New York Hearings Highlight Task Force & Judge’s Mission to Expand Right to Attorney in Civil Cases
Legal Services E-lert
Bibliographic Info:
Author: John Eligon
Source: The New York Times, “In Hearings, a Campaign for Legal Aid in Civil Cases”
Date: 09/28/2010
The New York Times reports: “She had come to America, lured from her home in Mangalore, India, by the prospect of child care work that would pay prevailing wages and offer weekends off.But once Juliet D’Souza began working for a family on Long Island, she had to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for which she was paid $600 a month, she said. The family scared her into silence by telling her that she could be arrested because she did not have a visa, she said. ‘I did not know that there were laws here that could protect people like me,’ Ms. D’Souza said on Tuesday, testifying at a hearing on expanding civil legal services to the indigent. ‘I thought I had no other options.’ Ms. D’Souza was one of five people who testified about how they had been helped out of dire situations by lawyers who represented them in civil cases, where, unlike in criminal cases, there is no unequivocal right to a lawyer. The hearing, held at the Manhattan Appellate Courthouse, was the first in a series of four scheduled for the coming week that are being convened by Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of New York State, who is trying to make access to civil legal services a hallmark of his tenure. Judge Lippman has already convened a task force to prepare a report urging more financing for lawyers to represent people who cannot afford one in civil cases. Judge Lippman said he planned to deliver the report to the Legislature by Dec. 1, along with the judiciary’s budget request, which, for the first time, will ask for money specifically directed toward paying for civil legal services. With this new budgetary initiative, the judiciary’s request could grow from the $2.7 billion the state awarded it for the current fiscal year. In an economy still weak, Judge Lippman acknowledged that asking the state for more money might be an uphill task. But these hearings and the task force are part of a larger campaign to change the way people think about civil legal services, the judge said. ‘There are certain fundamentals for a civil society, for a moral society,’ Judge Lippman said in an interview. ‘This is one of those priorities.’ It is ‘as important as funding the schools, funding the hospitals,’ the judge added.”