Regional Counsel applications have been released

I was just about to post about how no solicitations for the Regional Counsel positions have yet appeared, and suddenly there it is. You can get the pdf version of the application by clicking here, if you are so inclined.

The Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission must receive the completed applications by June 29, 2007. Those selected for interviews will be notified and the interviews will take place in Tampa on July 11 and 12.

So there you go. The notice doesn't have to say where the person selected for each district will have to physically work, since his or her duties will span multiple counties.

What strikes me about the application is that it is quite exhaustive, befitting a public office of great responsibility. That is all well and good, but to be candid seems out of proportion to the salary of the office.

I will not be applying personally, but would be interested in knowing how the interview process goes in Tampa, and to what extent skill and experience with child dependency is emphasized. If anyone reading this is interviewed and wants to let us all know how it went, feel free to e-mail this blog in confidence.

A news article from "before the change"

This article cuts both ways. It intimates that some private defense attorneys may have been over-billing, which in my personal experience with the folks I work with does not happen, but also spells out

For decades, private defense attorneys have represented all the people who couldn't afford a lawyer but had a conflict of interest with the public defender's office.

No more.

Nevermore.

State Sen. Victor Crist, the concept's reluctant sponsor, said the plan will save the state millions of dollars. The private defense bar and local public defenders suggest it will fail because of cost

.

Reluctant? Why?

Critics seem to like the new model even less.

They have their biases. Public defenders will have to compete with the regional offices for the limited pool of new law school graduates willing to work for low pay.

Private attorneys will lose cash flow from conflict cases, some of which brought them $950 and took less than a day to resolve. Senate staff estimated that 80 percent of the criminal conflicts and child dependency now handled by private attorneys will be assigned to the regional offices.

They will still get overflow clients in cases with multiple defendants. But veterans of private conflict representation across the state said it won't be financially worthwhile to take only a handful of indigent cases at the state's asking price.

"Doubtful, " is how Gulfport lawyer James O'Neill described the likelihood of him remaining on the conflict list after 27 years. "I really don't see a lot of reason to."

That might present a few reasons.

Critics say the biggest losers will be defendants in the most serious cases - capital crimes that carry a death sentence or life in prison as punishment. They argue the staff at the regional conflict offices won't be large enough or experienced enough to handle those trials and appeals.

Assigning high-stakes cases to overworked attorneys who are spread out across large geographic areas is a recipe for disaster, private attorneys say. Poor representation on the front end of a case leads to costly appeals later.

"This is not something that can be done on the cheap, " said Jeffrey Harris, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer who is president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "When you're sick and you have a heart attack, you don't go looking for the cheapest doctor. You look for the best doctor."

I agree, Mr. Harris. The thing is, when it comes to dependency cases, nobody, and I mean nobody but the defense bar and the parents themselves is particularly interested in finding them "the best doctor".

T-Shirt of the day

I expect this to be a regular feature.

I spend a lot of time in a juvenile courthouse, which is a facility split between dependency cases and juvenile criminal cases.

I am always amazed at what people wear to their hearings, or the hearings of their children.

My favorite t-shirt sighting of all time was a simple black shirt with white lettering that said "Guilty".

Priceless.

Last week I saw "Hustler Honey" on a teenage girl in dependency court, and Friday I saw a parent wearing a shirt with the words "I get away with SOOO much".

As a defense attorney, I try to give some advice about court attire. I try.

We are not alone

I found a couple of posts on a blog authored by South Florida attorneys that I admit I hadn't read until the new bill regarding the defense of the poor was passed.

Here's an interesting post. Have an excerpt:

What does it mean for you, the defense attorney who has worked so hard to maintain your growing legal practice? You have a private practice, but you supplement your income with the dozen or so court appointments you get each year off “the wheel”. Or you do it because it is the right thing to do; you want to give something back to your community. Now you are told that, after the Public Defender’s Office conflicts, and the Regional Counsel Office conflicts, that you will be asked to take the case. You are told that you now are under contract and will be paid a flat fee. How much you ask? Let me tell you how much:

CAPITAL SEXUAL BATTERY...................................... 2,000
LIFE FELONY ................................................................ 2,500
FIRST PBL ....................................................................... 2,000
FELONY 1ST DEGREE.................................................... 1,500
FELONY 2ND DEGREE................................................... 1,000
FELONY 3RD DEGREE....................................................... 750
VIOLATION OF PROBATION - FELONY ..................... 500

Here are the rules: Let’s say you plead a third degree felony first time up, no depos taken, wham bam thank you ma’am; five hours of work, $750; that’s $150 per hour. But, let’s say you have that tough case, defendant with multiple priors, or psychological issues, or maybe they are even not guilty, and you need to try the case. You spend 75 hours on the case, and what do you get paid? You guessed it, $750; that’s $10 per hour.

Ten dollars an hour? Ouch.

And then there's this:

It’s time to stand up and fight. There will only be approximately 600-800 felony appointments for the private bar under this new system. It can only work if the attorneys on the wheel (about 325 of them) are willing to take these cases and get paid these ridiculous fees. If you just say “NO”, all of you, there will be nobody to take these cases and you will shut down part of this new system. But all it takes is a few attorneys breaking from the pack and taking the cases, and then, well, the legislature wins. The community loses, the victims lose, the defendants lose, and you lose.

Double ouch! Hey, I'm sympathetic, but DependencyDefense.com is all about adapting to this thing and trying to make some lemonade. Point taken, though. I faced something similar in my county when those on the dependency wheel got their rates cut drastically recently. Some saw me, for continuing to take cases, as a traitor. Hell, I actually was called a traitor. The thing is (and I don't claim that this is a wise thing) dependency defense is pretty much 100% of my practice. If it all goes away, I'll be fine. A couple of weeks on the beach, I'll get my head straight and process endless divorces like everyone else, but in this space before it all falls apart, I still care about my clients and like the fact that I'm good at what I do. I get families back together, and there is some satisfaction in that.

Like I said, point taken. The thing is, there really will always be people to take the under-compensated cases, and by and large they will not be qualified to deal with these cases.

A few weeks ago I saw a similar post at their blog, but I can't find the link now. It had some good advice for conflict and dependency attorneys, such as: let JAC know in writing immediately every case that you currently have.

[ed: sorry for the font changes that, despite my best efforts, can't be fixed once I add a quote to the post]

Welcome to DependencyDefense.com

What's any interesting site anymore without a blog? It's a slightly less interesting site, that's what it is.

DependencyDefense.com is a site with, admittedly, a narrow audience. It's about, well, dependency defense. This blog is based in Florida, but suspects that it will find interest in those practicing dependency law elsewhere (though there is little competent evidence to suggest that blogs can, in fact, suspect anything at all).

In Florida, we who defend indigent parents who have had their kids taken by DCF are in something of a state of confusion. At least those of us whose practice is composed all or mostly of dependency cases are, at least, a bit apprehensive about what used to be called SB1088 and is now called Chapter 2007-62.

For those who don't know, or who didn't arrive here from the DependencyDefense website, the gist of it is that in dependency cases, which just happen to have a lot of indigent (poor) people involved in them, private attorneys have handled them on behalf of the Good People of Florida for years at discount rates.

In my county, for instance (Orange, which is a population center and has a lot of dependency cases), attorneys were paid $65 an hour until a few years ago, which was bumped to $80 an hour and then recently was slashed to a $750 flat rate for an entire case (which often go on for years).

Now, I recognize that your regular fellow/felless reader might think that that's a lot of money, and I don't blame him/her for thinking that, but trust me, it is not. As far as hourly rates go, that falls (according to a Florida Bar graphic on an issue of FlaBarNews last year sometime) in the bottom 3% of hourly fees charged by Florida lawyers. It turns out, in fact, that it's less than most paralegals in this state earn.

Not that this blog is about whining over that. It isn't. That's just background. This blog is about what is going to happen to dependency defense in the Great State of Florida in the very near future, and about discussing what can be done to ensure continuity of quality legal representation of those involved in court cases with DCF.

What is happening, as explained on the DD.com website (I'm abbreviating there, I imagine that DD.com actually is a website, and probably has content I don't want my kids looking at) (OK, I just checked, and while it concerns subject matter one might expect, it really isn't that bad) (as of June 9, 2007, anyway), is that all dependency cases with poor parents will be handled by a new state agency.

That's what's great about blogs. Only in a blog can you get away with three parenthetical asides in one sentence.

The thing is, that new state agency has between now and October 1, 2007, to somehow spring forth fully formed from the head of Zeus and start litigating complex cases, and to date there are no publicly visible signs of progress there.

Private dependency defense attorneys are going to have to get smart, adapt to the new situation, and be genuinely committed to helping the new system work. That's what this blog is about.