Many states are facing a crisis in public defense because of low pay, excessive caseloads, frequent burnout and a “great resignation” of qualified attorneys that began during the pandemic and shows no signs of ebbing.
Updated: A judge in Maine is being blamed for reducing bail for a man who was later shot and killed in a standoff with police on Saturday after he allegedly set a fire that killed a person.
Migrants who enter the United States illegally generally have just four hours to find a lawyer if they want legal assistance in a quest to remain in the country.
A federal appeals court upheld an injunction Friday that requires Oregon to release pretrial defendants from custody if they have not received a lawyer within seven days.
Six people have been charged with depositing stolen checks intended to pay court-appointed lawyers representing indigent defendants in federal cases in New York.
Many public defenders are “overloaded” with work, even when caseloads are evaluated under outdated guidelines drafted in 1973 that don't reflect modern-day realities, according to a new study released Tuesday.
While family separations have long been the norm when treating babies born dependent on substances, recent research suggests allowing a mother to stay with and care for her infant significantly improves their health outcomes.
A federal judge in Eugene, Oregon, has ruled that defendants held without lawyers for 10 days in Washington County, Oregon’s jail must be released from custody.
When a Houston man was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in July 2018, he was “a happily married 65-year-old man.” By the time that his case was dismissed in February 2022, he had lost his home, his truck and his wife.
The House of Delegates approved a measure adopting a new iteration of the ABA Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System at the ABA Annual Meeting in Denver on Monday.
For more than a century, the ABA has advocated on issues related to indigent defense, primarily through its Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defense. In fact, SCLAID (when it was operating as the Standing Committee on Legal Aid Work) stated in its 1937 annual report: “We believe that every man accused of serious crime is absolutely entitled to counsel and that, if too poor to employ one, society must furnish him that lawyer.”
Georgia courts are having trouble addressing case backlogs because the state has a shortage of lawyers, including prosecutors and public defenders, the state’s chief justice said this week.
A solo practitioner in Maine may find it difficult to comply with the terms of an ethics sanction imposed for relying on his assistant to take his continuing legal education classes.
The Utah model of reform allowing nonlawyers to offer legal services could be “critical” to serving people who can’t afford them, according to a Stanford Law School study published Tuesday.
