ABA SGLAID Public Defense Workload Studies Reveal Systems in Crisis

ABSTRACT

In early 2022, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense (ABA SCLAID), together with consulting firm Moss Adams LLP, released two reports on public defender workloads-one on Oregon, the other on New Mexico. To do this, OPDS contracts with providers of different types-public defender offices, law firms, consortia, nonprofit organizations, and individual attorneys. Or, a Chief Public Defender Bennet Baur stated in a blog post for the National Association for Public Defense, "each legal team member is straining under logistic and emotional weight three times what they can sustainably and ethically hold." For each of these open cases, a public defender must, at a minimum, regularly communicate with each client, continually seek to review and address ongoing detention and/or release conditions, prepare for and attend status hearings, and seek to keep track of witnesses and other critical evidence. The public defender in Gainesville, Florida, put it bluntly during a recent legislative session during which both public defenders and state attorneys were seeking salary increases "We are in crisis.