2019 NLADA Annual Conference-Innovative Justice

The NLADA Farmworkers Law Section will meet with members of LSC to discuss updates in specialized funding as well as program expectations and other service delivery matters. LSC staff will report on: (1) a pending analysis by the Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration to update the estimate of the LSC-Eligible Agricultural Worker Population, and (2) the implications the updated estimate may have for FY2021 Basic Field and Agricultural Worker service area grant allocations. We will also review information regarding the section’s monthly meetings for project directors and the newly developed monthly training series for farmworker advocates. Further discussion will include best practices and ways to establish mentorship relationships within the farmworker advocacy community. Executive directors and litigation directors are especially encouraged to attend, in addition to staff providing legal services to the agricultural worker population.

Millions of people are released from incarceration with mental illnesses that impede their successful reentry into society. This session describes two innovative legal service projects helping this traditionally underserved population. The DOES Project at Legal Action of Wisconsin goes into prisons to assist clients prerelease, using lawyers to provide advocacy in SSI/SSDI applications and appeals. The DOES Project continues to represent clients through the challenging and vulnerable period following release, aiming for economic security, health care coverage, and overall stability. Likewise, Beacon Law provides legal services to individuals re-stabilizing after homelessness or incarceration by removing barriers to employment, housing, and healthcare. They aid clients obtaining a valid driver’s license and sealing eligible criminal history. They also assist in SSI/SSDI matters, appealing disability denials though the SOAR initiative. We will discuss compelling reasons to focus on the reentering population and the challenges and opportunities inherent in providing legal services centering around reentry.

As more executive directors and senior leadership of legal service organizations retire, opportunities to move into leadership positions increase. Yet, some of the recent hiring of LSC executive directors were external hires. Becoming a leader at a legal services organization requires the development of skills that are not necessarily the same as advocating on behalf of a client. This session will help you to identify what skills might need to be developed and ways to develop these skills.

The ABA Standards for the Provision of Civil Legal Aid were adopted by the ABA House of Delegates in 2006 and are a revised and updated version of similar standards promulgated in 1961, 1966, 1970, and 1986. At the 2017 NLADA Annual Conference, the ABA Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants (SCLAID) conducted a listening session to determine if the guidance provided in the Standards remains timely and appropriate in light of changes occurring in society, the profession, and technology. SCLAID has taken that input, along with others, and has developed a plan for updating key sections of the Standards for formal release in August 2020. At this session, SCLAID is seeking input from the legal aid community on the areas of focus for amendment of the Standards and additional feedback on SCLAID’s plan moving forward. Come prepared to share your views on this important topic.

Cities and counties are increasingly teaming up with for-profit debt collectors to hound indigent criminal defendants for appointed counsel fees and other unpaid court debt. These debt collectors often threaten debtors with arrest and jail, fail to provide required disclosures, and commit other abuses – because they believe that when it comes to criminal justice debt, they are not bound by federal consumer protection laws. We think they are wrong, and we intend to prove it. The team behind the first-of-its-kind Fair Debt Collection Practices Act case against one of the country’s largest collectors of court debt will discuss its test case and how legal services advocates can use consumer laws to stop collection abuses.