Read all about it here. Now, jump in the wayback machine and see how the same fairly obvious reforms were suggested almost four years ago in this OPPAGA report. If you read it, you can start at page 6 for parallels to the "new" initiatives.
Here's an excerpt from today's Florida Bar News article:
Bob Butterworth is on a mission to reinvent the once beleaguered social services agency he now heads by creating a professional law firm where lawyers will want to work....
...There will be two divisions. John Copelan will remain as DCF’s general counsel, with 35 to 40 lawyers in the General Legal Services Division, where duties include handling about 1,100 annual contracts...
...Asked what attributes [Mary Cagle, new statewide director of "CLS"] will look for in lawyers she hires, Cagle answered: “You need somebody who is passionate. If we can fix the legal piece, if we can make Children’s Legal Services in the department work, it is going to have a dramatic impact on the safety of kids and the length of stay in foster care.”
Is she saying that the "legal piece" is broken because of lack of passion among CWLS lawyers? CWLS has its problems, but I don't think that is it, I have to say.
George Sheldon, assistant secretary for operations, added they are hiring regional managing lawyers in the $75,000 to $90,000 range, so someone with experience can work their way up the ladder.
I'll need some more information to figure out how that is a change from how it is now. Actually, if that means that some supervising attorney jobs go away (I don't know that they are), then there will actually be less upladder real estate in the future than there is now.
“There is going to be an increased expectation at the department. I think you will find a lot of these lawyers wanting to step up to the plate,” Sheldon said.
“We are looking to explain to the lawyers that the expectation, as with any lawyer, is that when you go to court, you have met with case managers, you know all the issues in the case, and you are prepared to advocate on behalf of that child in court,” Cagle said.
“You have to stand up and be the mouthpiece. That is not happening today in every courtroom. We are going to train them and lay out the expectations and expect them to step up.”
Not to be overly critical, but all this says to me is that the standards required of DCF in the future will be pretty basic and minimal standards of attorney conduct.
Later, she added, “You know, we’re not at the point in time to ask what are you going to do with the people we have, because, in their defense, they have not had any training. They haven’t even known who their boss was. They had no chain of command or no definition in terms of who their client was. They didn’t have a model to work from. There was no direction. You really have to put all that in place before you ask that question.”
A couple of comments about that bolded portion. When I was a CWLS lawyer, I realized literally within the first week that I would have to carefully and decisively define who my client is, and stick to the definition. I searched through some bar publications about just that issue among government lawyers and I got my answer. It really isn't that hard to do, and any decent lawyer should first be concerned about it, and then quickly mentally resolve the matter. As for the training thing, that is also an obvious problem and has been for years. If they are really going to do something about that, then that is a very good thing for Florida.
Good luck to CWLS/CLS. The more professional it is, the better it is for parents and their children.
No comments:
Post a Comment