December 2020 - Pro Bono Newsletter

In this issue: End-of-year pro bono hours and CLE updates.

We are so grateful for all of your generous support! Thanks to you, LASC and SEOLS have helped struggling Ohioans weather the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating economic impact. Together, we have helped laid-off workers access unemployment benefits, assisted parents negotiating virtual school, and prevented families from getting evicted from their homes. We look forward to continuing the good work in 2021.

Upcoming CLEs

On Thursday, Dec. 17 and Friday, Dec. 18, LASC will host two CLE Events in partnership with the Public Interest Law Foundation (PILF). The events will raise funds for PILF, which funds law students who pursue summer positions with nonprofits like LASC and SEOLS. The minimum donation is $50, but additional funds are welcome.

Over the past five years, the Supreme Court — a gradualist, incremental institution in most times — has gone through constant change.

From the months before Justice Scalia's death in February 2016 to the weeks since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court, there have been seven different iterations of justices casting votes.

In contrast, the same nine justices were on the bench for more than a decade after Justice Stephen Breyer joined the Supreme Court in 1994. This program will examine those changes, their effects, and the consequences for the future.

Chris Geidner is the Director of Strategy at The Justice Collaborative, where he works with a team of lawyers, policy analysts, and others to end dehumanization and extreme vulnerability in our country.

Register for the Dec. 17 event.

Professor Arthur Greenbaum is the James W. Shocknessy Professor of Law at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, where he has been a faculty member since 1980.

Among other areas of expertise, Professor Greenbaum teaches and writes in the area of professional responsibility. Recent work includes pieces on the reporting of lawyer misconduct, administrative and interim suspension in the lawyer regulatory process, lawyer transfers to disability inactive status, and the ethics of lawyer assistance in the preparation of expert witness reports. He also is the co-author of a treatise on the Ohio law of professional responsibility – Ohio Legal Ethics Law Under the Rules of Professional Conduct – with the Jones Day law firm. He presently is a member of the Columbus Bar Association’s Professional Ethics Committee and the publications board of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility. He also is the long-time faculty advisor for, and a board member of, the Ohio Public Interest Law Foundation.

Register for the Dec. 18 event.

CLE credit for 2020 Trainings

Did you attend a CLE event sponsored by the Legal Aid Society of Columbus or Southeastern Ohio Legal Services in 2020? We switched to a new CLE format this year – live interactive webinars. We want to make sure the new format doesn’t change your ability to get CLE credit for our trainings. If you do not see CLE hours on your Supreme Court of Ohio transcript for a training you attended in 2020, please email training@oslsa.org.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) Credit for Pro Bono: Important End-of-the-Year Information 

Thank you so much for your work to help low-income people in our community! Please review the following information if you have volunteered at a pro bono clinic (virtual or otherwise) or accepted a pro bono case sponsored by the Legal Aid Society of Columbus (LASC) or Southeastern Ohio Legal Services (SEOLS) in 2020. We have reached that time of the year when we are closing pro bono cases and tracking volunteer hours. To that end, please review the requests and instructions below, but please feel free to email Dianna Parker with questions.

CLINIC VOLUNTEERS – If you are an attorney or an OSBA-certified paralegal whovolunteered at a pro bono clinic in 2020:

• Please email Dianna Parker with “Pro Bono CLE Requested” in the subject line if you wish to request CLE credit for your pro bono hours. 
• In mid-December, we will send you your total volunteer hours and then you will just need to complete the top half of a Form 23 and email it to her by 12/31/2020.
• Six hours of volunteering equates to one hour of general CLE, with a max of six CLE hours for attorneys and three CLE hours for paralegals per reporting period. Partial credit under one hour of CLE is permitted.
• If you are planning to volunteer at a December clinic that has not yet occurred, please wait until you have completed that time to ensure that you have received the maximum amount possible. 

CASE REFERRALS – If you are an attorney currently working on a pro bono case referred by LASC or SEOLS, or you have recently completed a referred case, please do the following:

• Regardless of whether you are seeking CLE, please complete an interim (still working on the case) or final (completed the case) report by 12/31/20.
• If you are seeking CLE credit, make sure you have uploaded a Form 23 to the report.
• If you have already completed a case report and Form 23, your hours will be submitted in January.
• For those of you working on multi-year cases, please note that we are not able to give CLE credit for any hours worked in 2019 if we did not submit them last year.

Please note that no CLE credit will be awarded if we do not receive the required Form 23 by December 31st. All pro bono CLE hours will be submitted to the Supreme Court of Ohio in January.