Us vs. Them?

In the interest of equal time, I will post, in its entirety, an email I got today. I get to preface it first, however.

This blog is not (and has never been) about attacking individual lawyers who work for the RCs on the basis of their expertise, ethics, or commitment to their clients. I am not an "us vs. them" kind of guy. I don't care about that; that's not the point.

The point, if you go to dependencydefense.com and read the bits about why the website exists, is (or was) to try to find solutions to the new order of things given to us by the legislature, and to be vigilant to see that parents didn't experience a sudden lack of quality representation. It was to that end that I emailed (repeatedly) all five of the Regional Counsels to invite them to discuss how the private bar could help them and work on training programs. None of them ever replied to me on that.

So the "point" of all this has evolved a bit, and now is more along the lines of simply reporting on a government agency run by government agents to help keep it accountable.

So that's a long preface. This is not "us vs. them", at least not from the point of view of the owner and author of this blog and its parent website. With no further delay, we visit the mailbag:

Though I am appointed as a private attorney, let me give you the other side. In the 2nd Circuit, the Regional Counsel’s Office has hired 3 experienced attorneys who previously worked both for DCF and as parent’s attorneys, and they are getting the majority of cases. It’s not perfect—they’re already overworked; whenever one of them quits, it’ll become impossible; and as State employees, they may never get a raise; but they’re doing pretty well.

On the other hand, I recently found out that a private attorney on one of my cases was appointed at Arraignment, negotiated with the Department to declare the parent non-offending, and was then discharged from the case, even though it remains open as to the child and other parent. The attorney gets $1,000 and the parent has no representation for the remainder of the case.

My comments: 1) of course they are already overworked. I sympathize, but that is not a good thing; 2) The private attorney you cite should not have done that. The flip side of that same coin, my friends, is that several of us have spent a long time on cases representing the interests of a parent only to have JAC protest, once it is over, that the parent is non-offending and as such the lawyer should not be paid (JAC can be found on either side of that question, depending upon who you ask). The bottom line is that the statute says that "parents" are entitled to counsel and does not distinguish between the rather imprecise and pragmatic terms we use for convenience, "offending and non-offending". So you are right to criticize that lawyer. I feel inspired to request an official Bar opinion on that so I can post it here.

Thanks for the email, by the way! Various points of view are welcome here.

[Update/amendment. It seems I cannot request a Bar opinion as I suggest above that I would, since the ethics lawyers are not supposed to accept requests regarding the conduct of one who is not the inquirer. Does anyone have an idea how we might legitimately get an opinion from the Bar on withdrawing from a "non-offending" parent. Since I've never done it and wouldn't consider doing it, I can't ask the question, it seems].