New Article: Luz E. Herrera, Rethinking Private Attorney Involvement Through a Low-Bono Lens, 43 Loyola of Los Angeles L. Rev. 2009. Abstract below:
Those who frequent our courthouses and work with low and moderate – income individuals have no illusions about the large gap between the rhetoric of justice and the present reality of our legal system. All over the country, courts are plagued by long dockets, slashed personnel, scarce resources, and self-represented individuals who are not literate in the law and represent themselves in complex legal proceedings or transactions out of necessity. If the accessibility of the legal system remains the top priority for ensuring justice, then perhaps we must consider forging new alliances, healing the political wounds of previous generations, and expanding the discourse of access to justice to include the provision of affordable legal services by the private bar. If teachers, firefighters, social workers, and government employees cannot afford to hire an attorney to protect their parental, economic, or civil rights, the legal profession has a problem that it is obligated to address under the profession’s norms of conduct.
This Article attempts to shift the lens of the legal services discussion from a narrow focus on free legal services to one that is more inclusive and responsive to the needs of both the legal consumer and the major private provider of legal services in this country: The “Main Street” lawyer. Addressing the “justice gap” problem requires us to be critical of existing structures, processes, and players, and to be willing to consider that perhaps our current paradigm can benefit from agitation. The paradigm shift advocated in this Article does not intend to discredit the importance of federal government subsidies of legal aid to the poor. Such subsidies are critical to preserving justice for that population. However, it does seek to push the legal services community into a more diverse and inclusive discussion that incorporates the non-poor client community that needs affordable legal services and the attorneys who serve them. Both constituencies are critical political players in a national discourse on legal service delivery. A mixed-model legal services delivery program must give these groups a stake in order to successfully advance an agenda that also benefits the poor. The development of such an agenda requires greater focus on Main Street lawyers, reduced-fee models, client preferences, and the factors that drive the cost of legal services.
Categories: Articles · Legal Aid
New Article: Martha F. Davis, Learning to Work: A Functional Approach to Welfare and Higher Education, 58 Buffalo L. Rev. 1 (2010). Abstract below:
The current welfare law mandates participation in designated work activities at the expense of education for welfare recipients, particularly discouraging pursuit of higher education while, at the same time, emphasizing marriage. On the eve of the 2010 reauthorization of welfare reform, this article challenges the assumption underlying the 1996 welfare law and its 2005 reauthorization that work and education are wholly distinct concepts and activities. Indeed, both educational theory and workforce development policies have reflected this conceptual and functional common ground between work and education for decades. Similarly, peer nations and international law squarely acknowledge the ways in which these activities interact. Focusing on the common ground between work and education can serve as the basis for a new, broader understanding of welfare-to-work activities. Instead of pitting work and education against each other, as was done during the prior legislative debates and post-implementation analyses, this perspective reveals that work and education have considerable overlap. These overlaps can easily facilitate design of welfare programs that, unlike government-sponsored marriage promotion initiatives, build individual human capital while also conveying important values and skills necessary to workplace success.
Categories: Articles · Welfare
From the National Poverty Center’s website:
Request for Applications Visiting Scholars Program Summer 2010, Application Deadline Feb. 15, 2010
Request for Applications 
May 1, 2010 to August 31, 2010
The National Poverty Center (NPC) hosts a Visiting Scholars Program for faculty, researchers, and policy analysts. Although the NPC does not provide funds to support the travel, research expenses or salary of visiting scholars, we can provide one or two visitors at a time with office space, access to computers, and opportunities to interact with NPC affiliates and attend seminars and lectures at the University of Michigan campus.
To apply, please e-mail three (3) copies of the following: a CV and a brief statement of the research you would like to carry out while in residence and the period of your proposed visit. We will consider requests to visit for period as short as one week to as long as four months. Visits may begin as early as May 1, 2010 but end no later than August 31, 2010. Faculty who are on sabbatical from their home universities are encouraged to apply.
The NPC is interested in all proposals focusing on the causes and consequences of poverty in the United States. Of special interest are proposals directed to these areas of research:
- The Effects of the Recession and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 on Workers and Families
- Economic Self-sufficiency and the Well-being of Vulnerable Families and Children
- Longitudinal Analyses of Youth Development
- Family Formation and Healthy Marriages Among Low-Income Populations
- Safety, Stability and Healthy Development of Children
- Immigration and Poverty
- Investing in Low-Income Families: The Accumulation of Financial Assets and Human Capital
- Qualitative Research on Barriers to Self-sufficiency
Please e-mail the application materials as .pdf attachements to: npcinfo@umich.edu
For further information, contact:
Shawn Marie Pelak, Program Manager
National Poverty Center
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan
Joan and Sanford Weill Hall, Suite 5100
735 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-3091
Phone: 734.615.3890
Email: spelak@umich.edu
Categories: Legal Academia
Below are some conferences, and on the right sidebar I have also added permanent links.
Feb. 19-21, 2010: Yale’s Rebellious Lawyering Conference, http://islandia.law.yale.edu/reblaw/
Feb. 28, 2010: SALT’s Robert Cover Retreat, “Turning Point: Shaping Public Interest Law for 2015” (Peterborough, NH), http://www.saltlaw.org/events/view/15
Mar. 4, 2010: Univ. of Baltimore School of Law’s Center for Applied Feminism’s “Applied Feminism and Marginalized Communities” Conference, http://law.ubalt.edu/downloads/law_downloads/Call%20for%20Papers.pdf
Mar. 7, 2010: National Housing Law Project’s “Housing Justice Network” Conference, http://www.nhlp.org/hjn2010.
Mar. 19-20, 2010: SALT’s “Vulnerable Populations and Economic Realities: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Law Teaching” (Golden Gate Law), http://www.ggu.edu/school_of_law/academic_law_programs/jd_program/poverty_law
Mar. 19, 2010: Access to Equal Justice Colloquium: Exploring the Right to Counsel from a Separation of Powers Perspective (Washington Univ. St. Louis)
Mar. 25-28, 2010: 2010 Southeast/Southwest People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, “Equality and Justice in the Obama Era,” http://www.seswpocc.org/index.html
Apr. 14-16, 2010: State Bar of Texas’ Poverty Law Conference, http://www.texasbar.com/Template.cfm?Section=Access_to_Justice_Pro_Bono&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=19247
May 27-30, 2010: Law & Society Annual Conference (Chicago, IL), http://www.lawandsociety.org/
Sep. 9-12, 2010: Third National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference (Seton Hall Law), http://law.shu.edu/About/News_Events/thirdnationalpoc/index.cfm
Oct. 7-10, 2010: LatCrit XV: “The Color of the Economic Crisis: Exploring the Downturn from the Bottom Up,” http://www.latcrit.org/
Categories: Conferences
The 2009 Poverty Scorecard produced by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law is now online. The Scorecard compiles data on Congress’s votes on 20 bills considered in 2009 that would have the most significant impact on Americans living in poverty. The Scorecard offers background information on each bill, and gives each member of Congress a letter grade based on his or her performance in fighting poverty.
-Thanks to Michelle Nicolet for the heads up!
Categories: Course Materials · Reports
Report: Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, “The Disruption of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program: Causes, Consequences, Responses, and Proposed Correctives,” Dec. 2009. Abstract below:
This paper describes the current state of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the nation’s primary program for the production and preservation of affordable rental housing. The LIHTC program was severely disrupted during the financial crisis when many traditional housing tax credit investors, mostly large financial institutions, became unprofitable and demand for housing tax credits plummeted as a result. The paper discusses the implementation and efficacy of two stopgap measures passed by the federal government to support the production of LIHTC housing in the near term and evaluates a number of longer-term proposals for reviving housing tax credit demand.
Categories: Reports · housing
New Article: Drury D. Stevenson, IOLTA Problems in the Post-Kelo Era, South Texas Faculty Working Paper, Jan. 2010. The abstract is below:
IOLTA programs are a very popular mechanism for funding legal services for the poor, and are now operating in every state. As a result, however, IOLTA has become the most frequent and widespread instance of government takings of private property in America. The post-Kelo era has seen increasing legislative restrictions on takings, and the post-Kelo reforms in several states appear to have inadvertently made their respective IOLTA programs illegal by banning all takings where the government immediately gives the taken property to another private party (in this case, private poverty-law foundations and legal aid clinics).
IOLTA takings also highlight a puzzling gap in our legal system between eminent domain law and administrative law. Eminent domain law tends to downplay the importance of procedure itself for government actions, often allowing states to proceed without regard to procedural due process as long as the victims of takings can bring inverse condemnation actions after the fact. Administrative law, in contrast, includes a long line of Supreme Court precedents that emphasize the importance of procedure itself as a component of due process and fairness; state infringements on the “property interests” of individuals can face reversal simply because an agency failed to provide a fair hearing beforehand.
The ensuing discussion also reaches three inherent tensions or puzzles with public funding of legal services for the poor: crowding-out effects, monopoly/single-payer system problems, and the moral hazard problems with providing free lawyers for the poor. This article addresses, apparently for the first time, these three (rather significant) concerns as they pertain to IOLTA or legal services in general. I offer some modest policy reforms in response to these issues.
Categories: Articles · Legal Aid
New Article: Lisa Pruitt, “How You Gonna‘ Keep Her Down on the Farm . . .,” Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City L. Rev. forthcoming. Abstract below:
This is a contribution to a collection of autobiographical essays, “One-L Revisited,” in which authors reflect on their experiences as first-year law students. The author of this essay recounts her experiences at the University of Arkansas School of Law (1986-87). She frames her recollections primarily in relation to her rural, working-class background and her later-acquired feminist politics.
Categories: Articles · Legal Academia
