Wegman Partners is a legal staffing agency with over 50 years in placement of Associates, Counsels and Staff Attorneys. In the following article, Wegman Partners discusses how decades of underfunding and staff shortages have created swathes of legal system crises across the United States of America, with many public defenders saying they’re unable to effectively represent their many clients as they juggle with lacking resources, student debt, low wages, mountains of workloads, and burnout.
The crushing workload of defense attorneys and other legal professionals has long been a contentious issue in the industry. Martin Gibson, a former public defender in Oregon, notes his first panic attack occurred around 7:30 pm surrounded by over 200 client files — a caseload far higher than he could ethically represent.
This fear-inducing panic attack wasn’t something Gibson wanted to feel again, causing him to quit the profession. But he is just one of the hundreds of attorneys who have felt the same insurmountable career-ending pressure.
Wage Increases to Retain and Attract Lawyers
Wegman Partners explains that experts state that wage increases could help attract lawyers who could share in the seemingly ever-expanding workloads while retaining the public defenders already toiling in the overworked profession.
But, Wegman Partners says that many attorneys have reported having caseloads of more clients than they can represent – wage increases alone may not solve such a mass of case files. Many feel that the only ethical way to handle this problem is to quit the industry, seeing there was not a proper way to provide clients with the legal attention they need.
The Office of Public Defense Services executive director in Oregon, Jessica Kampfe, stated that attorneys who don’t feel like they are advocating for people are pushed out of the profession due to motivation loss. And this won’t be fixed through increased wages alone. After all, Wegman Partners reports that the problem stems from…
Too Many Cases
During a study, Lee Enterprises asked for public defense workload information from 17 states throughout the west of the nation. The results were unsurprising to those in the field but shocked many outside the profession.
Public defenders in Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Texas, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma had more cases than the outdated national standards advice. Those operating in Nevada, Colorado, and Montana worked too many hours, and the rest didn’t track this data statewide.
According to guidelines set out by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, a public defender must not represent over 25 appeals, 200 juvenile delinquencies, 400 misdemeanors, or 150 felonies in a year.
However, the National Legal Aid & Defender Association spoke out, saying that these 500-year-old standards aren’t equipped to handle the complexities of modern cases. Jon Mosher, the Sixth Amendment Center deputy director, seconds that, saying the standards are far too high.
A State-by-State Dive
In 2021, Wegman Partners explains that almost 400 Texas-based attorneys had more public defense cases than the standards recommended. But the caseload of two private attorneys may bring more than a fair jolt of shock — they defended over 700 felonies, the work of almost five attorneys, as per the guidelines.
Over 100 private attorneys and full-time public defenders in Idaho defended more than the state’s recommended case number, which lets attorneys take on increased workloads, regardless of the country’s standards.
Wegman Partners reports that Pima County, Arizona, saw at least 23 attorneys struggle with caseloads above USA’s average. Statewide doesn’t wasn’t given to Lee Enterprise as each county runs a separate public defense system.
As for Montana, it requires an average of 63 more public defenders to deal with the cases assigned since 2019, according to the public defender office.
New Mexico and Oregon have less than half the attorneys they require to offer efficient, effective representation. Wegman Partners reports that the crisis is so rife that some Oregon-based offices stopped accepting cases due to staffing shortages.
The Bottom Line: Burnout Leads to Ineffectiveness
With such high turnovers across the board, caseloads are becoming constitutionally inappropriate. Wegman Partners lawsuit reports that the piles and piles of work per attorney are too high, burning them out and causing them to be ineffective in the stands.
Plus, public defenders are at risk of losing their licenses if they take on more clients than they can handle. But many aren’t blessed with the option to say no.
It seems the only way to prevent further legal system crises is to retain the lawyers the country already has by offering wage increases and encouraging graduates to head into the field.
