LEGAL AID LINKS

This year's Equal Justice Conference will be held on September 24-26 at the Manchester-Coffee County Conference Center.

In carrying out the theme, "How Do You Define Success?," TALS would like to explore how Tennessee's civil justice community defines success. Some might consider success as achieving a particular outcome, i.e., how many meetings were attended, how many cases were won, whether the phone was answered on the first ring, or having transformed an initially angry and frustrated client into someone who was satisfied and even laughing. Others might consider success as having a certain work ethic with the keys to a successful day/week as working hard, being reliable, and showing up on time.

Just for fun, take a moment to answer the question "How Do You Define Success?" TALS will select some of your responses to include on our keepsake TALS EJC 2008 t-shirt and in conference promotions. TELL US. HOW YOU DEFINE SUCCESS?

NOTE: Legal Aid programs will need to register for the conference through TALS and book accommodations as a group this year. Details about registration and lodging will be sent soon.

The TALS Board of Directors has recently undertaken a review of our strategic plan. Last month, we held a day-long strategic planning work session with the board that generated good discussion and will lead our organization toward greater focus. As you may know, our board is large and diverse so these discussions are always rich and broad.

We see our work largely defined in three major areas: SERVICE; DEVELOPMENT; and LEADERSHIP. In "service" we include our work to support the practitioners of legal aid across Tennessee - through our websites, through our Task Forces, through trainings, etc. In "development" we include our work to develop resources for the legal aid community in Tennessee - through legislative advocacy for funding for legal services, through seeking and maintaining state contracts (such as DCS, DHS, and TennCare QIT), and through coordinated grant and cy pres efforts. In "leadership" we include our efforts to map the course for equal access to justice in Tennessee - through board leadership, through legislative response, through leadership development, and through participation in other efforts such as the TBA's Access to Justice Committee.

In coming months, you will see the impact of our strategic as we undertake new initiatives - developing new leaders; aggressively seeking cy pres funds; improving our websites, and more.

2008 PUBLIC POLICY UPDATE

State legislature passes bills of interest to advocates
By Jill Talbert, Mike Murphy and Stewart Clifton

The Tennessee General Assembly finished its work in late May. The legislature reconvenes on January 8, 2009. We have briefly mentioned 50 bills below that might be of interest to advocates for low income and elderly Tennesseans. Not all passed bills have been signed by the Governor yet. TALS will distribute more information to our task forces as the process of codification becomes more complete. We also plan to present a workshop at the Equal Justice Conference in September.

The following bills were analyzed by advocates in the civil legal aid community in response to requests from legislators.

SB 3851/ HB 3671 Guaranteed Asset Protection Waiver Act of 2008 (PASSED, Public Chapter 1055)
Requires that a GAP waiver agreement be part of a finance agreement. "GAP waiver" means a contractual agreement in which a creditor, including a motor vehicle dealer, lessor, or retail installment seller, agrees, for a separate charge, to cancel or waive all or part of the amounts due on a borrower's finance agreement in the event of a total physical damage loss or unrecovered theft of a motor vehicle, including an automobile, recreational vehicle, camper, boat, or trailer.

View Entire List

UPCOMING TALS TRAININGS

"Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline in Tennessee: Arming Youth Advocates with Strategies for Change" will be held at the Nashville School of Law on June 27 and 28. This training offers up to 9.25 hours of general continuing legal education. Go to the trainings tab to register online now. Or, view complete schedule and other details on-line at TALS.org.

This Training is Sponsored by:

Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) - Court Improvement Program (CIP)
Children's Advocacy Network-Lawyer's Education Advocacy Resource Network (CAN-LEARN)
Disability Law and Advocacy Center of Tennessee (DLAC)
Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services (TALS)
Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (TACDL)
Tennessee Bar Association's Access to Justice Committee (ATJ)
Tennessee Bar Association's Juvenile and Children's Law Section (JACL)
Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth (TCCY)

View online brochure and/or register now!

IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

DAVID ETTINGER moved to Tennessee in 1978 to work as a staff attorney for Legal Services of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. He thought he would be in Tennessee for two years. Nearly 30 years later, he's still here, but not for much longer. This month, he left for Manhattan, to take a job as a Social Security Administrative Law Judge.

While he has been a staff attorney at what is now known as the Legal Aid Society, David worked first in Gallatin, where he authored the infamous and now defunct Gallatin Gazette, and then in Nashville. Before class actions were banned for Legal Services programs, David successfully litigated a number of class actions in state and federal court, which have established legal precedents and/or have resulted in significant monetary benefits for disability claimants. (In one of these, Willis v. Sullivan, which led to SSA being ordered to correct its procedures in calculating benefits in certain cases and review claims of class members, resulting in well over $100,000 in additional benefit payments to those claimants, only David and one other known person, an employee of SSA, understood the nuts and bolts of the issue.)

David also was part of the team that brought the Social Security class action Samuels v. Heckler, which held unlawful six practices used by the Tennessee Disability Determination section in denying disability benefits and resulted in SSA being ordered to review thousands of claims leading to millions of dollars of benefit payments to disabled Tennesseans. Not surprisingly, David rose to national prominence among Social Security practitioners. He received the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Social Security Claimant Representatives (NOSSCR) in 2001 and was chosen to be a NOSSCR Board member in 2005. He hopes to be able to continue to do good for claimants, and the Social Security system, as an ALJ.

DOUGLAS A. BLAZE, a 15-year faculty member and administrator, has been named dean of the College of Law at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also the Art Stolnitz and Elvin E. Overton Distinguished Professor of Law. He had been the interim associate dean for academic affairs.

He's received numerous awards including the 2007 Ritchie-Bernstein Award for his contributions to the UT Legal Clinic during his tenure as director. He's also the recipient of the Thomas Jefferson Prize for Excellence in Research and Creative Activity (2004), the Bass, Berry & Sims Award for Outstanding Service to the Bench and Bar (1996 and 2004), the Harold Warner Outstanding Teacher Award (1997), and the Carden Institutional Service Award 2000 and 2005).

He is co-author of "The Law of Negligence in Arizona." His work has been published in the Arizona State, Georgetown, Tennessee and William & Mary law reviews.

Blaze is past-chair of the Tennessee Alliance for Legal Services and is a member of several other bar committees.

The Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands has named LUCINDA SMITH as managing attorney of its Nashville office. Smith will hold the post while continuing to serve as director of the Nashville Pro Bono Program, which she took over in 2003 after practicing law with the firm of Dodson, Parker, Dinkins & Behm. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, where she is also an adjunct professor teaching family law.

GORDON BONNYMAN, executive director and co-founder of the Tennessee Justice Center, has been chosen by his peers and honored in the Nashville Business Journal as one of Nashville's top lawyers. According to the Business Journal, winners of the "Best of the Bar" are chosen by "lawyers selecting the lawyers they believe are the very best legal professionals the Nashville area has to offer."

Gordon Bonnyman has also been honored with the Economic Justice Award from the National Center for Law and Economic Justice (NCLEJ). The award was presented to Bonnyman during the organization's annual awards dinner. He is the first Tennessean to receive the award. Previous recipients of the award include Senator Edward Kennedy, and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, among others.

Gallatin resident and former Legal Aid Society attorney JIM HAWKINS has announced as the Democratic candidate for the State Senate in Tennessee's 18th District. The district covers all of Robertson County and the vast majority of Sumner County, representing over 200,000 people. Hawkins does not have an opponent in the primary and will face Republican Diane Black in November. For more information about Jim Hawkins and a full biography, please visit www.jimhawkins.org.

The National Association of Pro Bono Professionals (NAPBPro) has announced that VICTORIA WEBB, with the Nashville Pro Bono Program, has been elected to the NAPBPro Executive Board for a three-year term. Webb has been with the Nashville Pro Bono Program since 1986, when it was located in the Nashville Bar Association's office.

"In my work with NAPBPro nationally, I hope to work with the Access to Justice and Pro Bono communities all over our state to keep promoting the active involvement of private attorneys to help our clients," Webb said.

Webb entered the pro bono profession when it was new to the legal arena. Today communities nationwide acknowledge the need for pro bono programs to augment and add services to the local legal aid offices in their provision of civil legal services.

LAS JOB ANNOUNCEMENT: The Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands has an immediate opening for a grant writer to be located in the Nashville office. Go to http://www.las.org/jobs for job listings.

MEMPHIS AREA LEGAL SERVICES (MALS) has been awarded a combined total of $481,184 from Tennessee Housing Development Agency and the national nonprofit organization, Seedco to provide foreclosure counseling and legal assistance to homeowners who are facing or are already in foreclosure. This new program, called the Home Preservation Project, is MALS' response to the foreclosure crisis that has resulted from the crash of the subprime mortgage market. Projections indicate as many as 15,000 foreclosures in the Memphis/Shelby County area in 2008 alone.

Building on its extensive experience in predatory lending work, MALS has designed a comprehensive program that will expand its ability to offer mortgage default and foreclosure prevention counseling. Importantly, the program also employs trained attorneys to review the clients' original loan documents, identify abusive loan terms, and seek to negotiate restructure of those loans, wherever possible, eliminating features with ARMs or predatory terms, which for many borrowers, made default all but inevitable. Even for those whose homes may not ultimately be saved, MALS attorneys will be able to provide advice and counsel on options for getting through the foreclosure process, and also steer clients away from the growing number of foreclosure rescue scams flooding the community.

MALS' EarnBenefits Project, funded by a grant from Seedco since 2005, seeks to ensure that eligible low and moderate-income households and individuals are aware of their rights to public and private benefits such as food stamps, emergency rent and utility assistance, tax credits, WIC and prescription drug programs. Last year alone, our full time EarnBenefits Counselor, Gloria Fouche, provided informational materials to nearly 2,000 individuals and assisted 750 households in applying for various benefits. Of this number approximately 530 were identified as having received benefits totaling more than $480,000. 2008 marked the second year that MALS has hosted a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) site as part of the program. Fouche provided free electronic filing tax preparation services to low- to moderate-income clients. She prepared regular tax returns for 87 clients and also completed 122 Economic Stimulus Payment forms for people receiving social security or disability and would not have filed taxes otherwise. All combined, the refunds to these 209 clients totaled $103,547.

The following officers have been elected to lead MALS' Board of Directors: Paul Morris (Board President) Martin Tate, Morrow & Marston, PC; Antonio Matthews (Immediate Past President), Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC; Thad Rodda (Vice-President), The Bogatin Law Firm; Dancy McKinney-Parker (Secretary); and Byron Winsett III (Treasurer), Shelby County District Attorney's Office.

TENNESSEE JUSTICE CENTER SEEKING HELP

Calling all foster parents, guardians ad litem, and other advocates

The Tennessee Justice Center helps children in or at risk of state custody get the health and mental health care they need.

We want to:

Learn what is happening to children in or at risk of state custody; and
Teach individuals how to get these children the care they need.

We will:

Meet with individuals (foster parents, GALs, CASA volunteers, and other advocates) in small or large groups;
Conduct in-person trainings on children's rights to health care and how to enforce those rights;
Provide written materials; and
Assist individuals in filing TennCare appeals for services.

For more information, call: 615-255-0331 or toll-free 877-608-1009.

UPDATE & RECEIVE	TALS is updating its online directory of legal aid staff and others who work in the civil justice field. We need your help to do this! Please take a moment and email us your complete staff listing to tpbynum@tals.org in one of the following formats: Excel or CSV. Once we receive your listing, you will recieve a special gift in the mail.
Please respond by July 7, 2008