Board Meeting Transcripts 2003

 

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: 
Frank B. Strickland, Chair 
Lillian R. BeVier, Vice Chair 
Robert J. Dieter 
Thomas A. Fuentes 
Herbert S. Garten 
David Hall 
Thomas R. Meites 
Maria Luisa Mercado 
Florentino Subia

STAFF AND PUBLIC PRESENT: 
Victor M. Fortuno, Vice President for Legal Affairs, 
General Counsel & Corporate Secretary 
Randi Youells, Vice President for Programs 
John Eidleman, Acting Vice President for Compliance 
& Administration 
Leonard Koczur, Acting Inspector General, Office of
the Inspector General 
Laurie Tarantowicz, Assistant Inspector General and 
Legal Counsel 
David Maddox, Assistant Inspector General for
Resource Management 
David Richardson, Treasurer & Comptroller 
Mattie C. Condray, Senior Assistant General Counsel 
Dawn Browning, Assistant General Counsel 
Michael Genz, Director, Office of Program Performance (OPP) 
Alice Dickerson, Director, Office of Human Resources 
Lisa Rosenberg, Congressional Liaison 
Elizabeth Cushing, Board Liaison 
Perry Wasserman, Special Assistant to the VP for Gov't 
Relations & Public Affairs 
Douglas S. Eakeley, Former LSC Chairman and Partner 
with Lowenstein Sandler 
Julie Clark, Vice President for Government Relations, 
National Legal Aid and Defenders Association ("NLADA") 
Don Saunders, Director for Civil Legal Services, NLADA 
Linda Perle, Senior Attorney-Legal Services, Center for 
Law and Social Policy ("CLASP") 
Bill O. Whitehurst, Chairman, ABA's Standing Committee 
for Legal Aid & Indigent Defendants ("SCLAID") 
Lillian Moy, Executive Director, Legal Aid Society of 
Northeastern New York 
Catherine Samuels, Director of the Law & Society 
Program of the Open Society Institute 
Jane Stern, Program Director, New York Community Trust 
Stephen Brooks, General Counsel, Interest on Lawyer 
Accounts ("IOLA") 
Elizabeth Shearer, Sr. Legal Aid Consultant, Legal Aid 
of Queensland, Australia 
Bernice Phillips, Buffalo Prenatal Network (Nominee) 
Jim Daley, Oversight Counsel for the Committee on 
the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives 
Andrew Scherer, Executive Director, Legal Services for 
New York ("LSNY") 
Alexander Burstein, Executive Director, Legal Aid 
Society of Rockland County 
Alexander Forger, Former LSC President and Partner with 
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP 
Maria Imperial, Executive Director, New York City Bar Fund

* * *

C O N T E N T S
	Page
Approval of Agenda	6
Approval of the minutes of the Board meeting of September 15, 2003	7
Approval of minutes of the Executive Session of the Board meeting of September 15, 2003	8
Approval of minutes of the Executive Session of the Board meeting of November 4, 2003	8
Approval of minutes of the Search Committee for LSC President and Inspector General meeting of October 28, 2003	10
Approval of minutes of the Search Committee for LSC President and Inspector General meeting of November 10, 2003	11
Recognition of and remarks by Douglas S. Eakeley	12
Recognition of and remarks by Alex Forger	17
Remarks by Catherine Samuels	22
Remarks by Jane Stern	41
Remarks by Stephen Brooks	47
Remarks by Elizabeth Shearer	50
Chairman's Report	62
Members' Reports	64
Acting Inspector General's Report	64
Consider and act on the report of the Board's Provision for the Delivery of Legal Services Committee	69
Consider and act on the report of the Board's Finance Committee	75
Remarks by Maria Imperial, addressing the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's partnership with Legal Services for New York City (LSNY)	79
Consider and act on the report of the Board's Operations & Regulations Committee	88
Consider and act on the report of the Board's Search Committee for LSC President and Inspector General	92
Consider and act on the Board of Directors' Semi-Annual Report to Congress for the period April 1, 2003 through September 30, 2003	93
Consider and act on possible changes to LSC's organizational chart and lines of reporting	103
Consider and act on the postponement of the Board's 2004 Annual Meeting from Friday, January 30, 2004 to Saturday, January 31, 2004	107
Consider and act on other business	111
Public comment	111
Consider and act on whether to authorize an executive session of the Board to address items listed under Closed Session	116

MOTIONS:

Pages 6,  7,  8,  8,  9,  10,  11,  77,  77,  90,  102,  110,  116

P R O C E E D I N G S

(11:09 a.m.)            

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Let me call to order the meeting of the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation.

First let me say again to our friends in New York City how much we appreciate your warm welcome and hospitality during our visit, and that we're going to take credit for bringing the Indian Summer weather to your community, and I'd like to be covered in the press on that subject tomorrow as taking credit for it.

It's been a great experience for us, and I know i speak for the entire Board in saying we've enjoyed our visit very much, and we'll just have to put your great city on our list of places to visit again in the future.

So thank you again for your hospitality.

First, I would entertain a motion to approve the agenda for our meeting.

M O T I O N

MS. BeVIER: So moved.

MR. FUENTES: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any discussion on the agenda?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All those in favor, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: The ayes have it and the agenda is adopted.

Next is the approval of minutes of the Board's meeting of September 15, 2003. Those minutes are in your agenda book.

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: Move approval.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is there a second?

A PARTICIPANT: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those in favor, signify by saying aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those minutes are approved.

Next, the approval of minutes of the Executive Session of the Board's meeting of September 15, 2003, also in your agenda book.

Is there a motion to approve those minutes?

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: Move approval.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: A second?

MS. BeVIER: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those in favor, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: And those opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those minutes are approved.

Approval of the minutes of the Executive Session of the Board's meeting of November 4, 2003, which is in a separate handout that you should have.

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: Move approval.

MS. MERCADO: Mr. Chairman, I just have some amendments to those minutes, please.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. I know, for example, that you were not in attendance by telephone, and also, Ernestine Watlington was not in attendance.

MS. MERCADO: Right.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Did you have any other changes?

MS. MERCADO: No, because I wasn't there.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right.

(Laughter.)

MS. MERCADO: Neither Ernestine nor I were there.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right.

MS. MERCADO: If it reflects that as amended, then I have no problem with it.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right.

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: Move approval as amended.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is there a second?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those in favor, say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: The ayes have it, and those minutes are approved.

And next, Item 5 is the approval of the minutes of the Search Committee for LSC President and Inspector General of October 28, 2003.

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: Move approval.

MS. MERCADO: Mr. Chairman, again, I do have an amendment. I wasn't at that Search Committee meeting.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right.

MS. BeVIER: Well, yes you were.

MS. MERCADO: I was at the second one.

MS. BeVIER: Oh, then I'm sorry.

MS. MERCADO: I was at the one on November 10th.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: You weren't at the one on the 28th?

MS. BeVIER: I'm sorry.

MS. MERCADO: I just don't want to be responsible for decisions I didn't make.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. That's fair.

Has there been a second to that motion?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. Any objection to approving those unanimously?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Hearing none, those minutes are approved.

And the last minutes item is the approval of the minutes of the Search Committee for LSC President and Inspector General held on November 10, 2003.

Is there a motion on those minutes?

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: So moved.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: A second?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any objection to approving those unanimously?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Hearing none, they are approved.

Now that we have those housekeeping items out of the way, I would like now to recognize the Honorable Douglas S. Eakeley of New Jersey.

If you would come forward, Doug, to the microphone, we want to welcome you to our meeting, the distinguished former Chairman of our Board.

We've all come to know Doug, and he extended courtesy to those of us who were nominees for a year to begin attending Board meetings, and we were warmly received by Doug and his entire Board, and I want to state on the record that we appreciated that very much, and I think it meant a lot to us in terms of getting acquainted with our duties and responsibilities, and we greatly admired your work and the work of your Board.

And now I have a formal presentation, after which we would entertain any remarks you might want to make.

What we have is a resolution which I'd like to read in its entirety, so it will be in the record.

This is a resolution on the official letterhead of the Legal Services Corporation in recognition and profound appreciation of distinguished service by Douglas S. Eakeley:

"Whereas, Douglas S. Eakeley has always been mindful of the interests of the least advantaged in our society and he has worked tirelessly to advance the cause of civil legal assistance to the low-income persons of America;

"Whereas, Doug has provided outstanding leadership and guidance to the national legal services community; and

"Whereas, Doug faithfully and with honor, integrity, and great distinction served as Chairman of the Legal Services Corporation for over nine years;

"Now, therefore, be it resolved that LSC's Board of Directors formally acknowledges and extends its profound appreciation to Doug for his many years of service to LSC and to the cause of civil legal assistance to the disadvantaged in America."

Adopted by the Board of Directors on June 28, 2003.

Doug, congratulations.

MR. EAKELEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

(Applause.)

MR. EAKELEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: And now, we'll be glad to hear from you.

MR. EAKELEY: That's really very, very kind, and you're really giving too much credit where not that much credit is due.

We had a wonderful Board that was wonderfully cohesive and served a wonderful cause with management and field attorneys and staff and ultimately clients who demonstrated the appropriateness of this cause of serving access to justice by giving back a modicum of what they received by way of access to justice and a means of bettering their lives the protecting their families.

It's certainly a little different, sitting on this side of the table, after nine years, and it was literally just 10 years and a month ago that we were sworn in.

One of the things that our Board never accomplished was reauthorization of the Corporation. The Corporation --

(Interruption to the proceedings.)

MR. EAKELEY: -- was --

(Laughter.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: We're not sure what that is, but don't take it personally.

MR. EAKELEY: I was just thinking how nice it would be on the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Legal Services Corporation Act next year in July, that perhaps one might foresee the possibility of a reauthorization of the Corporation as a demonstration of the federal government's commitment to access to justice. That's top on my wish list for all of you.

Also on my wish list for you, and you're already working your way there, is developing more of a financial base for a program that continues to be financially strapped.

Compliance is extremely important for accountability to the Congress and for the integrity of our programs, but the other, larger purpose of the Corporation, of course, is to assure that cost-effective, high-quality legal services are provided to those in need, and the best way to do that is to help bridge the gap between unmet legal needs of low-income Americans and the resources available to them.

The federal government can't do it all, but as you've seen, the leveraging that the federal dollars produce by way of state and local funding provides evidence of the federal government's leadership in this area and its critical need for continuing that leadership.

So I wish you all very well on this extremely important cause. I thank you so much for this recognition.

I had said to the chairman some time ago, and remind him from time to time, but if there's any way I can ever be of any assistance to any of you in your continued transition, please do not hesitate to call on me. This was a labor of love, and it will continue to be such as the years go on.

So thank you, and good luck.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Having worked with Doug over the past year or so as a nominee, and then suddenly becoming the chairman, I realized I had big shoes to fill, so I'm glad to hear that he is willing to receive a call from time to time.

Next, I'd like to recognize another former leader of LSC, Alex Forger of New York, former President of LSC, former chairman of the great law firm of Milbank, Tweed here in New York.

And Alex, if you would come forward, we would be delighted to hear from you at this time.

(Applause.)

MR. FORGER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, staff, friends of legal services, and my good friend and former boss, Doug Eakeley -- a tribute well deserved. It was a few years back I spent a few years with Doug.

My purpose here today, I think, is to welcome you to New York, and in the words of the lyric: "New York, New York, it's a wonderful town. The Bronx is up and the Battery is down."

You folks all went to Queens, and if you were going south, you'd turn left, and if you were going north, you'd turn right, and I hope you had a good experience in your visit to Queens.

I think that there are other distinguishing aspects of New York, one of which I think was its finest hour as well as one of the finest hours of the legal services community, on September 11, when there was an outpouring of support from all components of the legal services community, and particularly the legal service providers in New York City.

They worked with government, they worked with the courts and with the legislature, and they helped ease the pain and the legal problems of those many people who suffered through that tragedy.

We're also distinguished by the fact that we are the home of legal services, the first program having been established in 1876, the Legal Aid Society, the oldest in the nation.

We're also proud to have in its home, LSNY, Legal Services of New York, who was your host two days ago, as the largest legal services program in the city.

There's been a tradition of our bar for well over 100 years of volunteering both financial and in their services.

Those blessed or burdened with old age, such as myself, recall the early days in practice when the bar was volunteering, in the '50s, to work on misdemeanors, and if you were sufficiently expert, to work on felonies. This was the principal volunteering of the community, I think in that perspective, when one realizes that it really was not until some 40 years ago that government took a principal role in supporting civil legal services, and that, as you know, started with OEO in the 1960s.

Incidentally, there is a wonderful piece written by Linda Perle and Alan Houseman of a brief history of legal assistance, civil legal assistance in the United States. If you haven't yet read it, I commend it to you. But, in the post-Gideon days, we did shift principally to aiding in civil legal service.

I think today, we have a sense of impatience at the level of government funding, particularly as it relates to international communities, but then in the perspective that we've only been at it for some 40 years, that is not so bad.

The OEO gave way, after a few years, to legal services, as you know, in 1974. OEO foundered in its legal assistance program principally because it was deemed to have engaged in partisan political activity, and thus gave rise to Legal Services Corporation with the hope and expectation that it would be removed from the political whims and that it would stand on a bipartisan basis and be able to deliver a product to those in need of legal services.

And as we know, it's had a rocky history. Most of its years since then, it's been in controversy over both the nature of the activity in which it has been engaged and the demand by many still with us that government not be engaged in funding legal services; but true to the old adage, he who pays the fiddler plays the tune.

Legal services, accordingly, has been restructured by Congress, and now I guess the principal effort is to the so-called core issues. With that restructuring which has occurred over the years comes the hope of a sense of stability for the program.

It has reached a middle ground, not satisfactory to those who no longer wish to have government fund legal services, nor entirely satisfying to those who see it with a more activist role free of government strength.

Well, be that as it may, as we all know, even as so restructured, there is more to do than it can possibly handle because of the lack of its resources, but this, I believe, is a great moment of opportunity.

When I went to legal services in '94, I was then of the belief that the golden age was about to dawn on the Legal Services Corporation, but instead, a torrent of controversy developed and turmoil continued, and a fight for survival was the issue of the day, but I think that today is a great moment of stability in the ability of this Board to implement the will of Congress and to build on the trust and confidence that Congress will have in this program and in this Board, and if that occurs, then it seems to me there is greater hope than ever before for increase in funding and perhaps even an increase in the nature of the programmatic approach of legal services.

So I wish you well, welcome to New York, and assure you that we here in New York will help in any way that we can to help you in your most important task, and building for a good future for legal services.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Alex, we thank you for your remarks.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Next, we'd like to call on Catherine Samuels, Director of the Law and Society Program of the Open Society Institute, for some remarks.

Catherine, if you would come up. Welcome.

MS. SAMUELS: Hi. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to each one of you for inviting me to speak.

It's daunting to follow two former chairmen of the Board of Legal Services Corporation, and I can only tell you that each one of them has been one of my heroes, and I hope that you all, and do expect that you all will follow their passions and hopefully achieve at least some of the goals that all of us here today have had for many years, and there are still many challenges that lie ahead.

I'm excited to be here. I hate to seem like -- you know, I may pick it up a little bit.

I'm here to welcome, but mostly to congratulate, and I've very pleased to be able to play that role, because I'm here as a funder, a funder who has been in a, I guess what we would call private-public partnership with the Legal Services Corporation for five, maybe seven years, and I have had a vantage point which I assume I'm here to hopefully share with you.

I'm here, really, to praise the Legal Services Corporation and staff. We have had a wonderful partnership, and it's been wonderful at all levels that I think partnerships need to be, where people are very honest with each other about what they can and cannot do, very honest about their constituencies and finding common ground and then building trust, and then finding effective ways and strategies to move forward together.

I specifically want to name, you know, certain people who have been most active in that partnership and John McKay, of course -- I'm so sorry his brother is not here today and I'm sorry to hear that their mother is sick, because John used to talk about her.

But John's enthusiasm and creativity and ability to be able to open his mind to the types of partnerships and ideas and thoughts and challenges that everyone had to think about after the cuts and the crisis I think were just -- I mean, he was a wonderful leader for partnership-building relationships.

And Randy Youells, and his whole technology group, you know, made it possible, I think, and really deserve the credit for the leadership and transformation that many of us who sit back every now and then when we have a few seconds are really astounded by in the legal services community.

I work in a number of other communities, and I wish I could say that they have experienced the same type of transformation that this community has.

So I'm going to just spend a couple minutes on that partnership that we've had and what foundations can do, and recognizing that again we do have different constituencies and different ideas about what our role can be vis-à-vis -- which is quite different from what government can do.

You're going to hear after me Jane Stern, who has been, I would say, one of the most consistent voices of trying to, you know, encourage foundations to support legal services, and it's a tough, tough sell.

So let me tell you what we've been able to do, and then talk a little bit maybe about what Legal Services Corporation might be able to do with foundations and expanding your resources in the future.

We have been able to support -- the first thing we did was actually support an evaluation of hot lines, a role that an outsider and an outside foundation can sometimes do when you're taking a look at an innovation, and then trying to figure out is it working, is it not working; what are the problems; if it is working, how do we move it when there may be some resistance, and understandable resistance, in the community?

Model development, I think that's where -- as a foundation, you hate to fund models and just sort of throw them out there, so if we know we have a partnership, which we have with Legal Services Corporation, and we could fund some technology innovations, and whether it was domestic violence pro se programs, or family pro se programs, or I think our greatest investment, which was in pro bono now, the law help platform that's been developed on which I think approximately 30 states are going to build their statewide web sites, that one started off as a pro bono model, continues to be an extraordinary vehicle for pro bono, but more than that, it developed a platform and a vehicle through which a justice community, an access-to-justice community can begin to take advantage of resources, provide expanded services to individuals, and also integrate, become more integrated, because there is a platform and a technology vehicle through which they can begin to expand their own communication about common problems and common goals, instead of continuing to be in what we call sort of fragmented silos based on issues, based on constituencies, based on whether you litigate, or whether you collect data, or whether you're an advocate.

The other thing I think that we've been able to focus on, which was not so -- I think that we've been able to help with the infrastructure development. We've gone from developing some models which then people at LSC could look at and say, "Are they useful, are they not; are they worth investing in?"

The most recent one, which I'm really concerned about, is the whole issue of multilingual, being able to reach non-English proficient communities, and there are a couple models there that we've invested in, and I know that Mike Danson and his people have looked at those, and hopefully -- and there are different types -- hopefully, that's an investment that we all as a community can make over the next few years in terms of being able to reach so many communities who at this point are under-resourced.

I think the other thing that we've been able to do is to invest in developing and expanding resources, and we've talked about expanding bar resources, but foundation resources are a tougher nut to crack.

I think the way in which we have been most helpful is we were able to fund some public opinion research and some focus groups, not for purposes of, you know, corralling political support for a particular, you know, point of view, but in order to understand exactly what, in terms of the public's understanding of legal services, which is zero -- knowledge, zero -- but when they were asked questions about the services and the needs and what kind of support they would provide, we're talking about 95-plus.

When you asked about government paying for those services -- we were afraid to ask that question, right -- it went down to 91 percent, or something like that, and this is a poll that with shared with the entire community, and the message was really there to help people begin to talk about what legal services does in terms of people, because foundations are interested in the issues, they're interested in their constituencies, they're interested in their communities. They're not interested in litigation. I mean, I don't think any of us are.

I think they're interested in how do legal services lawyers and other lawyers work together with other community groups and with other of our providers in a way that helps us address the problems that local foundations -- because that's what I think most of the time we're talking about -- local foundations want to address.

So I think that, in terms of the future of these partnerships -- and I'm not talking national, but local, because that's where I think the money is being raised -- the partnerships among the legal service providers and the communities, which we sometimes call community lawyering, where they're addressing specific identifiable, often systemic problems, is a very useful private-public partnership that cam be pursued and that Legal Services Corporation can help facilitate without further resources, but really, in terms of a direction that it can support.

The other piece of expanding resources, and I think they were all very concerned because legal services lawyers are a limited number of people, and so over the last five years, one of the greatest successes has been the integration, further integration of, you know, law school clinics, the bar associations and pro bono support, the sort of more traditional part of the legal community.

I think in the piece that we're working on now, which is extremely, I think, has even, in terms of leveraging, and also really effecting change, is the partnerships that take the next step.

Mike McKay mentioned in a speech I think he gave in Seattle when he was welcoming you all to the second meeting or first meeting, and that's where the service providers, the direct service providers -- they can be domestic violence shelters, they can be housing-tenant associations. But the organizations that are representing and addressing, you know, the constituencies often go to first.

And so developing the partnerships with them and developing the partnerships with civil rights lawyers and attorneys who are out there, who at this point are not feeling as if they can be very effective with legal remedies, and I mean, across the board, if you start looking at all of the, I guess you would call them stakeholders who care about the exact same constituency that we do, who are equally passionate, but may come at it from a somewhat different direction, you see how the puzzle, when you start putting the pieces together, actually, you know, it develops into a delivery system which is far greater than we might have imagined in terms of what is already out there being funded by different sources and, at this point, operating in a solo way.

So if I, you know, wanted to sort of push you to the next step in terms of the partnerships, that would be, I think, the next vehicle, and a very important one, is expanding it to include all of the stakeholders and all of the groups that care about the same constituencies, and focusing increasingly on taking the pressure off the courts to deal with problems they can't deal with, and deal with solving some of the underlying problems.

The other thing, and I think it's been -- well, I have to -- I guess the other thing I have to say about foundations at the national level is foundations feel as if the government should be doing this job. Most of the foundations I go to, and I say, you know, "Can we get you to provide more support to legal services?"

You have to take apart the words, because they believe that legal aid, legal services is a government obligation. If they step in, what's going to happen? The government won't feel the pressure anymore.

That's why the partnership, in terms of what it is that you need and want them to do, and what they can do that you all can't do is so important to think about, because asking them to actually put in dollars into a general delivery system is probably not going to happen.

So after the beginning of that sort of good-bad news about the role of foundations, there's one other piece of the delivery system that seeing David Hall, who has, you know, been a hero of mine since we worked together in developing what I think is still a very promising vehicle for expanding access to justice. We all know that most low-income people are really served by the small firm practice and by the private bar, not by legal services lawyers, and thinking about that, we started thinking, "Okay, so what does that mean to us, and how do you start integrating those communities," because the integration of communities I think is what leverages the resources.

Northeastern, when David was the dean, became one of four model schools, and what we looked at is, how can law schools play a role in helping to resource their graduates, going to solo, small firm practice, concerned about providing services to low-income and marginalized communities be challenged?

Very interestingly, there are now 10 schools that have signed up who are engaged in all sorts of projects, and an enormous interest throughout the academy, but I think that if we take that to the next step and we take a look at solo small-firm practitioners generally, and how we integrate and how we most effectively leverage that relationship, using, obviously, law schools but also the bar associations -- we have wonderful, especially in New York, which has one of the best sections, that's devoted specifically to solo small firm practitioners. I think the networks are there. We just haven't connected all of the dots.

I sort of want to end with what Alex said, which is this sense that this may be a moment of opportunity, maybe just because, you know, we don't feel as if we're in crisis mode and it feels good to sort of sit back and say: "Okay, you know, what comes next? Can we move to the next step?"

And you all have already done that by asking for an increase in the authorization, and doing so in a way which is very specific, I think, and targeted.

One of the things that I would love you to think about is, one is removing the restriction on private money, because I think it's difficult to facilitate the kind of partnerships you need to facilitate as long as you've got that restriction there, and I think having it done through litigation is not the best way, and I don't know what role you all could play, but obviously, if there's one that's appropriate for you to play, that would be a major step, I think, in terms of -- because more than 100 foundations have signed up on an amicus brief in support of a litigation challenging that particular restriction. So right there, I think you would make a lot of friends.

But I think that one of the things we could think about is a five-year plan for, you know, addressing the elephant that's in the room, the politicization of legal services for low-income people.

The public is not the problem. We see it in our polls. The public is not the problem. And whenever you talk about, how do we start that process of gaining the support of policy makers, decision makers, I think we have to go back to documenting the nature of the problem and educating people in the way that works for them.

That's one of the things I guess I would leave on the table is, is there a way now to start thinking about a five-year plan for moving this issue out of the political realm into just being a mainstream, fundamental value that people can talk about publicly, that someone scan actually say, "I support as a principle, as a value, access to justice, to civil justice."

Thank you for your time. I'm sure I took too much, and I apologize.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: A question or two if you have another minute.

MS. SAMUELS: Sure.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Go ahead.

MS. MERCADO: I'm not sure I quite understood the partnership that you were talking about with solo small practitioners, because they represent a significant level of low income.

I wasn't sure how you saw the partnership within LSC and that particular segment of the bar.

MS. SAMUELS: I think that you all would have to help in the conceptualization of it. I can tell you what we've done so far.

What I think is working is that what we're seeing is that, you know, an enormous percentage of graduates from law schools, even with the debt that they have, and that obviously is on your table, I'm sure, as well, are extremely interested in serving low-income communities, and if they can't get fellowships -- and some of them do work in legal services for a few years, at least 60 percent of them and in some law schools 80 percent -- are coming back and starting solo, small firm practices, and economic viability is obviously, and professionalism, is obviously an issue. That's what the bars deal with.

But what we're finding is that there is just an enormous amount of passion, commitment. You sit in a room with graduates from law schools who are involved in these projects, and it couldn't be more exciting, because they all talk what they want to do for the communities in which they work.

Sometimes it's one-on-one practice, and picking up what legal services lawyers cannot do, whether it's with immigrants or other constituencies, but very often it's the same work that legal services want to do.

So I think it's a local, first of all, I think it has to be something that we encourage local legal services lawyers to do, is to take leadership and building -- sometimes I have to draw.

There's another circle besides the bar association and large firms. The next circle is reaching out to the solo, small firm practitioners, and I think you can do that through both the law schools and their graduates, whether they have a program or not, their graduates; and the clinics in particular stay very much in touch with their graduates.

And the second piece is the bar associations, and then working with them, too, because in talking to them both about the discounted services -- the low bono is what they're calling what they're doing.

Some of them are calling themselves private public interest lawyers, which is a wonderful way, I think, of describing what they'd like to do, but they have to do it in a way that helps to network them.

And if you've got statewide web sites, that's one way, if you bring them into those web sites -- and they're being resourced -- if you bring the law schools into those web sites, and in fact ask the law schools to add the resources and the content that they can provide, the circles get bigger and bigger in terms of resources.

So I mean, I can send you material on the current law school consortium program. The most recent initiative is developing a regional, the law schools in California developing a regional consortium to support their graduates who want to do this type of work, which is brilliant, because each one of those law schools brings something different to the table.

But I mean, I don't pretend to have, I mean, all of the answers to that one. I think that it still needs to be conceptualized beyond the model that we have now. I think the knowledge we have is that there is a constituency there that we are not using properly, that we're not leading, and we're not resourcing, and we're not connecting with in the way we could to expand.

MS. MERCADO: Because I didn't know whether that meant that we as LSC would be looking at not only the partnerships at the solo or the small practitioners would handle, but that in addition there would be some additional funding that you would see us using, I don't know whether, you know, for training or for backup, and the kind of cases that do.

Because I know in our region, anyway, in Texas, the majority of the pro bono cases are taken by solo practitioners --

MS. SAMUELS: Exactly.

MS. MERCADO: -- and small firms of five or under.

MS. SAMUELS: Yes.

MS. MERCADO: It's not the big firms who are taking, at least not in our area --

MS. SAMUELS: Exactly. Saint Mary's was one of the first schools, that unfortunately dropped out, and they were going to do it primarily through technology, because of the isolation of so many of those practitioners.

Texas, I think, is a perfect example, and a very good model that even a T-grant might support in terms of how to first resource it.

And we could go back and give you some of the material for that original model that was developed, and unfortunately, that particular school had to drop out at a certain point, but it spent a whole year, so we have a fair amount of -- I mean, David remembers, that model was the one we were in some ways most excited about, the use of technology to actually resource the solo, small firm practitioners who are isolated and wanted to do this kind of work.

But I think we don't need to duplicate -- you know, the technology, once you develop a solid, statewide web site, and then you begin adding the resources and the people, I think it's a great vehicle for expanding these circles of resources that we're talking about, but obviously, the content has to continue to be there and someone has to actively support them.

Mr. Chairman, did you have a question for me, as well?

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: No, I didn't, but I was going to ask if any other Board members had questions for you.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here.

MS. SAMUELS: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to congratulate you and welcome you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: I will now call on Jane Stern, if you would come forward. Jane is Program Director for the New York Community Trust. We look forward to hearing from you.

MS. STERN: Good morning.

The first thing I'll say, aside from welcoming you here, is to explain that the New York Community Trust is not a bank, it's a foundation. I have to say this everywhere I go.

On behalf of the trust and our board of directors, I'm really delighted to welcome you here this morning, and particularly to thank the Legal Services Corporation for your continued support for Legal Services for New York City, LSNY.

Today, with increasing pressures on New York City's low-income residents, your core support for New York City's primary civil legal assistance program is more important than ever, and I just can't emphasize that enough.

The mission of the New York Community Trust grant-making program is to make New York City a better place to live, particularly for our neediest citizens. Our grants, which range, focus on such issues as strengthening families, housing and community development, public education and youth services, health care and meeting the needs of elderly and other special populations, and access to justice; and my responsibilities at the trust include our human justice program.

As Catherine said, we have been a leading local foundation supporter of civil legal assistance in New York City, particularly LSNY.

Over the last five years, the trust, our September 11th fund, and individual donors at the trust have contributed nearly $3.7 million to LSNY and the neighborhood offices, and Andy Scherer has asked me to say a few words about why legal services are a priority for the trust's board, and maybe this will inform you somewhat about the point of view of foundations.

A partial answer is that our board members, who include leaders of the bar, are concerned about ensuring fair access to the justice system, and specifically about the insufficiency of civil legal services for poor New Yorkers, which you are very aware of.

With that concern in mind, we've made a number of grants to both LSNY and to neighborhood offices to increase and improve their capacity to represent indigent city residents.

In addition, and equally important, our board believes that legal services, the availability of legal services is critical to our grant-making goals in other fields.

In that vein, most of the legal services grants that I have brought to our board have been developed in collaboration with my fellow grant officers at the trust in other fields, often, for the kinds of partnerships that Catherine alluded to.

Examples are grants that we have made that relate to domestic violence; HIV/AIDS; fraudulent loans; and economic opportunities for poor women, just to mention a few of the grants we've made.

Our grants are modest, very modest, in terms of both LSNY's budget and the budgets of the neighborhood offices, but I think we've been able to step in at critical junctures, and that's probably the importance of foundation money.

For example, we've made grants to assist LSNY in the very important restructuring process which we thought was critical to legal services in New York City, as well as with the compelling need for technological improvement.

At the same time, we have made startup grants that have helped to create successful programs that have been continued and expanded through government and other funding streams; and on a few occasions, we have provided emergency support to help what we consider to be excellent programs meet unexpected funding gaps.

In this context, at our December board meeting week after next, I will be recommending a grant to South Brooklyn Legal Services for its domestic violence program, to help cover a hiatus in follow up funding, and at that same meeting, I will be recommending a grant to Brooklyn Legal Services Corporation A for what we see as a very creative project to increase pro bono legal services at that office.

But over and above these very specific grants, the trust is pleased to work in partnership with LSNY as well as with the New York State IOLA fund, the city bar, and other legal organizations, to help redress the paucity of services to meet the civil legal needs of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

In recent years, LSNY has taken a leadership role in coordinating services, both within the agency and with other legal groups, to ensure maximum use of limited legal resources that do exist, and I'd like to particularly cite the collaboration between LSNY and other legal services providers in the city that made an unprecedented and still ongoing effort to provide legal help to low-income victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and I see that much of that work is described in your Board Book.

Major financial support for this effort, which has helped thousands of New Yorkers, has been provided by the September 11th fund at the trust, but I want to stress that it was only because of our history with LSNY, our respect for its leadership and for the work of the legal offices, that we felt confident and comfortable in advising the September 11th fund to support this effort on, really, an emergency basis.

On behalf of the trust, I can say that we look forward to continuing to work with LSNY. As I note, it will be making -- our board will be considering several grants to LSNY at its next meeting, and I anticipate recommending additional grants over the course of the coming year.

But as I've said, our grants are very modest. It is the core support of the federal Legal Services Corporation that sustains LSNY and its neighborhood offices, and on behalf of my organization, I'd like to thank you for making this critical contribution to New York City.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Does any Board member have questions for Jane?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Hearing none, thank you very much for being here --

MS. STERN: Thank you very much for this opportunity.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: -- and thank you for the work your organization does.

Next, we'd like to hear from Stephen Brooks, General Counsel for the Interest On Lawyer Accounts here in New York State.

Stephen, if you would, come forward. We welcome you to our microphone.

MR. BROOKS: Mr. Chair and members of the Board, I am the general counsel of the Interest On Lawyer Account Fund of the State of New York, IOLA, and on behalf of IOLA, I'd like to welcome the LSC Board to New York.

LSC and IOLA are the two largest individual funders of civil legal services in New York. This year marks IOA's 20th anniversary. Since 1983, IOLA has provided $188 million in grants.

In these 20 years, IOLA's grantees, which include the programs funded by LSC, have provided legal services to cover 6,800,000 people, winning $2,800,000,000 for them.

IOLA strongly believes in coordination and collaboration among its grantees. The LSC planning process, the New York State Bar Association's partnership conferences, the programs fostered by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the steps IOLA has taken to build closer grantee relationships have moved collaboration a long way in recent years.

I might add, those collaborations include those of the institutions represented by the folks who have just preceded me at this microphone.

IOLA is confident that these collaborative efforts will continue and will ensure that high-quality legal services continue to be provided to the clients of LSC and IOLA grantees in the years ahead.

We are happy that you've chosen this great city for your meeting and hope that you come back so on.

I have put a small stack of materials on the table over there, showing, most interestingly, the quantified achievements of your and our grantees for our most recent statistical reporting year, which is calendar '01.

At this point in our reporting cycle, we're just up on the verge of producing the '02 statistics, so what you get is, in our annual cycle, about as stale as it gets, but nevertheless, I think it's very insightful in the level of detail it will show you.

It shows what the programs of New York do with all funding. It's not limited to IOLA programs and it's not limited to LSC programs.

Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you, Steve, and we appreciate your being here.

I forgot to ask, does any Board member have a question for Stephen?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you very much.

We're now going to hear a totally different perspective from our next speaker, and I'd like to invite Elizabeth Shearer to come to the microphone.

Elizabeth is a Senior Legal Aid Consultant for Civil Justice and Legal Advice, in the Legal Aid Society in Queensland, in Australia.

And you've traveled a long way to be with us, and we welcome you to the microphone, and please proceed.

MR. GENZ: Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, it's my honor, Michael Genz, Director of the Office of Program Performance, to introduce Elizabeth Shearer, our international partner.

She's here on a six-week fellowship of the Winston Churchill Memorial Fund. She's here studying centralized intake systems and pro se efforts. She's already visited our programs in Hawaii, Orange County, Washington State, and Detroit, and we look forward to the results of her study.

MS. SHEARER: Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, thank you very much for the opportunity to address you this morning. It is, indeed, an honor.

I've been in the United States long enough to see that we have very much in common. We share the same strengths, the strengths that come from that great vision we all have of equal justice for all, and also the strength of so many dedicated and committed people working for legal services throughout the country.

We share the same challenges, as we struggle to make best use of our modest resources to benefit our clients.

We, too, live with some of the what I like to call creative tensions that are reality for life in legal aid services: the tension between providing access to as many people as possible and still providing full case representation services to those who need it; the tension between quantity and quality; and the tension between the need to be always efficient but also always remember that our clients are among the most vulnerable in the community and don't always lend themselves to being dealt with efficiently.

We see in Australia the same themes emerging that I think will be familiar to you: the need to respond to a changing environment; the need for partnerships and collaboration; the need to harness technology to benefit our clients; and sustainability, the need to ensure that we can recruit and retain good staff, that we can continue to provide quality services, and that we have appropriate succession planning in place.

In Australia, each state has a legal aid organization where statutory authority is funded jointly by the commonwealth and state governments and also receive interest on solicitors' trust accounts.

We provide a mixed model of service delivery, which means that private lawyers provide a portion of representation to the majority of our clients funded by us, but we also have significant in-house legal practices; and the other significant difference is that we all provide services in the area of criminal law, as well as family and civil.

I work for Legal Aid Queensland. Our organization has a budget of approximately $65 million a year. We've got 350 staff in 14 offices throughout Queensland. Queensland is a very large and decentralized state with about 3.5 million people.

We have funding agreements in my organization to provide services to state and federal governments. We contract to provide a fixed number of services at a fixed cost price.

The services that we provide we cast a little differently to you here.

Legal information is our first line of service. At Legal Aid Queensland, we provide probably about 150,000 legal information sessions a year. That's predominantly through a call center and by staff at our counters when people come into an office wanting to know what to do.

Our next line of service is legal advice. We provide about 60,000 legal advices a year. That's done by telephone, face-to-face, growing use of video conferencing, and at specified outreach locations, including prisons.

Our information and advice services are without eligibility requirements. We provide them to anyone who comes, but our data shows us that most of the people who come are our traditional legal aid clients.

Our next level of service, legal representation, does have means requirements. The case has to come within our funding guidelines, and there has to be a meritorious case before we fund.

In Queensland, we fund about 30,000 cases a year for full representation, and 70 percent of that work is done by the private profession under contracting arrangements with us. The rest is done by our in-house practice.

In criminal law, our focus is on the more serious crimes in the higher courts where there is a right to counsel, but we also do some work in the lower courts where people are at risk of imprisonment.

In family law, our focus is very much on children's issues, as families are breaking up.

And in civil law, we, too, had a big funding crisis in the mid-'90s, and our civil practice is now fairly constrained to a number of niche areas. In-house, our practice consists of anti-discrimination, consumer protection, and compensation for victims of crime.

With our in-house practice, we attempt to focus our practice on the clients that need the special expertise that we bring as one of the larger legal firms in the state, so in crime, we have a serious crime unit that does the most serious criminal matters; our family practice focus is on representation of children in family court and also child protection matters; and in our civil practice, we like to focus on clients that we know have special needs and vulnerabilities.

My role at Legal Aid Queensland is to manage our legal advice program and our civil justice program, and as you've heard, my visit here is funded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, and I've been visiting a number of your programs throughout the country.

I'd like to formally acknowledge the warm welcome that I've had from all in the legal services community where I have visited, including members of the LSC staff.

The visit has been immensely rewarding to me. I've gained some new insights. But perhaps even more reassuringly, I've realized that the things that are difficult for us are difficult for you, as well. I haven't found that magic answer I was looking for, but I feel reassured that we're all asking the same questions.

I also see the visit as a foundation for some future collaboration. It's clear that globalization is having impacts on our clients here as well as in my country. Issues such as privacy and predatory lending practices are very much the same, and I hope that we can continue to learn from each other and share knowledge to the benefit of our clients.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you so much for being here. It's fascinating that report. Does any board member want to ask any questions of Elizabeth?

MR. MEITES: I have a two-part question.

Of your $65 million, how much is criminal, spent on criminal?

MS. SHEARER: The bulk of our case work, those 30,000 cases, about 17,000 of those are criminal, so it would bed around 60 percent, I'd say.

MR. MEITES: So that leaves $24 million for civil work?

MS. SHEARER: Yes, civil and family.

MR. MEITES: You only have 3 million people in your state?

MS. SHEARER: Yes, three-and-a-half.

MR. MEITES: Okay. And you say you have troubles?

MS. SHEARER: Yes.

(Laughter.)

MS. SHEARER: Yes.

MR. MEITES: Why isn't that enough money to provide lavish legal assistance to the 3 million people in Queensland?

MS. SHEARER: Well, I think your legal needs surveys here show that, I think you're reaching maybe one in five, or 20 percent. I think ours show that we're doing better than that, but still not 100 percent, and that's where we would like to be.

In family law, we have to focus our assistance on children's matters very much, which doesn't address, you know, people with small property issues.

In the civil area, we've moved out of the large mainstream civil type cases, and our practice is very much in niche areas, so there are many injustices that go unaddressed.

But yes, I acknowledge that we are comparatively better funded than the situation is here.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any other questions? Yes, Herb.

MR. GARTEN: I believe that Australia was the inventor/creator of trust accounts, or very close to being the creator of it.

Are you experiencing the same problems in Australia with low interest rates as here in the United States?

MS. SHEARER: No. In fact, there have been very low interest rates, but that's been counterbalanced by an increase in activity in the property market, so income from solicitors' trust accounts has risen considerably in the last three years.

MR. GARTEN: So you're hearing generally what's happening in many states in this country in that regard?

MS. SHEARER: Yes. I mean, the difficulty with that as a funding stream is that it's never reliable, because it's subject to so many variations.

MR. GARTEN: Have you found any other ways to raise funds for your IOLA accounts?

MS. SHEARER: No, we haven't explored the other methods of fund raising. We've recently been involved in pro bono initiatives, but that's fairly new in Australia, not nearly as well developed as it is here.

MR. GARTEN: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Yes, go ahead.

MR. DIETER: In terms of technology, as you've visited the various offices, I assume you've shared with Michael your assessment of sort of whether we're ahead or behind you or how things you've tried there may have application here. I'm curious about the video conferencing.

MS. SHEARER: Yeah. I think that TIG funding here has achieved remarkable results for what has been not a large sum of money in the overall scheme of things, in terms of uniform, fairly uniform state web sites. I think that money has been leveraged very effectively.

We would love to have a kiosk system like Orange County does. I think that's a bit beyond our reach at the moment.

We have used video conferencing extensively. We were fortunate to get a grant from the federal government to set up a video conferencing network of 21 sites in Southwest Queensland to provide advice to people in those remote areas where there's trouble getting advice in town.

The response from the community was slow. What it showed us was that the human face, or what our evaluators call soft technology, is as important as the hard technology, but having said that, we use video conferencing extensively in our advice service to the prisons, where it just provides us enormous efficiency compared to prison visits.

I mean, we still visit, because it's important for lawyers to be in prison, but the bulk of that work is done by video conferencing, very effectively.

We did video conferencing before we did telephone advice, which is the other way around from what people use --

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any other questions?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you very much, Elizabeth, for being with us.

MS. SHEARER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is Maria Imperial here yet? Okay. She would be our last speaker this morning, as far as I know, unless somebody comes on at the public comment part of the meeting

So we'll skip over Maria. If you'll make us aware of when she arrives, we'll take her at that point in the agenda.

The next item on the agenda is the Chairman's Report.

I would say to you that the main thing that I've been involved in since our last meeting together with some other members of the Board is the work of our Search Committee, and we hope to bring that to a conclusion this weekend, if at all possible.

That's a very brief report from me, but I can assure you that the time involved in that for several Board members has been much greater than the brief report.

I will also acknowledge at this meeting the valuable assistance we've had in the work of the Search Committee from Lillian Moy, who was suggested as a member of our committee by NLADA, and Bill Whitehurst, chair of the ABA SCLAID Committee, and their input has been of great assistance to us, and I wanted to acknowledge that publicly in this meeting.

Does any member -- that concludes the Chairman's Report.

Does any member have a report he or she would like to make?

Go ahead.

MR. DIETER: I'd like to report on, I guess, a couple of events that occurred in Colorado.

The Legal Aid Foundation of Colorado, which is the fund raising arm for Colorado on the statewide legal services program there, has raised $800,000 this past fiscal year and is anticipating raising $1 million this year, 500,000 of that coming from Denver, you know, for all programs in the state.

And in September, the Legal Aid Foundation received a $137,000 donation from attorneys' fees that were collected in a case handled pro bono by several large and smaller firms in the Denver area, in which they challenged the loss of benefits to Colorado families under the state welfare program:

David, Graham & Stubbs; Faegre & Benson; Hoffman, Reilly, Pozner & Williamson; McKenna, Long and Aldridge; Silver & Dubosky; and Johnson & Repucci. They received, I think it was 274,000 and donated half of that to the Legal Aid Foundation and half of it to another public interest foundation.

Our state Access to Justice Commission is meeting this weekend for a two-day retreat and is welcoming Judge Joann Vogt of the Colorado Court of Appeals, who is going to be joining the commission as a vice chair.

And that's my report.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any other reports from Board members?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: I call Len Koczur to come forward at this time and present the acting inspector general's report.

MR. KOCZUR: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

For the record, I'm Len Koczur, the acting inspector general.

Since the last Board meeting, we've issued a final report on a program integrity audit of Central Minnesota Legal Services.

One issue was disclosed during our audit. That is, in one of the branch offices, there was an inadequate separation with an organization that was doing prohibited activities, and we made recommendations to correct it. Basically, it was an issue of physical separation, that the office was -- it was hard to distinguish our grantee's branch office from the other organization.

We issued two draft reports, one on the California Rural Legal Assistance and one on Legal Services of Northwest Ohio. Comments have been received on both, from both grantees, and they're being evaluated now. We would expect to issue both reports by the middle of December at the latest.

We have two audits in process, the Boston Volunteer Lawyers Program and the Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Field work is underway. We expect to have that completed probably early next month.

The second area is, we are continuing with our private attorney involvement audit. Two grantees were visited. I think the last time I reported, we planned to visit these two grantees, Monroe County in New York and the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund in Kentucky.

Our objective here was to find out how the PAI programs worked out there. We read a lot of information about what is provided to the Corporation, and we wanted to see how they actually operated.

Particularly the Kentucky program had multiple ways that it met the requirement. Basically, there's eight different ways the PAI requirement can be met.

We're not issuing reports on either of these programs. That wasn't our intention. It was simply information gathering. We did send letters kind of wrapping up the work to both program directors.

The second phase of the audit will be conducted next year. We're developing an audit program based on the information we've collected, and we will visit a number of grantees to try to get a broad range to see how effective the program is across the board.

Also since our last meeting, my staff and I met with Bill Whitehurst and Terry Brooks of SCLAID to brief them on the audit and what we were doing in our plans and so forth.

We also issued a summary report on the individual grantee reports that we've received. If you recall, grantees are required to provide us with annual financial audit reports which not only deal with their financial status, but also compliance with the regulations, and we annually summarize the results of these and publish a report.

We received and reviewed 187 reports last year, and 77 findings were in these reports. I don't recall the exact number of reports that had findings, and 47 of these findings were referred to management for follow up, whether we considered them significant deficiencies or they were repeat deficiencies -- the problem hadn't been corrected from the prior year.

Our annual corporate financial audit is in process. The auditors expect to complete their field work at LSC next week. So far, there haven't been any issues that came to their attention.

Generally, we present this report to the Board at its annual meeting in January. Last year, we weren't able to do that because of the need to include Friends of Legal Services data in a footnote in the report, and also because of a new reporting format where there was an extensive discussion of the Corporation and its accomplishments.

We plan again to go back to the old schedule, and hopefully we'll be able to issue the report in January. The thing that could hold it up would be the Friends data that has to be audited. Our auditor also does that audit, and that hasn't started yet; but the auditor is very confident that it'll be done. It's just he hasn't seen the data yet.

Since the last meeting, again, we issued a report on a mapping project for the State of Georgia, which is one copy. The report will be sent to the Board members early next week.

I'm sorry. What I failed to mention is, we had it finished several weeks ago, but because we included maps in it, it took quite an extensive effort to print it, so I think we just received them within the last couple of days, so those will be mailed out next week.

The reports show again, the conclusion, maps are useful. More work needs to be done. And that's in Phase 2 of the project that we're in now with the California, five California grantees, and also we've expanded the project in Georgia.

If you recall, we had to use the 1990 census data when we started, because the 2000 data wasn't released. Well, that data is available, and so we're expanding the Georgia project to produce maps based on the 2000 census. Both grantees in Georgia are very hopeful that that will be proving more useful than using the prior data.

And that concludes my report.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any Board members have questions of Len regarding his report?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you, Len.

The next agenda item is to consider and act on the report of the Board's Provision for the Delivery of Legal Services Committee. I'll call on David Hall for that report.

MR. HALL: The Provisions Committee had a very informative meeting yesterday. The focus was on state planning.

We first heard from Randi Youells, the vice president for programs, who gave us a very thorough and insightful understanding of the history of state planning, how the process works, and many of the successes that, from her perspective and that of the staff, have been accomplished through this particular process.

I think we all went away from that presentation feeling very good that this process had accomplished its intended goals and that there were some good successes.

We then heard from representatives from the city level about their planning process.

We heard from Andy Scherer, the executive director of Legal Services of New York; Judge Fern Fisher, who is on the planning body for the city, which was different from the state process; and we also heard from John Kiernan, who is the chair of the Board of Legal Services of New York.

I will not try to capture all of the salient points that they made to us. I would say the general summary was that they felt that the local process was very successful, in part due to the fact that they included so many stakeholders in the process, and that it was a very open process.

They certainly highlighted how the reorganization was very successful and helpful to them, that they were able to create a structure that allowed for autonomy to exist in the various programs, in the various roles, but also provided for more control and oversight at the central office, and that that mechanism, which was novel and different from what was being proposed in other places, has certainly worked for them, and overall, really feel that it has brought about a more efficient operation.

The last important comment is that there was this notion that the spirit of collaboration between the Corporation and the city planning process was an ideal one, mainly because no directions were given; there was an openness to being flexible about how they should go about that reorganization.

We then heard from representatives from the state planning body, Judge Newton, Anne Erickson from Greater Upstate Law Project, and Lillian Moy, Executive Director of Northeastern New York Office.

Again, I will not try to touch on all of the points that they made, but it certainly indicated that the state planning process had also been successful, that it is a process that maybe not has moved as far along as the city process, but that it has certainly been able to bring about a different focus and also a better effort.

They indicated that they've gone from 14 programs down to seven, and created some different service areas in the process of that, but that even with that alteration, that they were very confident that they would be able to give what she called full and deep coverage to the various areas, and in part felt that confidence based on the deep level of commitment that the people who have been working in that program, or working in the planning process, have brought to the whole discussion.

We heard quite a bit about training, leadership, and diversity, which was a part of the planning process at the state level, and something that was highly emphasized, and has focused on issues of language access, issues of gender identification, and also that the first skill training that has happened in 10 years is going to happen now at the state level, so it appears that through the state planning process, that there's been a greater focus on the notion of training and that that has been a fundamental part of the structure.

We were also made aware that there are issues around pro bono planning and pro se litigants that the state planning process is focusing on and hoping to have some recommendations shortly on how they are going to move forward there.

In summary, I think that presenters for the state planning process also felt that it had been successful, that they have really been able to accomplish a lot through that process, in part for the same reasons that the city has been successful, and that is, one, bringing together a lot of stakeholders who have been committed to that, and also the support that the Corporation has given through grants, et cetera, to the assist in that planning process.

The last issue that we talked about was future directions for the committee and issues that we are going to look at, and we talked about numerous issues. I will not repeat them all at this point.

We have decided that the next issue that the committee will look at, building on the work that has come out of the state planning process, is the issue of quality and how do we go about really defining what quality legal services is all about, and how do we go about assessing that when it occurs.

So that will be the focus of our next meeting. We had hoped to have talked a little bit more about that at our meeting, but we ran out of time. There is a list of other issues that we will be looking at after that point in time.

So again, as I did at the committee meeting, we certainly, as a committee, want to thank all of those who came and presented, and it gave us a much better understanding of the state planning process and its successes.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Does your committee have any motion for action today?

MR. HALL: It does not.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Before moving to the next committee report, let me note for the record that the reason why we didn't have a President's Report today is because our President, John Erlenborn, has been ill, and has had some surgery in the past week or so.

We are very pleased, though, to hear that he is progressing well and should be released from the hospital during this weekend.

So that accounts for the fact that there is no President's Report at this particular meeting.

Let me call a on now Rob Dieter to present the, consider and act on the report of the Board's Finance Committee.

MR. DIETER: We had our meeting of the Finance Committee yesterday. There is Board action required with regard to a resolution that appears on 188, although I believe we have a revised version of that resolution. Do we have that, Victor?

Anyway, by way of explanation, the only substantive discussion we had with regard to the consolidated operating budget, Comptroller David Richardson reported on some internal budgetary adjustments and reallocations of various items within the budget. It doesn't increase the overall budget, it simply reallocates spending to appropriate item categorization, I guess you would say.

In reviewing those documents, though, in advance of the meeting, I had asked David to prepare a document that I believe that each Board member now has, that shows how the carryover from prior years is treated in terms of its reporting in the budget summaries, and that was the reason that we passed the resolution for it to be changed to I guess more accurately reflect, with regard at least to the management and administration budget, that the carryover items are shown separately and we don't, I guess, get mistaken in terms of what it is that we're actually spend every year.

Also, he is reporting on all items that require adjustment that are $5,000 or more. In the past, I think the limit was $10,000 or more. There are only two items, even at this lower level, and I asked him to continue to report at that level until the Board and the committee are more familiar with the budgeting process.

So that's the only other change that's been made.

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: Mr. Chairman, I would move the recommended action of the Finance Committee. I think Herb has the edited text.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Could you deliver that, Herb?

M O T I O N

MR. GARTEN: I move the adoption of Resolution 2003-014, which appears on Page 188 of our material, with the amending of the words "(including the carryover from the prior fiscal year)" after the figures representing the consolidated operating budget totaling $345,681,872.

MS. MERCADO: So you insert after that, and that language again, please?

MR. GARTEN: "Including the carryover from the prior fiscal year."

MR. DIETER: And is that also to be included after the --

MR. GARTEN: I'm advised by counsel that it's sufficient to appear the one time.

MR. FORTUNO: Yes, I believe that the comptroller yesterday explained that having it appear at that one point in the resolution would be sufficient.

MR. GARTEN: Right. So it would only appear the first time, based upon the advice I received yesterday.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. Is there a -- that's a motion from the Finance Committee. Is there a second to that motion?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: To adopt the resolution as that is, Resolution 2003-014, as amended.

Is there any discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Hearing none, let's proceed to a vote on adoption of the resolution.

Those in favor, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: The ayes have it and the resolution is adopted.

Is that the completion of your report?

MR. DIETER: That concludes our report.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. As I said a moment ago, we'll go slightly out of order here now, and I'm advised that Maria Imperial has arrived, so I would ask her to come forward.

Maria is Executive Director for the New York City Bar Fund, and I believe that she is here today representing the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

We welcome you.

MS. IMPERIAL: My purpose here today is actually to welcome all of you. I'd like to welcome all of you to our house, and we refer to the Bar Association here in New York City as a house, and with that same feeling, I'd like to welcome you here.

I am the Executive Director of the City Bar Fund, and the City Bar Fund is the pro bono arm of the Association.

I am also a proud member of the state planning effort.

Actually, when I arrived at the City Bar Fund five years ago, one of the first things that I actually coveted, and actually my colleagues don't even know this, is to be a member of the state planning, so I am proud and gratified that I'm now a member of the state planning process.

For many of you, this might be your first visit to New York City post-September 11, and as many of us remember today where we were 40 years ago, all of us remember where we were on September 11th.

I was actually in Albany with many of my legal services colleagues, Andy Scherer as well, at a conference on how to increase access to justice, and it was very ironic that we were there in Albany talking about increasing access to justice when such a great injustice was happening before us; but something that was incredible was that many of us stayed in Albany and continued to talk about how we could increase access to justice in New York State.

Adversity always does have a counterpoint, and I would say that that counterpoint is shown through the work, the collaborative work of the bar in response to the September 11th crisis.

Judge Kay, the Chief Justice of the New York State Court, has described the response of the New York Bar to the September 11th crisis as the shining hour of the New York State Bar.

We're in the process of documenting the response, and it soon will be released. We're working in collaboration with the National Association of Legal Placements, and the reason why we're doing this is because one, we feel like this story has to get out.

We hear so many stories about how our profession is lost and misguided, and we really need to tell the story of all the great work that was done by the entire legal services community, pro bono lawyers working hand in hand with the legal services community.

Through the September 11th initiative, more than 4,000 individuals and families were assisted, and over 1,000 small businesses were assisted. We also trained over 3,000 pro bono lawyers.

The night of the first training, this story is told a lot in New York City, but now you're here, so you could actually see and feel it, but we announced the training on a Monday, the training was going to be on Tuesday for how to help people complete death certificates.

So we announced the training one day before, and here over 700 lawyers showed up. There wasn't enough room. We actually had about 500 people in our largest room, the meeting hall, people snaked down the stairway, around the corner, and they were actually out on Sixth Avenue, so it was a remarkable response.

We also could not have done what we did without technology. Probono.net was crucial to what we did. We were communicating with over 3,000 lawyers, so without technology, we would not have been able to do what we did.

Together with the legal services organizations, with LSNY and Legal Aid, we created a very -- we created what I think is a great model, which we called the facilitator model.

We assigned each family a lawyer who acted as a facilitator, and their purpose was really to take the burden off of the family and to conduct a legal inventory and figure out all the different legal needs that the family had.

And then their job was to figure out how they were going to get those legal services, whether it was from a private attorney through pro bono, or from a legal services organization.

It is a form of unbundling, but the important thing for us was that there was always a person overseeing, so at the same time there was unbundling, there was somebody there bundling the legal services back up.

In terms of the 3,000 lawyers that did pro bono, about a quarter of them never did pro bono before, and about a half of them had only done about 25 hours of pro bono in their life.

So right now, for us, the challenge is how to build on that momentum, and how to get those lawyers to continue to work hand in hand with legal services to provide legal services, because the fact is that for many families in New York City, homelessness, foster care, being deported, those are crises every day, so we have to use those same resources to address their crises.

I hope you have a great meeting. You have beautiful weather, and you're in New York City at a great time of year, so I hope you enjoy your stay here. Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you, Maria.

(Applause.)

MR. DIETER: I have one comment, question.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Go ahead.

MR. DIETER: In connection with the 9/11 response, I guess I'm displaying my ignorance about the operation of the Corporation, but do we have in place, you know, how our grantees can look to us for a response in some sort of natural emergency?

You know, we've had, I know there was a flood at one office. There are fires in California. Nine/eleven was obviously unique and hopefully not going to be repeated.

But do we have a policy in place so people know what they should do, and is there money available for that kind of situation?

MR. EIDELMAN: Yes. John Eidleman, acting vice president for compliance and administration.

We do have a fund in place, and when we cover funds from our grantees, we have a relief fund, and very often they contact us, and we the Office of Compliance and Enforcement has those funds available, and with the approval of the president, obviously, we do distribute those funds.

Rather recently, we gave some funds to a program in Tennessee that had had a disaster early in the year from a tornado.

So those funds are available.

MR. DIETER: Okay. Just curious.

MS. MERCADO: Just while you're there, John, haven't there also been times when there have been some natural disaster, whether it was a tornado or flooding or fire or anything like that, that sometimes the programs have been able to get some emergency funding even from Congress, for some particular special need?

MR. EIDELMAN: I think maybe then we get some FEMA funds.

MS. MERCADO: FEMA funds, right, that are directed toward those offices.

MR. EIDELMAN: Correct.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Maria, it turns out one of our Board members has a question for you, if you don't mind. You could perhaps answer it from there.

I usually have asked speakers if, or asked Board members if they had any questions of speakers, and I forgot to do that with you, and it turns out there is a question.

MS. BeVIER: Maria, what I'm curious about is the amount of legal assistance that was provided to the people who didn't die in the World Trade Center, but who lost their jobs, and I mean, I think it's so easy to identify with the victims and the families of the people who were killed, but there's a whole other group of people whose lives were severely disrupted by that event, and I wonder if they're -- they must be included in your client base.

MS. IMPERIAL: Yes. You can tell by the numbers that they are definitely included, and as I said, we worked hand-in-hand with LSNY and also with Legal Aid, who are based out in the neighborhoods, and we did -- there were many issues that the people who were not killed but were injured in the -- or who lost their job, and that was an issue that we struggled with.

And actually, there was a funding issue on how connected was somebody's plight to the World Trade Center, so there was also dividing up of who would be responding to, who was in the best position to respond to the person's legal need, and in many situations, LSNY or Legal Aid was in the best position because they were in the neighborhoods and they were used to working with this population.

MS. BeVIER: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Before taking our next committee report, this is an oversight that I meant to cover at the beginning of the meeting.

I want to recognize Bernice Phillips, who is a nominee to our Board, and is with us today, and we thank you for being here and look forward to the time when you're confirmed as a member of our Board.

MS. PHILLIPS: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Reporter, do you need a break?

Pardon me for overlooking that. One of our Board members call that to my attention. My peripheral vision is not working today I think.

Next, we need to take up the, consider and act on the report of the Board's Operations & Regulations Committee, Tom Meites.

MR. MEITES: Our committee met this morning to consider two matters.

First was whether to recommend to the Board adoption of proposed revisions to section 1604 of our regulations. This regulation had been considered by us previously, at our previous meeting, and we deferred to this meeting to allow more time to consider it.

Mattie reported to us that an objection that had been raised to a prior draft of this rule had been satisfied by removal of language that had caused the question, and that at the time, at this time the objections had been satisfied.

I neglected to ask for public comment before our committee considered the recommendation, for which I apologize to the public.

I was bent on beating the speed record that Brother Dieter had set yesterday, and as often happens when you go too fast, you make mistakes. I will slow down and allow Rob to reclaim the speed record next time.

So I would ask the Chair's indulgence that if there were any comments from the public, he might ask for them now.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Are there any? Linda.

MS. PERLE: Hi. This is Linda Perle from the Center for Law and Social Policy, representing the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

I really just wanted to say before that I agree with the third draft of 1604. It's something that was a collaborative effort in 1995, and we agree that the changes that were made in the draft to address issues raised by the 1996 restrictions were appropriate and we're satisfied that the changes are the correct one, and we would support the adoption of this version of the reg.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you. That's terrific.

MR. MEITES: Our committee unanimously voted to recommend to this Board that it adopt the proposed revisions, that I believe it's appropriate, and we ask the Board to consider our recommendation at this time.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Do we have a formal resolution, or --

M O T I O N

MR. MEITES: I will so move to that effect.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is there a second?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Do we need a formal resolution on this? We just simply adopt this motion?

All right. Moved and seconded by the Ops & Regs committee. Is there any discussion on that motion?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Let's then proceed to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: The ayes have it and that motion is adopted.

MR. MEITES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The other matter was to consider a staff recommendation that our committee defer further action on rulemaking until there's a new president in place and until that president has had a chance with staff to review its recommendations on current rulemaking activities.

Lillian and I believe that that is a sound course to take, and we'd like to report to the Board that unless the Board directs us to do otherwise, that is what we propose to do.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is that satisfactory with the Board, that we take no action? I think that no motion would be required.

Is any motion necessary on that, Mr. General Counsel?

MR. FORTUNO: No, sir.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right.

MR. MEITES: Mr. Chair, that completes our report.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you, sir.

The next item is consider and act on the report of the --

MR. MEITES: Excuse me.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Pardon me.

MR. MEITES: Mike McKay was not here, but I have every reason to believe that he concurs in that, too.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. The record will reflect that.

The next item is, consider and act on the report of the Board's Search Committee for LSC President and Inspector General.

I think that can best be summed up by Item 25 on the agenda, wherein, during a closed session of the Board, we will be interviewing a group of candidates for the position of LSC president during the course of this weekend.

Consequently there's nothing further to report on the activities of the Search Committee, except that we've gone through a process that has resulted in the fact that we're going to conduct interviews while we're in New York City.

Now, we need to Consider and act on the Board of Directors' Semi-Annual Report to Congress for the period April 1, 2003 through September 30, 2003.

MR. FORTUNO: Mr. Chairman, if I may, I'd like to introduce Dawn Browning, who is a lawyer with LSC's Office of Legal Affairs.

With the Chair's permission, I would also invite up John Eidleman, who is acting vice president for compliance and administration, and Randi Youells, who is vice president for programs.

Dawn Browning, Ms. Browning was responsible for -- actually, this was a collaborative effort, but I think Dawn did all the heavy lifting in getting everyone's input and integrating that into one cohesive document which has been circulated to the Board.

As you know under the Inspector General Act as amended, ADA requires that the LSC have an inspector general and that the inspector general submit semi-annual reports.

The inspector general has prepared a semi-annual report for that office for the period of April 1, 2003 through September 30, 2003.

The Board, under that same legislation, is required to submit comments or a response thereto. Traditionally, what has happened is the Board has looked to staff to prepare a draft for Board consideration. That is what's before you.

The three VPs up here now are here so that if you have questions about anything of substance in the report which is within the sphere of responsibility of any of the three VPs, we're able to address that for you.

So that said, how would you like to handle the document, whether it's page by page or simply if there are questions, we could address specific questions?

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Why don't we take the latter approach.

MR. FORTUNO: Okay.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: If there are questions, we'll address specific questions.

If there are not any specific questions from Board members, then we might ask each person at the microphone to, within your areas of responsibility, to highlight anything you think we should pay particular attention to in this report before we consider a motion to approve it.

First, let's see, does any Board member have a special or a specific question relative to the semi-annual report?

Yes, go ahead.

MS. MERCADO: I just have a clarification. I wasn't sure, Page 14 of the response, trying to set guidelines for how to deal with the provision of legal services to individuals with limited English proficiency, I wasn't sure whether there was already -- I know you discuss in here that there is a program letter that you're preparing.

Has that actually already been sent out to the grantees or are we still in the process of it?

MS. YOUELLS: It's still in the process. We have a Leadership and Diversity Advisory Council. They're been working with staff for about six months on that particular program letter.

We presented it last week at the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, and now we have a several week period for comment on that program letter. At that time, we will incorporate comments and present it to the executive team.

Though it's still very much in the works, our goal is to get it out hopefully before the beginning of the next year.

MS. MERCADO: Okay. So my follow up comment to that, this actually goes back, I guess, to the Finance Committee, and I know that it's maybe a little bit broader than the staff would like to look at.

But in looking and requiring grantees to have staff on board that can actually translate or provide documents to folks, that in and of itself, by its very nature, is going to require additional staff for certain grantees.

And so in our F-1 mark for the coming year, or even in some additional funding that LSC can request, if we're making this as a requirement of our grantees, are we then looking at some percentage of -- and I don't know whether you've done the numbers to that -- especially in populations like in the New York City program, where we're talking about X number of different languages that are spoken, and that doesn't necessarily mean that they have staff to address all those needs without having to bring some client from the client community who doesn't even understand the substantive issues that you're dealing with, to translate or prepare documentation to represent these clients.

So I'm sort of concerned about making it a requirement of the grantees, and at the same time, then, the compliance department coming in a year later and saying, "You haven't meet this need," but you don't have the funding to have the people in place or the technology in place to do that.

So I just want to make sure that when we're adding new requirements that they must have for this, that we are also at the same time asking for funding from Congress that deals with providing the legal need, because I think there was an issue, more of an ADA equal access, equal representation issue is how this whole issue came up.

MS. YOUELLS: The draft program letter does not anticipate imposing new requirements on our grantees. It for the most part is technical assistance, in helping them to understand the requirements of already existing laws that we believe they are not following, and they may not be following it for a variety of reasons.

The Leadership and Diversity Advisory Council has discussed your point almost non-stop, and there has been a heated debate among that council as to whether or not LSC should seek additional funding to help meet the requirement or whether or not, since under the LSC Act we are required to make our services available to people who need them regardless of their ability or inability to speak English, and if that's a requirement that's imposed by other laws, our grantees are responsible for doing that under their basic field grants.

So that's certainly the argument, and I know that the Leadership and Diversity Advisory Council came to the conclusion that it was important to get this guidance out, because there are other laws that actually require our grantees to do things they we fear our grantees are not addressing.

However, having said that, the first year is certainly a year of adjustment, and in the first year the program letter, or the draft program letter sets out some aspirational goals and puts them on notice of these other laws that they must begin to comply with, and does not immediately impose burdens on them, and much of it is written in very aspirational terms, so it's aspirational goals that we think that they should be achieving.

If you'd like, I can certainly have a program letter sent to any person on the Board who would like to see it as we're in this final comment period.

MS. MERCADO: I would.

MS. YOUELLS: All right.

MR. MEITES: Frank, I have a question.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Go ahead, John.

MR. MEITES: On the same Page 14, you make reference something called the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, which of course I never heard of.

You state that it provides that indigent persons whose homes are subject to civil forfeiture shall be entitled to be represented by an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation.

I have two questions.

What is a civil forfeiture under that act?

MS. YOUELLS: Do you want to answer that one?

MR. FORTUNO: It's not entirely clear how it happened, bur there was a provision inserted in a piece of legislation which imposed this requirement where, for example, there is a couple with a home and there is a criminal action brought against one spouse. The other spouse may be under threat of losing that home.

The court can appoint, and as the statute says, an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation, which itself, that phrase created some confusion and some problems.

MR. MEITES: That's you.

MR. FORTUNO: That's right. And we have a very small legal staff, and we're certainly not admitted all over the country, and these things come up all over the place.

What we've done is, in conjunction with the Office of Program Performance, we've tried to work out a system where when such an appointment is made, and we've been trying to work with the Administrative office of Federal Courts to try to resolve this anomaly, but what we're doing in the meantime is when we are appointed, is we try to find someone in that jurisdiction who is competent to handle such a matter to represent the individual.

And we've succeeded. We've had fairly few cases. We've succeeded. We've also managed to come up with the money to pay whatever costs may be associated with that representation.

We've been fortunate to get pro bono representation, I think in all cases, so it's just been the cost.

MR. MEITES: The second question, just out of curiosity about Congress's consistency, is this without regard to citizenship?

MR. FORTUNO: Yes.

MR. MEITES: Okay. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is there something else that anybody on the panel there would want to highlight for us?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any other questions from Board members?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: If not, I would entertain a motion to approve the semi-annual report as presented.

M O T I O N

MS. BeVIER: So moved.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Is there a second?

MR. FUENTES: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any further discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Hearing none, let's proceed to a vote.

All those in favor of the motion, please say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Those opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: And the report is approved.

MR. FORTUNO: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you very much.

Getting close to the end here of this particular part of the meeting.

Item 16 on the agenda, consider and act on possible changes to LSC's organizational chart and lines of reporting, is an item that I asked to be put on the agenda for this reason:

In reviewing the chart, it appeared to me that it would be more appropriate if the treasurer of the Corporation reported directly to the president rather than through another officer.

Most organizations that I'm familiar with in my own experience, that is the case, because in this instance, the treasurer, although he doesn't carry the exact title, is the chief financial officer for the Corporation, and again, emphasizing my own experience, I would find it entirely inconsistent that the chief financial officer would report to another officer, who in turn would report to the Board.

And this is not a reflection on anybody in the slightest. It is simply my own view of how the organization ought to look.

So I don't have a specific recommendation for the Board today. I just wanted to raise the visibility of this item so that the Board could focus on it at a future date, and I will work with the staff and perhaps have a chart or revised organizational chart for consideration at a future meeting.

But that's the reason why that item appears on the agenda.

MS. MERCADO: Mr. Chairman?

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Yes.

MS. MERCADO: That whole issue of sort of reviewing and revising that would probably come under the Operations and Regulations Committee, and even during my tenure, we've had actually different kinds of officers and members of the Corporation for a variety of different reasons.

I think that during John McKay's leadership, we did have a bunch of those different vice presidents and stuff that weren't there before.

In our first year, we had, and Former President Forger could probably confirm this, I think we only had the vice president -- there was vice president of everything, compliance and programs, and the comptroller/treasurer, and the corporate secretary was actually Patricia Batie, who's sitting back over there, at the Corporation.

I mean, it was not -- she was in charge of the Board and the Corporation and getting the information and doing all that coordinated effort, but it wasn't necessarily in the role that it is now.

I mean, certainly, I think it needs to be looked at, but I think in deference to whoever the new incoming president is, because they might have a different style of how they want to manage, which I think is sort of what has happened, is that just like you're allowing the new president to come in, with whatever regulations they're going to look at, and decide whether or not they should or shouldn't be involved in that, they we probably ought to wait 'til we have a new president in line to see whether or not that's even a format of management or governance that they might be interested in doing, because different ones have done different things, and it hasn't necessarily been by the Board.

I mean, it's up to the Board --

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: I understand.

MS. MERCADO: -- for approval, but, you know, definitely, the Ops & Regs Committee is the committee to sort of look at it in depth.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: I don't disagree with the idea of referring it to the Ops & Regs Committee. However, I do disagree with the notion that we would leave it to the president to decide where the chief financial officer fits in the picture.

In other words, I am uncomfortable at the Board level in not having the chief financial officer reporting directly to the president rather than through another officer, and second, perhaps even with a dotted line to the Board.

We have certain fiduciary responsibilities, and my problem is that there's another level between the chief financial officer and the president now, and that person is even further removed from the Board.

So I would respectfully disagree with the notion of leaving that to the new president to determine.

I think the Board does have some responsibility in that regard, to see to it that there is access to the Board in the financial area.

So I emphasize again, this has nothing to do with any individual, but simply the way -- what I call lines of reporting.

So I will refer the matter to the Ops & Regs Committee.

MR. MEITES: And Lillian, I think that perhaps in the January meeting we'll just put that on the agenda, so we won't forget about it, and at least we can do some preliminary discussion. Does that make sense?

MS. BeVIER: It does make sense.

MR. MEITES: So we'll do that at the January meeting.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Next, we need to consider and act on the postponement of the Board's

2004 Annual Meeting from Friday, January 30 to

Saturday, January 31, 2004.

I presume that would not be controversial. I do need to ask the question, though, is that envisioned as a two-day meeting, as our usual format, so it's going to be a Saturday-Sunday format?

MR. FORTUNO: Yes. The bylaws prescribe that the annual meeting shall be held and that it will be held on the last Friday of January of each year, so because that's prescribed in the bylaws, which goes on to then provide that the Board may, by vote, change the date of the meeting to a day either 30 days, up to 30 days earlier or later, you're simply changing it from that one Friday to however you'd like.

You could make it a Thursday-Friday, you could make it a Saturday-Sunday. You have flexibility.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: So we're doing this to comply with the bylaw?

MR. FORTUNO: That's right. Since the bylaws prescribe that the annual meeting will be held on that Friday, unless you're going to have your committee meetings on Thursday and the Board meeting on Friday, which you can do --

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Oh, I see. So this is a technical item?

MR. FORTUNO: Yes.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: It's a technical item. Okay. So it's still going to be a Friday-Saturday format?

MR. FORTUNO: That's entirely up to the --

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: The Board being, the actual Board meeting being on Saturday?

MR. FORTUNO: That's right.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: So we need this technical motion --

MR. FORTUNO: The item as posed, which would change the Board meeting from Friday to Saturday, would then accommodate a Friday-Saturday meeting, so that you would have committee meetings on Friday, the Board meeting on Saturday.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Okay.

MR. FORTUNO: And that is probably the option that's most appealing to you, but you do have, I wanted to note, flexibility to change even further; but what's under consideration right now I believe is that one change.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Okay.

MS. BeVIER: Is there any sentiment at all on the Board for a Saturday-Sunday meeting? Because just simply myself, I can't be there on Friday, and so I'd hate to miss the very important Ops & Regs Committee meetings.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Unless we had the Ops & Regs meeting on Saturday morning.

MS. BeVIER: Okay.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Why don't we do that?

MS. BeVIER: Yeah.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Let's leave it a Friday-Saturday evolution, and when we make up the agenda, put the Ops & Regs Committee meeting on Saturday morning.

MS. BeVIER: I would appreciate that.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: That will accommodate Lillian.

M O T I O N

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All right. Let's then -- I would entertain a motion to adopt that schedule change.

Is there a second?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any discussion?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Any objection to approving that by a unanimous vote?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: We'll consider that done by unanimous vote.

Is there any other business to come before the Board today?

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: And is there any public comment? Yes, sir.

MR. SCHERER: The briefest of public comment. I just wanted to, on behalf of LSNY, the LSNY Board, and the state steering committee, thank you all for coming to New York for this meeting. It was a very productive meeting.

We really enjoyed getting to know you, look forward to working with you in the future, and wish you well carrying on with your awesome responsibility for administration and access to justice.

Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Well, speaking for one member of the Board, I think it's been a very energizing and informative experience. We've enjoyed it a great deal. Couldn't be better.

MR. SCHERER: My name is Andrew Scherer. I'm the Executive Director of Legal Services for New York City.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Included in my invitation for public comment, certainly specifically, around there any comments from the representatives from SCLAID or NLADA?

Don, please come forward.

MR. SAUNDERS: I'll try to be shorter than Andy, Mr. Chairman.

I just wanted to report to the Board that the NLADA annual conference took place last week in Seattle. It was very successful, very well attended. I wanted to thank Mr. Garten and Mr. McKay for representing this Board very well and strongly there. I think the community enjoyed getting to know them, and that meant a lot to us.

I'd also like to thank Randi and her colleagues for supporting a very, very effective rural preconference.

With some slight financial support, we had over 70 people who came together to discuss rural issues, and I think you'll see following up from that meeting some very good input that will come back to the Board.

Melissa Pershing, one of your consultants, put that together and it was a wonderfully effective event, and we certainly appreciate LSC support of it.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you very much, Don.

Yes, sir. Identify yourself.

MR. WHITEHURST: My name is Bill Whitehurst, chairman of the Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants with the American Bar Association.

I want to also report that we had our firs that meeting of this year. It was a very productive meeting, and we are hopeful at our next meeting in San Antonio, at the ABA midwinter meeting, that we might have some representatives of this Board join us, and we would welcome that, and I'll be in touch with you on that.

I also want to, on behalf of the ABA and SCLAID, to thank the Board for including us in an advisory capacity in the selection of the next president. That's a very important thing, I think, for the entire legal community. We appreciate being included in that effort, and have enjoyed it immensely. Thank you.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Linda.

MS. PERLE: Very, very, very briefly, I hope that all -- I'm Linda Perle with the Center for Law and Social Policy -- I hope that all of you got copies of the history that we provided and I just wanted to let you know that we have many thousands of them.au

(Laughter.)

MS. PERLE: If anyone either on the Board or anybody else in the room wishes additional copies for whatever purpose, we'll be happy to send it to you.

MR. MEITES: The history ends too early.

MS. PERLE: It says that you're here and that we're looking forward to working with you and seeing what happens.

MR. MEITES: The next edition?

MS. PERLE: Yes, the next edition.

But seriously, just give me a call or send me an e-mail. We'd be more than happy to send as many copies as you want, and all we'll ask you to do is pay the postage.

MR. DIETER: Frank?

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Yes.

MR. DIETER: I saw the news item regarding Mr. Whitehurst donating a large fee to, I don't have all the details, but I think we should acknowledge his contribution to Success to Justice in Texas, which organization received --

MR. WHITEHURST: It's the Volunteer Legal Services, where we pay a percentage of a fee if the case was referred to us from the VLS, and we were fortunate that we made a recovery, and it was the largest donation or referral fee paid to our group, and it's history. So it was very well received, as you might --

(Laughter.)

MR. WHITEHURST: And we were very glad to do it. It was $170,000.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Thank you for quantifying that for us. That's an impressive amount.

Our last agenda item before we conclude this part of the meeting is to consider and act on whether to authorize an executive session of the Board to address items listed under the "Closed Session" part of our agenda.

Is there such a motion?

M O T I O N

MR. FUENTES: So moved.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Second?

MS. MERCADO: Second.

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: All those in favor, say aye.

(A chorus of ayes.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: Opposed, nay.

(No response.)

CHAIRMAN STRICKLAND: The ayes have it, that's adopted, and we are adjourned from the public portion of our meeting. Thank you so much for everybody attending today.

(Whereupon, at 1:15 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

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