Judicial pay in New York has been a disgrace for a long time now. And so the leader of the pack, Chief Judge Judith Kaye, has decided to take charge of the situation and . . . write an op-ed piece. Oooh. Take that, you legislators.
These past months, actually years, of promised but unrealized salary increases for judges, have of course been highly dispiriting. We have watched the cost of living skyrocket. We have watched the compensation of the pool from which judges are drawn — outstanding lawyers of at least 10 years’ experience — far outpace our own compensation.
Ouch. Scathing. Judges are “highly dispirited!” That Judge Kaye, you don’t want to piss her off.
Today, many recent law graduates, some of them not yet admitted to the bar, earn more than we do. Additional bonuses are being heaped on the bonuses already being added to their salaries. And we have documented the dozens and dozens of public employees who earn considerably more than we do.
True that. Of course, not too many judges would be able to land a Biglaw job. In fact, they probably wouldn’t have gotten an interview.
Upsetting as it is to the judges, this picture should trouble New Yorkers even more. The public, after all, needs and deserves a first-class judiciary. The public needs and deserves to attract, and keep, the very best of the Bar on the bench. Lawyers don’t become judges to become rich. But let’s face it, freezing their compensation at the bottom rung of judicial pay scales is unfair to them. It disserves the public interest.
It disserves the public interest? That’s it? That’s the most persuasive, forceful argument she’s got? No wonder those legislators are shaking in their boots. The other Judge Judy is on the warpath, her whoop being that it disserves the public interest.
Judge Kaye is, of course, quite right about the disgraceful state of judicial salaries. But as this lags on, year after year, writing stuff like this is just plain embarrassing. And if the Legislature ignores you (as they have and will again), what are you going to do about it? Write another, even more scathing, op-ed?
A while back, I wrote a piece for Judicial Reports about the lawyers’ view of the judges’ predicament. In the scheme of fiscal priorities (remember Herzberg’s Theory of Motivation and Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs?), there is probably no group less sympathetic than judges. You want private lawyer incomes, get off the bench. But then, I bet that most judges will be just a little surprised by the reality in the trenches. Every ex-judge doesn’t get a TV show. And a glut of ex-judges won’t help Biglaw profits per partner.
Judges deserve to make far better money than they’re now getting. Lawyers in the trenches do as well, by the way, though that never really makes it onto anyone’s radar when they’re busy complaining about themselves.
How long will the judiciary keep begging for the Legislature to be nice to them? At what point will our judges decide that the same old argument are just the same old argument? And when will the judges realize that we are all in this together? Do you think that the cost of living skyrocketed only for judges?
Yes, Judge Kaye, judges deserve a salary increase. But you are not going to get it by writing another tired op-ed piece. And you will not get lawyers on board when the judiciary was all too happy to hang us out to dry when lawyers couldn’t pay their rent. We are all in this together. Until that message gets through, you can write as many op-eds as you like about disservice, but it’s not going to do any good.
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Jonathan E. Gradess, Executive Director, NYSDA to P.J. M. Dolores Denman, 4th Dept., Public Hearing, Rochester, NY Oct. 20, 1998:
We had a fair amount of testimony in our downstate New York City hearings conerning practices in both the 1st and 2nd Departments, wide ranging practices concerning the handling of vouchers,decisions in the Department regarding them, cuts to vouchers after filing, and such and so forth. I wonder if you might address the question in the 4th Department whether or not such policies exist regarding handling of vouchers.
JUSTICE DENMAN: We review those vouchers very carefully. These are for assigned counsel. If there’s a conflict and the Public Defender’s Office is not able to handle it for some reason, then we assign counsel.
What we have found recently — and it’s sort of an interesting result — is that we are not getting the excessive vouchers that we once did. We did a lot of cutting back on vouchers because assigned counsel have to understand that there is some pro bono component to what they’re doing. We pay them, but not the way you would pay a retained private counsel. …
Judges deserve a salary increase. But maybe there is some pro bono component to what they are doing.
Regards. Kathleen
Exactly. Not only has the judiciary done little to support criminal defense lawyers ability to survive financially, but they have been utterly cavalier about it. Lawyers have to understand that there is a pro bono component? This was when the maximum on a voucher after trial was $1200 at $65 an hour in court, $25 an hour out of court, and the lawyers pay their rent, staff and costs out of that windfall.
In the meantime, I’m sure they would be shocked to find out how many “private retained” counsel are taking felonies for $1500 apiece, and doing as many as possible to cover their costs and earn a living. At that price point and volume, it’s impossible to provide quality representation, but they feel that they have no choice. It’s a downward spiral that has degraded the profession. But we should care about the judges salaries. Just like the judges care so deeply about ours.
S —
Oblivious, just as we all are about something or other. It is unnatural for us to walk in another man’s shoes as our fictional Atticus discussed with his daughter and encouraged her to do.
There are judges who are very considerate about vouchers and other aspects of the income-earning situation and I do not know if they are in the minority. A few are noticeably abusive about it and their disrespect quickly gets around the bar.
I believe that the free market exists and functions efficiently. There is no scarcity of attorneys. It is a cycle of oversupply and undersupply, and the market winnows attorneys out in a rather predictable pattern.
I recollect in the late 80s gazing at the mass class portraits outside the dean’s office. Since 1979 the class sizes had almost tripled. It seemed to me we were in for it. Where will most of us work? was my thought. Hard work may not be rewarded in glut conditions. You need ingenuity to create your own luck, even if your objective is the income (and stress) of corporate/big law or the security (and boredom) of government work.
What compounds this for the baby boom generation is that the situation has more or less followed us, lifelong, in most professions.
Your comment about the $1,500 fee per felony brings to mind hamsters on a flywheel. It is potentially very damaging to clients for attorneys to do felonies in volume as you have discussed before.
But these are individual responses to the Glut. The Glut merits discussion, I think. It is the forest behind the trees.
I did not mean to go on so long.
Regards, Kathleen.
Anything That Fits, They’ll Print
After another round of threatening, pleading and
Anything That Fits, They’ll Print
After another round of threatening, pleading and
Anything That Fits, They’ll Print
After another round of threatening, pleading and
Chief Judge on “Let’s Make a Deal”
This is getting really embarrassing.
Chief Judge on “Let’s Make a Deal”
This is getting really embarrassing.
Resources Depleted, It’s Time To Go
An upstate Supreme has given up.
The High Price of Hookers For Judges
While the salacious details of Eliot Spitzer’s hookergate remains a favorite topic for discussion around New York, there’s one group that’s not enjoying any of it very much:
Chief Judge Kaye Pulls The Trigger
The problem with making threats is that they mean nothing if you don’t follow through.