Wednesday

Virginia Still Lagging...

An editorial in a recent local Virginia paper noted that "Virginia's much-reviled, lowest-in-the-nation mandatory compensation caps for court-appointed attorneys remain a joke. Until recently, a charge punishable by life in prison earned a lawyer no more than $1,096, even for a full-fledged trial.

Defense of lesser crimes, and particularly those committed by juveniles, were even more ludicrously compensated. An extra $2 million allotted by the General Assembly last session improves those numbers a smidgen. The $1,096 inched up to $1,186, for instance. But that's still a ridiculous sum for, say, a five-day, first-degree-murder trial.

The fairest plan would be to remove the caps altogether, paying attorneys based on actual work."

It was a worthwhile point, well made.
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6 comments:

Mike said...

Even lawyers deserve fair pay for their work.

11:52 PM
Mike said...

I admire you for caring about this indignity.

It sounds like a way to lose weight.

11:54 PM
Tom McKenna said...

It's amazing, but for all the complaining about low fees, I still see lawyers lining up to take these cases. If it made no economic sense, they wouldn't take the cases. Some of our locals make most of their living off court-appointed work.

11:08 AM
Indefensible said...

That's right Tom--but this is not a race to the bottom. The goal isn't (or shouldn't be) to pay as little as possible for representation. It is, after all about justice. The point is to attract a bit of talent, and create a system that creates incentives to actually provide good representation.

4:43 PM
Tom McKenna said...

While most of the court-appointed attorneys here would doubtless want to be paid more, they would take exception to the assertion that they are not competently representing their clients. In fact, many of the court-appointed attorneys are of far higher caliber than the PDs I've experienced. This is no doubt true in part because PD offices tend to hire newly minted attorneys who leave after just a few years-- many to go into private practice taking court-appointed cases.

8:03 AM
Anonymous said...

The best lawyers leave this work as soon as they can afford it. I assume they, like me, took the state-paid cases because they needed the experience and stayed on for too long because they loved the chance to do good. (not often a chance in lawyer-land.)

The poor are treated like shit in our society but the justice system must, or ought to be, one place where what you can pay has nothing to do with your results. I think pretty much any thinking American agrees with that. Of course, equality is rarely the case in criminal courts, no matter how much lawyers and even some judges wish it were.

After 15 years at slave wages it took me 2 more years to finally figure out that my $37.50 an hour via the state could earn me $250 an hour by folks with the cash.

Still I miss the public contract work. This blog makes me miss it more and worry what leaving it behind has done to my mortal soul.

10:12 PM

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