"Disheartened"

(An open letter to Bob Butterworth)

One conversation with one attorney is not a scientific sample, but it is one interesting conversation nonetheless.

Chatting with a C_LS (motto "What did we ever need the child welfare part, anyway") attorney about last Friday's C_LS strategic planning pep rally involving many of DCF's lawyers in Orlando, (sorry for the awkward sentence structure there -- I know in German it's supposed to go time, negation, manner, place, in that order -- that seems to work in English as well, he summed up his feelings about the big meeting as leaving him disheartened.

He elaborated a bit, feeling like the main thrust of the meeting to explain how CWLS was going to become C_LS, a "statewide law firm" was to make it clear that all of the new bosses are outsiders, that is, that there was a certain vibe that can be described as "you (current attorneys) are the problem; we are not of you or from you, and are here to fix the problem."

With respect to DCF Secretary Butterworth (and it is genuine respect), I think that is the wrong approach (if, indeed, one man's "vibe" was accurate). DCF's lawyers aren't the problem. Yes, there are some who are drawn to government lawyer jobs because compensation and job security bear little relationship to the quality of one's legal skills or results; but such DCF attorneys are the minority.

Most of the DCF attorneys I know are good lawyers, and many had significant legal accomplishments prior to going to work for DCF. They struggle, however, with bringing legal standards and ethics to a culture that operates very differently. I'm told that one of the positive things that came out of the big meeting was an attempt to clarify who the DCF attorney's client is. That is necessary, and a question I resolutely answered for myself in my first week when I myself was a DCF attorney.

That's not enough, though. C_LS needs to be empowered to make reasonable demands upon their investigators and case managers with respect to gathering competent evidence and paying at least plausible lip service to the notion that there is such a thing as services to preserve a family. In other words, the People of Florida are not well served if the only way for a C_LS attorney to "win" a case is to separate parents from children and make every effort to keep it that way.

Before you turn CWLS into C_LS, consider simply making the requirements of CFOP (Children and Families Operating Procedure) 175-15(6)(c) actually work. That's already your policy, and there is no quality control on it. Also considering scrapping CFOP175-15(6)(f) entirely, and replace it with an internal quality control system withing the C_LS.