A Wake County Superior Court judge Monday upheld a $50 annual fee charged to attorneys to help pay for a public campaign financing fund, but he also gave them a bit more discretion in how the money can be spent.

Two attorneys, Catherine M. El-Khouri and W. Anthony Purcell, had sued the state over the fees, which are assessed through the North Carolina State Bar, Dan Kane reports.

The campaign fund pays for publicly-financed campaigns for state appellate judicial races and for a voter education guide. The attorneys had contended the fee represented a violation of their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and was an impermissible tax. They sued in October 2007.

Judge Howard E. Manning Jr. found that the fee is legal, but he also granted attorneys the option of designating their $50 fee to the voter guide. That way, he said, they would not be paying into the campaigns of candidates that they don't like.

"Overall, it's a positive decision for continued funding of a program that Judge Manning says serves a compelling state interest," said Bob Hall, executive director of Democracy North Carolina, a nonprofit that supports public campaign financing.

He said the attorney fee generates $1.1 million annually, about half of the total funds for the judicial public financing program. The rest comes from a voluntary $3 check-off on the state income tax form.

Update: Bob Orr, a former state Supreme Court judge who heads the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law, also found plenty to like in Manning's decision. The institute had supported the lawyers' suit.

"From our perspective, the constitutional claim the suit was based on was upheld by the court," Orr said. "The remedy may be broader than we advocated for, but the underlying claim was upheld as unconstitutional. The $50 fee cannot go to candidates by fiat of the General Assembly."

Former Democratic Gov. Mike Easley has spent $222,000 in campaign funds on lawyers this year, according to a new report filed Friday.

The report shows that spending on three law firms ramped up as investigations started into issues surrounding Easley and his campaign this spring. Elections officials have said that the former governor, who left office in January, can spend his campaign funds on legal issues that arise out of the governor's position as an office holder, which covers a broad area.

One of the lawyers working for Easley, John R. Wallace, said in a statement:  “The legal service provided included compliance services, research and reporting, and the gathering and assembly of information from past campaigns.  We have been providing information to move this matter forward and are intent on coming to a quick resolution.”

Elections officials have said they have concerns about the campaign's activities and have indicated there will be hearings on the issues sometime in September.

More after the jump

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Once guaranteed a shot at the good life, a growing number of those who practice law find themselves among the unemployed. This spring, out-of-work attorneys are being joined in the brutal job market by hundreds of newly minted lawyers graduating from the state's seven law schools, many planning to take the bar exam this summer.

"It's not a happy picture," said Allan Head, director of the N.C. Bar Association, a voluntary professional organization with 13,500 members across the state. "I can't remember a time when lawyers were being laid off."

Nationally, the unemployment rate in 2008 for the legal profession, including paralegals as well as lawyers, was at the highest it's been in years -- 2.6 percent, approximately 44,000 people, according to data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number is believed to have increased this year.

A program to help public service lawyers repay student loans may be cut.

Since 1989, the N.C. Legal Education Assistance Foundation has helped assistant prosecutors and public defenders and attorneys working at legal aid, legal services and nonprofits repay their law-school loans.

One of the first loan repayment assistance programs of its kind in the country, the program has helped 404 attorneys with more than $3 million in quarterly payments to repay loans.

Recipients are chosen through a competitive process and have to stay in public service for a certain length of time.

"Because salaries for public interest lawyers can be in the low $30s, with law-school debt up to $200,000, they can't take those jobs," said executive director Esther Hall. "We're helping them pursue careers in public service."

Since 2006, the foundation received $500,000 a year, all of which went straight to loan repayments. Three part-time staffers, including Hall, are paid from a grant.

"Without the state funding, we would go out of business," she said.

Gov. Beverly Perdue recently proposed cutting the program as part of a plan to balance next year's budget.

They are no longer mere trial lawyers. They are now "advocates for justice."

No, we're not talking about the latest summer superhero flick.

The N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers announced today that they are changing their name. From now on, they will be known as the "N.C. Advocates for Justice."

The group approved the name change at their annual convention this weekend.

"N.C. Advocates for Justice better reflects exactly what we do on a day-to-day basis," said Joe Cheshire, president of the organization. "It does a better job of articulating what this organization is all about - fighting for justice and protecting people's rights."

We wonder if they're going to start wearing capes, too.

A new report says North Carolina is a "sucker" because its legal climate is ripe for greedy lawyers seeking a payday.

The report released Tuesday by the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco ranked each state's tort-system using three measures, reports Titan Barksdale.

Researchers at the institute say that although North Carolina doesn't have a lot of litigation compared to other states, it is lax on rules to control tort actions. So the report characterized North Carolina as a sucker.

But Thomas B. Metzloff, a civil-law professor at Duke University, warned that the report has a pro-business leaning.

"These [measures] are loaded with an anti-citizen and anti-plaintiff spin," Metzloff said. "If you get a group of lawyers, judges and law professors in a room, they would have field day criticizing these variables."

The study ranked North Carolina third in one measure because of low damage awards, and low litigation risks in the state. Alaska and North Dakota are ranked ahead of North Carolina. North Carolina, however, ranked 25th in another measure that looked at tort reform.

"I think this is an absurd way to rank this," Metzloff said. "Medical malpractice controls were big in the report, and I think the state has done a good job at improving how medical malpractice cases are settled. It has avoided some of the Draconian measures that could hurt the interest of injured patients."

The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy says North Carolina is "under-lawyered."

Robust growth and new businesses boost the need for lawyers in North Carolina, according to a center report released today. It cites data that North Carolina has fewer private-sector lawyers per capita than any other state (758 people for each lawyer).

But, the report says, state restrictions make the climate difficult for new lawyers to come here, reports Jane Stancill.

The reports says North Carolina allows only graduates of American Bar Association-approved law schools to take the state bar exam, and requires licensed lawyers from other states to have practiced for four of the past six years in order to "waive" in to the North Carolina bar. The rules prevent newly licensed lawyers and those who graduated from unaccredited law schools to practice here.

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