IN THIS ISSUE
Client Council
Message from the Chair
LSC Updates
LSC Policy Updates
Eliminate Qualified Immunity Article
Remembering Edgar Cahn
2021 Annual Conference Reflections
Member Resource Center
Upcoming NLADA Events
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Ronald Simpson-Bey, Acting Chair, Client Council & NLADA Board of Directors Member
Rosita Stanley, Vice Chair, NLADA Board of Directors
Larry Carlton
Leonor Cortez
Liza Merrill
Suzanne Small
LaShung Willis
Marquita Wise-Jones
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Greetings to all!
As we look back on 2021, we have a lot to reflect on from the past year and a lot to look forward to this year. And while 2021 was certainly challenging in many ways, it also showed how strong we are as people in general and as the Client Community specifically – even in the toughest of times. The unique circumstances faced by the Client Community are in addition to, and beyond, the everyday challenges faced by others. Yet, we keep rising to the top in spite of our circumstances because we work from the perspective that tough times don’t last, tough people do.
As I reflect on the things I am most grateful for both personally and professionally, primary among those is the opportunity to serve as the Client Council Chair and to be accompanied by so many caring, thoughtful and dedicated people all across America.
We can take pride in the fact that when the pandemic forced us to keep our distance from family, friends, and one another, the work we do to promote criminal justice reform and racial equality helped us to stay connected and made the difficult times hopefully a little easier.
While I, too, missed the energy of being in a room together with each of you, I had the pleasure and blessing to share the space with some of you, in person and virtually, at the NLADA Annual Conference. I look forward to seeing more of you in-person this year.
I want to thank you all for the hard work and commitment you’ve shown, and, with our combined strength, this is what makes us successful as a community. I wish you and your families a prosperous 2022.
In solidarity,
Ronald Simpson-Bey
Client Council Chair
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LSC Updates
By: Julie Reiskin
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Dear NLADA Client Members:
I hope you are all keeping safe and healthy. We have already lost too many directly and indirectly due to the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and the continuation of the pandemic of systemic racism. I am super grateful for the approximately 50 folks that came to our LSC and the Client Voice presentation at the NLADA conference in November 2021. I know LSC President Ron Flagg was very appreciative as well and he treasured the time and dialogue with you. While I was sad to not be there in person and see you all, it was nice to be in your virtual presence.
We had a good conversation with Ron. He reiterated his and LSC’s support for the client voice to be heard at all levels and the LSC expectation that client board members, once selected, are not different from attorney board members. Client members are an important part of the board, and have the ability to use our skills to lead. This theme, and the need to support clients as leaders (for the large benefit this provides to the community and the legal aid organizations), came up in other workshops, including a good one on client engagement run by some LSC staff. This support should be modeled by our grantee directors and other board members. I raised a point that we have discussed in our meetings, that we need a way to connect and get more training and to share best practices with each other so we can bring them to programs that are not fully utilizing the gifts that we bring as clients.
One way that LSC is using our gifts is the ongoing implementation of an idea we brought to LSC several years ago. This is involving clients in program quality visits that LSC does. When we first raised this, the LSC board unanimously endorsed the idea. LSC staff started by trying to hire client eligible people to be a part of the team that physically went to the sites and did the same work the lawyers do. They restricted eligibility to be a reviewer because they were worried about conflicts. They were also going to pay lump sums like they do for contract attorney reviewers. This approach did not work for a variety of reasons. The eligibility was too restrictive, payment in larger lump sums can be a problem for people on benefits, and the travel expected (this was before COVID) did not work for people who had children or other jobs. I am pleased that LSC staff talked to clients, and with their input, came up with a new and improved process.
They spent the down time during the pandemic perfecting this, and it is now up and running. They may find it needs further refining, thus are committed to keep working until they have the right model, because LSC values the client voice. LSC staff realize that while there are some areas where one might need the attorney or management skill to review our grantees, there are other very important areas that only we as clients will be able to review and really understand. For example, most attorneys do not know the anxiety that comes with even applying for income tested services, how we feel ill-equipped when we do not understand something, and that the reaction of the people we first speak with will inform whether or not we trust that organization.
Here's some of the changes and updates:
· This position now has a specific title called Client Services Reviewers. They are focusing on specific areas where our expertise is needed, such as the friendliness and clarity of intake and how readable brochures, websites, and social media are (including cultural appropriateness for the specific community served).
· People can be a reviewer if they serve or have served on a grantee board or received services from a grantee in the past 5 years. Of course they will never review their own program.
· Reviewers have to be able to use technology and have access to a phone and computer equipment.
· The positions are remote and paid hourly.
· They are given training and an assessment guide. Client Service Reviewers focus on the usefulness of the program from our perspective. After the client does the testing and review, they will meet and debrief with a team leader from LSC.
It seems like these changes are working. They made an announcement in December of 2020 (we shared it through the LSC client board member and NLADA lists) and got 30 applications, which is way more than before. They selected a few reviewers, conducted a training and virtual visits to see how well this worked. They visited Florida Rural Legal Services, Inland Counties Legal Services in California, and Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.
We will get more information as this progresses as to how the information they get from client reviewers is collected and shared, and how this may affect grant requirements. LSC finally has a new and improved grantee database to be able to collect and really use data in a great way.
I am always interested in hearing from you about ANYTHING. I invite you to listen in on any LSC Board or committee meetings. We will now always have remote options so you can all always come!! Even when we go back to in person, I do not see us ever not having Zoom or some other remote option. I always send the Zoom links out a few days beforehand. If you are not getting my information please email or text me your email address to 303-667-4216. I have a google group for LSC client board members as well. As an LSC client board member our focus is LSC, but our issues are shared, so client board members and other client leaders in the access to justice community are all welcome. At the meetings I share anything that I need input on for the LSC meeting (such as a regulation coming up) and I listen to hear what the issues clients are facing around the country are. I report out on this at all LSC meetings.
Our quarterly meetings for 2022 are as follows:
· March 28th (LSC April meeting is early this year)
· July 11th (Meeting is July 14-15)
· October 10th
These are Mondays, which tend to work the best, and by scheduling them all I hope to not have to move around the date as I did this year. I am also extending the time of the meeting to 2 hours but will try to keep it less than that if possible. I want to make sure everyone is heard and we do not cut off the rich discussion we have. The time is 5:00-7:00 Mountain Time. This is 7:00-9:00 PM Eastern, 6:00-8:00 PM Central, and 4:00-6:00 Pacific. I figure we can equally interfere with everyone’s dinner! Maybe we can have a virtual pot luck and “break bread” together.
In closing, I cannot express how much I appreciate all of you especially during these past two difficult years. You are the beacon of hope and model of action for community good that our communities and our country so desperately need.
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LSC Policy Update
By: David Miller
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Appropriations
Little progress has been made on appropriations to fund federal programs for the current year, which began in October 2021, despite the imminent expiration of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that has enabled federal programs to continue operating under last year’s spending levels. Congress must pass an appropriations package or a new CR by February 18 in order to avoid a government shutdown. A shutdown is currently considered unlikely, but it does not appear that the issues that have prevented interparty agreement so far, including around topline funding increases for domestic programs relative to defense spending, will be resolved by then.
After other legislative priorities have dominated the agenda in Congress in recent months, including negotiations on the Build Back Better Act and voter protections, focused negotiations on appropriations are now ongoing. However, comments by both Democratic and Republican Senate appropriators on each side suggest these negotiations are proceeding neither quickly nor smoothly. If the deadline is not met, a further short-term CR could be passed in order to give appropriators more time to complete their negotiations. Alternatively, Congress may decide to maintain funding for all programs at current levels for the remainder of the year.
There are clear incentives for each party to achieve a compromise. Many believe this will ultimately occur, and if this is the case, it is likely that LSC would receive an increase in funding of between 10 and 30 percent, and that the current requirement for at least 60 percent of the individuals on grantee boards to be attorneys would be reduced to 33 percent, a welcomed increase in flexibility. If an agreement is never reached, it is plausible that Congress will opt to pass a full-year CR, which would continue level funding for LSC at $465 million and leave the grantee board composition requirements unchanged.
NLADA will continue to advocate that Congress pass a budget for FY2022 that maximizes funding for the Legal Services Corporation and other important federal programs, and will continue to keep members informed of developments.
Regulations
LSC has begun efforts to conduct a comprehensive review of all LSC regulations, seeking to identify inconsistencies and inefficiencies that cause difficulty or confusion for grantees and the clients they serve. The end goal of this process will be to make regulatory changes, but all the changes will have to be in accordance with the current legislation. LSC will not be able to make changes to the LSC Act or the restrictions included in the LSC appropriations.
LSC staff has already done some outreach to the client community, and they will soon publish a request for information in the Federal Register. This request will have a 90 day comment period. In addition to the formal comment period, LSC staff will also hold (and advertise) virtual “office hours” to provide further opportunity for the public to share their thoughts and concerns on these issues.
NLADA will be seeking input from our client members around the country as we prepare our comments. If you have any interest in discussing this process or any questions about it, please contact NLADA’s Civil Counsel, Christopher Buerger, at c.buerger@nlada.org.
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Eliminate Qualified Immunity:
A Major Roadblock to Police Reform:
By: Ronald Simpson-Bey
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As the Chair of the Client Council and someone who is directly impacted by the criminal legal system, the issue of qualified immunity is of the utmost importance to the client community and every community in America that is over policed and disproportionately impacted by the deadly injustices of rogue law enforcement officers who are not held accountable.
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff's rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a “clearly established” statutory or constitutional right.
However, it is interesting that qualified immunity seems not to be spelled out in the constitution or federal statute. This doctrine was invented by the Supreme Court out of whole cloth to immunize public officials from lawsuits even when they commit legal misconduct unless they violated 'clearly established law'. That standard is incredibly difficult for civil rights plaintiffs to overcome because the courts have required not just a clear legal rule but a prior case on the books, with functionally identical facts. The doctrine actually undermines the clearly defined federal statute, 42 USC § 1983, that allows a plaintiff to sue for damages when state officials violate his Constitutional or other federal rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court first introduced the qualified immunity doctrine in 1967, originally with the rationale of protecting law enforcement officials from frivolous lawsuits and financial liability in cases where they acted in good faith in unclear legal situations. Starting around 2005, courts increasingly applied the doctrine to cases involving the use of excessive or deadly force by police, leading to widespread criticism that it, in the words of a 2020 Reuters report, "has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights." In the end it boils down to a display of white privilege built on the underpinnings of white supremacy.
In 2020, the state of Colorado eliminated qualified immunity for police officers. Colorado State Representative Leslie Herod, who wrote the new law, said: “If officers are rethinking [their career] because of a law of integrity and accountability, then they shouldn’t be in the profession as a police officer. “Their duty is to serve and protect, not kill. It is very important that law-enforcement officers think before they act.”
What we desperately need, but have so far lacked, is political will. America needs to do more than throw good reform dollars at bad agencies. Elected officials at all levels—federal, state, and local—need to commit attention and public resources to changing the legal, administrative, and social frameworks that contribute to officer misconduct.
The concept of “qualified immunity” itself is unlawful. And the U.S. Supreme Court should say so by reversing its own precedent that broadly protects police and prosecutors. This would be a significant move to level the criminal in-justice playing field.
Prosecutors must be able to look back and seek to remedy cases where injustices occurred. Overturning wrongful convictions is an essential duty. A prosecutor's job is not about a win-loss record or counting convictions. It's about seeking justice and promoting safe and healthy communities. We must demand that prosecutors be committed to justice for victims of crime and to changing a system that has failed individuals, families and communities — especially poor, black and brown communities — for far too long. There is no more tragic example of this failure than a person imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Eliminate qualified immunity.
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Statement from Rosita Stanley on the Death of Edgar Cahn
While I am saddened to learn of the death of Edgar Cahn, I also feel a great deal of gratitude, respect, and joy for the life he lived and his ongoing legacy. I am grateful for the opportunity to co-labor with Edgar over the years as soldiers in the fight for human flourishing, dignity, and the fully realized lives for all people – especially those with limited or inadequate income. Working alongside Edgar to bring visibility and build the leadership of people living lives with limited monetary resources as low-income and no-income members of our communities was empowering and life-giving. Edgar’s work alongside Jean Camper Cahn built the National Client Council and gave breath to legal services as a movement for equal justice and the fight against poverty. Edgar centered the voice of clients inside of the legal services movement. This movement gave life to my gifts as an organizer and leader in my community and across the nation. I signed onto the NCC creed Edgar and Jean wrote and lived. A creed that affirmed, “ . . . all that we have, in the here and now is our love for each other, our willingness to forgive each other, our willingness to come to each other’s rescue, and our unwillingness to stand by silent or passive in the face of injustice. This is my belief this is our joint belief and this we shall try to honor so long as life and breath permit.”
I respect that Edgar lived this creed. Even in his last weeks, he was organizing for justice. I spoke to Edgar not long before he transitioned to the other side. He was in conversation with me around organizing and mobilizing our people to fight for voting rights in Georgia and around the nation. And, I find joy in knowing that the Client Council of NLADA played a role in extending hospitality, love and respect for Edgar Cahn and his work with Jean Camper Cahn. Edgar breathed renewed life into my life’s work of building and growing the leadership development and impact of members of the client community. His mantra that there are no throw away people is part of our ongoing vision. A vision that recognizes the full humanity, dignity and power of those of us who sometimes come to be served and sometimes come to serve. His was a life well lived. He answered the call of his tradition, “Justice, justice, shall you pursue.”
Click here to learn more about the life of Edgar Cahn.
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2021 Annual Conference Reflections |
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NLADA hosted both virtual and in-person programming for client advocates at this year’s annual conference. Both events were handsomely attended by the client community! Highlights from the week together include a listening session with our new President and CEO, April Frazier Camara. April discussed her vision for client engagement and emphasized the need to rely on people with lived experience to inform and to lead reform work ahead.
Albert Einstein once said, “the only source of knowledge is experience”, and thanks to the client community, practitioners in civil legal aid and public defense are learning every day how critical it is to listen to and rely on the insights of clients who have the front row expertise. Client advocates work in many roles within civil legal aid and defense organizations, and they provided rich and engaging insights during the conference, spanning across LSC, community engagement, effective communications, advocacy in storytelling and more. Additionally, client advocates came together for an inspirational presentation, caring for them while they are caring for others.
The lines between the client, defender, and civil practitioners were blurred at this year’s conference and we celebrate this movement toward integration. The subject matter of almost every presentation was valuable to all practitioners, regardless of their role. NLADA is excited about the year ahead and looks forward to robust client advocate engagement!
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ARE YOUR ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP DUES PAID?
For inquiries about renewing your membership or how to join NLADA please contact membership@nlada.org.
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Help us expand our community to your colleagues and peers!
Your Acting Chair, Ronald Simpson-Bey CHALLENGES YOU to bring in 5 members or more for additional chances of FREE memberships with the offer above. Sign up two new client members and your next membership is on us!
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New Client Member Resources
Did you know NLADA has a special membership category just for clients?
Through a NLADA membership, clients engaged in the world of equal justice can take advantage of all of NLADA’s standard member benefits, along with our specially-curated content and engagement opportunities just for clients, including:
- Curated news and information.
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Access to the free Client Member listserv (OPEN NOW!).
- Opportunity to engage through the NLADA Client Council and weigh in on important issues facing clients across the country.
- Tailored programming at the Annual Conference.
- Steep registration discounts, or FREE registrations when offered.
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Click the banner to go directly to NLADA's COVID-19 Update and Resources website. |
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The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has not only exacerbated existing legal challenges faced by low-income and vulnerable people in the United States, it has also highlighted new issues in many substantive areas. Across the country, advocates in civil legal aid, public defense and affected communities are responding to ensure access to basic human needs and safety. NLADA is coordinating with an array of experts in both the delivery of legal services and access to justice, as well as experts in specific practice areas and leaders in providing civil legal aid and public defense.
This is a space for advocates to share resources, discuss responses and strategies with one another, identify experts in particular issues, and find policy developments affecting the delivery of legal services and access to justice. This page will be updated and expanded as the pandemic and its collateral consequences continue to develop. Please email Kellianne Elliott with submissions you might have for consideration in the relevant categories.
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2022 NLADA Events - SAVE THE DATE! |
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MAR
15
"Women and Retirement" Webinar
Virtual
Mutual of America will host, on March 15, 2022, a “Women and Retirement” webinar, FREE and exclusive to NLADA members, where you’ll get practical, useful information and insights you can use now to get better prepared for the kind of financial future you want and deserve.
APR
19
The Rising Tide of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investing Webinar
Virtual
Mutual of America will host a FREE and exclusive to NLADA members, 30-minute webinar on April 19, 2022, titled The Rising Tide of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investing, which will provide valuable insights into the recent growth of ESG investing and important factors for retirement plan sponsors to consider.
MAY
12-14
2022 Equal Justice Conference
Minneapolis, Minnesota
The 2022 Equal Justice Conference happens on May 12-14, 2022.
MAY
Date - TBD
2022 Client Summit
Virtual
JUL
17-19
2022 Litigation and Advocacy Leadership Conference
Charleston, South Carolina
The 2022 Litigation and Advocacy Leadership Conference will take place July 17-19, 2022.
OCT
26-28
2022 National Farmworker Law Conference & New Advocates Pre-Conference Training
Arlington, Virginia
The 2022 Virtual New Advocates Pre-Conference Training happens on October 24-25, 2022 ahead of the The 2022 National Farmworker Law Conference, which will take place October 26-28, 2022.
OCT
26-29
2022 Annual Conference
Arlington, Virginia
The 2022 NLADA Annual Conference will take place October 26-29, 2022.
Date - TBD
2022 Client Leadership Institute
In-Person
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