Public interest law.

• Author: Musto, Anthony C.
• Position: Annual Reports

Twenty-five years ago. 1989. Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House. We were fighting the Nazis in Europe. America's favorite TV show was I Love Lucy. And the Public Interest Law Section (PILS) was born.

(Note to editor: I think the events mentioned above happened in 1989. Please check, and, if not, substitute something appropriate like Babe Ruth's home run total for that year. Thanks.)

So, this year, PILS celebrated its silver anniversary. And we did so not just with pride and merriment, but with a tremendous amount of productive activity.

We established two new pro bono programs. One is designed to provide counsel for children aging out of the foster care system and the other for human trafficking victims seeking to seal or expunge criminal records relating to offenses they committed under the influence of their traffickers.

We overcame a major hurdle toward establishing children's law as an area of board certification, obtaining approval from the Board of Legal Specialization and Education of the proposal we jointly submitted with the Legal Needs of Children Committee. The next step is the Board of Governors. We hope that their approval will occur in time for the matter to be included in the Bar's October biennial filing of proposals relating to the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar.

We advocated for the Bar to create, as part of its Vision 2016 program, a Legal Job Corps to help resolve the disconnect between the many unemployed lawyers (especially those coming out of law school) and the unmet needs of the poor and the middle class. Because such a project would likely run through existing legal service organization, PILS would be in a unique position to, and stands ready to, facilitate the effort.

We published (what we expect to be the first annual) Public Interest Law issue of the Florida Coastal Law Review. Most of the articles were written by PILS members.

On the CLE front, we offered a free program to our members on "Ethical and Professionalism Considerations in the Practice of Public Interest Law." We also cosponsored a program entitled, "Introduction to the Practice of Consumer Law."

We continued...