Fellow Law Students:

The region affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita is still struggling to recover from the immense devastation, and residents in the area are facing tremendous legal challenges in their efforts to get back on their feet.  The Student Hurricane Network (SHN) is helping law students across the country organize efforts to assist with the ongoing relief work. The ABA Law Student Division is assisting SHN in these efforts as part of our ongoing commitment to the Gulf Region recovery.

In the fourteen months since the storm, over 1,000 SHN law students from over 70 law schools have traveled to work in the region.  The October 2005-October 2006 SHN Annual Report documents some of the work SHN law students have done and features a number of the justice issues folks have worked on, including criminal law, housing law, worker rights, and voter rights. But the crisis continues, and so do the opportunities for you bring your skills to bear on the chronic issues that persist in the region.  SHN law students from across the country are planning trips to the region over the 2007 winter and spring breaks to do, in part, the following:

• Project Gideon: Interview Orleans Parish Prison detainees, many of whom are still scattered to facilities across Louisiana and have been without meaningful representation for months.  Work with Public Defenders and members of the Indigent Defense Board to reform the criminal justice system in the region.
• Successions Project: Help families process the title transfer needed for the public assistance available to homeowners. There is currently a tremendous backlog to the title transfer process.  Work with New Orleans Legal Assistance attorneys to locate important documentation and forward systemic reform in the title transfer process.
• CDBG Mandate: Interview affected residents in Mississippi, many of whom have had difficulty accessing MS Katrina Recovery programs.  Work with attorneys at the Mississippi Center for Justice to develop the information needed to bring a challenge to the current MS Recovery Plan, to ensure that underserved residents are connected to the programs.

Please consider working to plan a trip to the region over this winter or spring break to work with a legal aid offices, investigatory projects, and grassroots legal service.  There is information about how to plan a trip on the SHN web page, under the “members and liaisons” link at www.studenthurricanenetwork.org.  If you are interested in planning a trip or in connecting with law students from your school that are planning a trip, please email us at studenthurricanenetwork@gmail.com.

Also, SHN is planning a second phase of the Matchmakers for Justice (M4J) program.  M4J involves pairing law students with displaces residents on a one-on-one, long-term basis.  SHN is preparing to take student applications in the next few weeks for the launch of the second phase of M4J, to start in early January 2007.  If you are interested in receiving information about the M4J application process, please email us at matchmakers4justice@gmail.com.

If you have any questions or thoughts, please contact SHN by email.  Also, if there is anything that we can do to support your efforts to work with hurricane-effected residents, please let us know. Looking forward to working with you,

Mike DePetrillo
Chair, ABA Law Student Division
Tulane Law School – New Orleans, LA
mdepetrillo@abanet.org

Morgan Williams
Tulane Law, class of 2007
Student Hurricane Network, Co-founder