ABA President Zack Discusses Judicial Budget Cuts

ABA President Zack on WABC’s “Tiempo”

‘This program saved my life.’ A woman stood before Crow Wing County commissioners Tuesday and told them she owed her life to the drug court program. Jailed several times, flunked out of school, with an overdose and 90 percent of her time sick from withdrawal and unable to keep a job, the woman said she had destroyed her family relationships and was facing loss of custody of her daughter. Now, as she approaches graduation from the program, she said she had turned her life around and was recently accepted for the St. Scholastica social work program. … David Hermerding, assistant county attorney and drug court team member, cited a letter in the May/June issue of Bench&Bar magazine from the American Bar Association’s chairman on its standing committee on substance abuse. The letter said by conservative estimates $3.36 is saved by the justice system for every $1 invested in drug court and as much as $12 is saved for each dollar in foster care, property loss and medical care.

Metadata is a term that is appearing more frequently in legal circles. Since August 2006, several bar associations have issued formal ethics opinions addressing the ethical implications of the disclosure of information via metadata. Given the ubiquitous manner in which attorneys regularly exchange documents, the ethics involved in metadata is a topic that will likely rise with even greater frequency in the near future. … The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center has compiled a useful reference chart of all U.S. decisions to date which can be found in its Metadata Ethics Opinions Around the US chart.

Joseph Kearney, a conservative legal scholar who was a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and now serves as dean of the Marquette University Law School, praised Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on Tuesday, saying she is ‘a very fine lawyer’ who appears to be in the ‘mainstream of American legal thought.’ … Kearney first got to know Kagan in 2003 during a training session organized by the American Bar Association as the two were embarking on their new jobs as law school deans. They have since stayed in touch and maintain a professional relationship, said university spokeswoman Brigid Miller.

The deadline is closing in fast for local residents affected by the severe weather April 30 through May 18 to register for assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. … Altogether, over $200 million in federal disaster grants and low-interest loans has been approved for those affected by the Tennessee storms and flooding since President Obama pronounced a major disaster declaration on May 4. Since that time, nearly 62,000 people have registered with the FEMA for federal assistance, but the deadline to qualify for aid for this disaster is quickly approaching.  … This is a joint project by the Tennessee Bar Association, the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Assistance, the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division and local legal organizations. The hotline is a source of advice on insurance claims, landlord-tenant problems, home-repair contracts, mortgage foreclosure problems, replacement of legal documents and other disaster-related matters.

Local bar associations will celebrate Law Day 2010 Tuesday by honoring local attorneys who defended lunch counter sit-in demonstrators in Nashville courts in 1960. Members of the Nashville Bar Association, Napier-Looby Bar Association and the Nashville Bar Foundation planned to gather at 11:15 a.m. on the historic Metro Courthouse lawn for a luncheon. Dennis Archer, the first African-American president of the American Bar Association, former mayor of Detroit and former member of the Michigan Supreme Court, was scheduled to deliver the keynote address.

Lawyer James Cole has operated behind the scenes for more than three decades in Washington, letting his high-profile clients do the talking. Now, as the nominee to serve as the deputy attorney general, he’s the one likely to be making headlines, starting with his confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. … Lawyer James Cole has operated behind the scenes for more than three decades in Washington, letting his high-profile clients do the talking. Now, as the nominee to serve as the deputy attorney general, he’s the one likely to be making headlines, starting with his confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. … Cole has won support from a broad coalition of groups, including the National District Attorneys Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers. The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, which Cole once led, also wrote senators a letter urging his confirmation.

Ruskin Piedra is the founder and director of the Juan Neumann Center, an organization tied to the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help church, which provides low-cost legal services to immigrants, many of whom are Latino and hail from the surrounding Sunset Park area. Piedra is a busy man. He manages about 3,000 cases, including undocumented immigrants seeking to adjust their status or who are facing deportation or seeking asylum. Piedra is not an attorney, but he has taken many courses in immigration law and procedure that qualify him to appear in immigration court. In New York, many nonprofits and charitable organizations employ representatives like Piedra who often charge less than an attorney. … ‘If you have legal representation, the possibility of getting your just day in court increases exponentially,’ said Michele Pistone, an expert in immigration law and Catholic social thought at Villanova University School of Law. A report by the American Bar Association found that asylum seekers are up to six times more likely to win their case with representation. According to government statistics, last year, of the 290,000 immigration cases that were completed, about 40 percent appeared without legal counsel, a figure that was of ‘great concern’ to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the federal department that oversees immigration cases.

It’s been four years since Capt. Eva Slusher regained custody of her daughter after a judge ruled that her military career made her ex-husband a more suitable parent. She prevailed after a two-year court battle and has since championed legislation to help protect other troops from similar custody fights. … Lawmakers and military brass concur in principle: There should be better laws to protect servicemembers’ parental rights. They agree that active-duty mothers and fathers need guarantees that lapses in parental care related to military service will not discredit them from being awarded custody. But whether to push the matter at the state or federal level — or both — is at question. … Odom, the Pentagon attorney, maintained that the proposed federal legislation would only muddy the murky waters of family law, where few matters are cut and dry. Safeguarding troops’ parental rights should remain at the state level where the process can be crafted to coincide with other states’ statutes and law enforcement and social services agencies, Odom said. … Meanwhile, though family law experts with the American Bar Association agreed with the Pentagon’s position in the report favoring state control, others say they continue to see hundreds of cases in which troops return home from combat to angry custody battles and unsympathetic judges, who see long tours overseas as an obstacle to providing a stable home for children.

Divorce is messy. Necessary, sometimes the best solution for families, but no matter how you look at it, it’s not easy to go through, and even more complicated when kids are involved. In many cases, once the two adults involved get everything worked out and find arrangements they can live with, the stress and heartbreak is only beginning for the kids. We don’t have a perfect system, as anyone who’s been through it knows. That’s why I was glad to see that a team of experts, including lawyers, judges, mental health professionals and financial experts, are meeting June 24-25 for a [ABA] Families Matter symposium identify problems and potential alternatives to current practice. The symposium kicks off a multi-year initiative to improve family law processes. As a second wife, I wholeheartedly support this effort. I’ve seen first hand what I view as inequalities in the legal system, an archaic system that assumes moms should have custody and dads are there for monetary support. It might look good on paper, but kids need both their parents, and a dad who only gets every other weekend ends up with an adult child who he feels like he hardly had a part in raising.

The D.C. Bar election results are in, and Banner & Witcoff’s Darrell Mottley has been voted president-elect for the 2010-2011 term. … Elected for two-year terms to the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates were John Cruden of the Justice Department, Karen Lockwood of The Lockwood Group, and Lucy Thomson of Computer Sciences Corp.