Chief Judge names LSNYC Chair to Civil Legal Services Funding Task Force

New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman has named Legal Services NYC Board Chair Mark Cunha to a task force charged with spearheading a court-led effort to secure adequate state funding for the representation of low-income New Yorkers in civil cases. Mr. Cunha joins 27 other civil legal services leaders in the crucial effort to secure funding for access to justice for low-income New Yorkers.

Judge Lippman in a statement yesterday charged the task force to come up with permanent funding mechanisms to support “affordable representation” for the state’s low income citizens. An adequate level of state funding, he said, is indispensable to enable the courts to carry out their “constitutional mission” to ensure “justice for all.”

The Task Force to Expand Access to Civil Legal Services in New York will consider information gathered at hearings held in each of the four departments of the Appellate Division. The hearings will be presided over by Judge Lippman, the presiding justice of the Appellate Division within each department where the hearing is held as well as Chief Administrative Judge Ann Pfau and New York State Bar Association President Stephen P. Younger or his designee.

The task force is headed by Helaine M. Barnett, who was the president of the federal Legal Services Corporation for six years. Its counsel is Marcia Levy, special counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell for pro bono. Judge Lippman’s counsel, Mary C. Mone, will serve as the panel’s staff counsel.

Task force members include judges, law firm partners, union officials, heads of legal services groups and managers of corporate legal departments. Serving as ex officio members are Justice Fern Fisher, the director of the courts’ Access to Justice Program, John Sampson, the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee and Helene E. Weinstein, chairwoman of the state Assembly Judiciary Committee.

The aim of the hearings will be to determine the extent and nature of unmet legal needs throughout the state. Based on those findings and information gathered by the task force, Judge Lippman will make recommendations for increased state funding.

When Judge Lippman announced the formation of the task force in May, he said the objective was to include funding for the final recommendations in the court’s budget for the state’s next fiscal year, which begins on April 1, 2011. The judiciary is required to submit its budget by Dec. 1, 2010.

“All this plays into getting the money,” Judge Lippman said at the time. “We are not just talking about it” (NYLJ, May 4).

Read the full article, including the complete list of task force members, at www.nylj.com.