowship for African-American LGBT Civil Rights. This fellowship honors the memory of Tyron Garner, one of the men Lambda Legal represented in our groundbreaking Supreme Court victory Lawrence v. Texas (which struck down all remaining state sodomy laws in the country) and helps expand Lambda Legal’s work in African-American LGBT communities. Mr. Garner died in 2006, after his case vindicated the constitutional right to express sexual intimacy in adult relationships.

Through the Garner Fellowship, Lambda Legal seeks to support law graduates dedicated to LGBT issues within African-American communities in ongoing engagement with civil rights work on behalf of LGBT individuals and people living with HIV. The Garner Fellowship contributes to Lambda Legal’s expansion of our current work to serve communities of color and address the intersection of LGBT discrimination and racism that affects African-American LGBT communities.

See the full post on PSJD: https://www.psjd.org/opportunitydetails?OppID=86887 

Organization

A Better Balance is a national legal advocacy organization with offices in Nashville, TN and New York, NY dedicated to promoting fairness in the workplace and helping workers care for their families without sacrificing their economic security. Through nationwide policy advocacy, legal services and strategic litigation, and enforcement and education, ABB is fighting back and improving workers’ lives at the local, state and federal levels. The organization has fought for and won victories in improved paid leave, equal pay, pregnancy and caregiver protection, breastfeeding accommodations, LGBTQ rights protections, and other economic justice issues throughout the country.  

Position

Based in Nashville, TN, the Staff Attorney would advance the goals of A Better Balance by promoting fairness for working families in the South and raising awareness nationally of local issues affecting Southern low-wage workers, especially marginalized communities. The Staff Attorney would work in the following areas: combating discrimination and unfair practices against women and caregivers, such as pregnancy & breastfeeding discrimination and Family and Medical Leave Act violations, staffing our free legal helpline to assist low-wage workers, being part of a team working on impact litigation cases, drafting and disseminating public education materials, and conducting legal research.

See the full post on PSJD: https://www.psjd.org/opportunitydetails?OppID=86603 

Organization 

The Institute for Justice is the National Law Firm for Liberty.
IJ litigates to limit the size and scope of government power and to ensure that all Americans have the right to control their own destinies as free and responsible members of society.

The Institute for Justice combines cutting-edge litigation, sophisticated media relations, strategic research, boots-on-the-ground advocacy and much more to fight on behalf of those individuals who are denied their constitutional rights. Despite the challenge of taking on powerful government officials and entrenched precedents, IJ is successful in winning 70 percent of its cases in the court of law, in the court of public opinion or through legislative reforms.

Position 

The Institute for Justice’s Dave Kennedy Summer Fellowship program provides an unparalleled opportunity for select law students to substantively contribute to IJ’s cutting-edge civil-rights litigation. Fellows conduct legal research; help develop litigation strategies for active and potential cases; and draft discovery requests, motions, and briefs filed in both state and federal court.

IJ’s Dave Kennedy Summer Fellowship positions are highly competitive. The fellowship is a paid opportunity, $7000 for the 10 week program, and generally runs from the last week of May through early-August. Fellowship opportunities are available at all six of IJ’s offices:

Arlington, VA (Headquarters)
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
Miami, FL
Minneapolis, MN
Tempe, AZ

See the full post on PSJD: https://www.psjd.org/opportunitydetails?OppID=86481 . 

Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives

Hello there, interested public! I won’t dodge. Things have been busy here at NALP, both with the PSJD Mini-Conference that happened at the end of October and with a number of projects in the office that I’m hoping to share with you all later this year. But also, it’s been hard to face the news the last few weeks and find a face to wear for all of you.

But the world continues to turn and the digest is back. Major news this week includes the likely demise of a successful and critical legal aid program in Ontario, ominous questions concerning the legitimacy of cy pres from the Supreme Court, a new, free, online caselaw library from the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab, and a number of high-profile district attorney elections that went to candidates promising substantial progressive reforms.

See you around,
   Sam

Immigrants & Refugees 

• The Justice Department began using video hearings to have migrant children testify in immigration proceedings from detention, according to the Associated Press, “some attorneys and judges say[] that technical glitches…are actually making it much harder for teens in shelters to have a fair hearing.”
• In Seattle, WA, Seattle University suspended its externship program with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “based on its current policies and practices.” 

Access to Justice – Civil

• In Washington, Justices Roberts, Alito, and Kavanaugh made comments during oral argument in Frank v. Gaos  that questioned the legitimacy of cy pres deals by extending reasoning from the Court’s recent holding in Janus v. AFSCME: According to law360, “Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether it’s appropriate to hand out funds to charities–which may make political or other speech–that class members have not approved.” As the publication notes, “the scrutiny of these deals indirectly threatens a system that the American Bar Association estimates sends approximately $15.5 million every year to legal aid service organizations.”
• In Ontario, “[a] program that gets lawyers to volunteer their time to help people navigate the civil court system in Toronto and Ottawa is shutting down next month for lack of funding–even though a study shows it saves Ontario’s justice system more than $5 million a year.”
  • A former president of the Ontario Bar Association launched a GoFundMe campaign in an attempt to save the program.
• In the Ohio News-Herald, the Managing Director of Ohio State University’s Student Legal Services program discusses the student-legal-services model.

Veterans Services

• In Washington DC, the Department of Veterans Affairs led other government agencies (including Labor, Justice, Defense, and the US Navy), “signed a joint statement aimed at improving access to free legal services for Veterans in need.”

Student Debt

• Citing reports from the Urban Institute and Brookings, Forbes reported that “40% of student loan borrowers may default on their student loans by 2023.”
• AboveTheLaw suggested “law students should join ROTC to help minimize their student debt.”
• In Washington DC, “[DC] Attorney General Racine and a coalition of 20 states called on U.S. Department of Education (ED) Secretary Betsy DeVos to help student borrowers who attended schools that abruptly closed have their loans discharged.”
• In Maine, lawmakers extended the state’s “Educational Opportunity Tax Credit” program, a state policy that offsets student loan payments for recent graduates who stay in the state, “making a similar offer to graduates from outside the state; in effect, trying to lure them to Maine.”
• In Newburgh Heights, Ohio, the mayor has proposed a program which would offer $50,000 in loan forgiveness to people who move to the town, buy a home, and stay for at least 10 years.
• In Washington DC, Bustle.com speculated that the influx of younger congress-members may create an institution more inclined to treat student debt reform as an urgent issue.
• In Milwaukee, WI, the state journal reported the story of a former student loan debtor who reports that the Department of Education began requesting additional payments months after he received official notice his debts had been paid.

Access to Justice – Criminal

• In Michigan, “[t]he Michigan Indigent Defense Commission is preparing to distribute $84 million in grant money to counties in an effort to provide fairer legal representation to those who cannot afford it.” (This disbursement will be the culmination of many months of work by the commission, documented in earlier editions of the digest.)

Criminal Justice Reform

• In jurisdictions across the country, voters elected district attorneys promising to reform their offices:
  • In Dallas County, TX, John Creuzot won with a platform of police accountability and bail reform.
  • In Bexar County, TX, Joe Gonzales won with a platform of cite-and-release for minor offenses.
  • In St. Louis County, MO, Wesley Bell won with a platform of diversion and drug treatment.
  • In Boston, MA, Rachel Rollins won with a platform of eliminating cash bail, dismissing minor offenses, hiring a more diverse staff of prosecutors, and collecting data to discover biases among her staff.

Legal Technology

• In Cambridge, MA, Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab launched the CaseLaw Access Project: “a new free website [that] makes available nearly 6.5 million state and federal cases dating from the 1600s to earlier this year.”
• According to Gizmodo, “[i]n a company-wide meeting[], Amazon addressed its relationship with law enforcement agencies, including Immigrations Customs and Enforcement–its first direct response to employee concerns raised in June about the company’s often successful attempts to provide cloud infrastructure and facial recognition software for these government authorities.”
• The Chief Program Officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts wrote for governing.com on how “[t]echnology can help people who don’t have lawyers and make courts more efficient.”
• A new report, “Government Jobs of the Future,” examines how changes in technology might affect the types of roles humans play in the administration of government.

Music Bonus

Dolly Parton, “19th Amendment“