re: Public Defenders Hard To Come By In Louisiana

quote:

---

The problem is people are sitting in jail for absurd periods of time before trial because the system is incredibly overloaded, and even when they get to that point the PD has almost no time to actually devote to the case.

---

I think if local PD boards would "guarantee" assignments of cases in blocks to their top tier folks - that would in turn allow them to hire associates - similar to a insurance defense model - fresh out of school and leverage the manpower. What happens now is that almost all the PDs are working in solo or up to 2 or 3 man shops - and it is literally "every man for himself" - if they don't develop the resources, it's always going to be the big, bad DA's office crushing the smaller PDs.

But that's just my market force idea in theory. I did so little of that work, particularly on the defense said, I only did quasi-criminal defense (but, it was $75 an hour, when they had money, enough to make it worth my while and certainly enough if I had an associate to do it to pay him or her - if I would have been guaranteed a certain minimum amount of work, I would have done nothing but that with my own firm), I may not understand why it's so fricked up. "We're overworked" just doesn't resonate with most lawyers, particularly non-governmental lawyers.