While legal aid lawyers get a salary, private lawyers who take assignments to defend the indigent are in a totally different boat.  A few years back, they went to war to get the rates increased so plumbers would stop laughing at them.  Eventually, they succeeded in obtaining an increase in the hourly rate that allowed them to almost break even.  It was a grand victory.

Except there is still a dirty little secret lurking behind these indigent defenders, and Carolyn Elefant did her math and figured it out. 

What do large-firm, white-collar criminal defense attorneys and court-appointed criminal lawyers have in common?  They both charge $650. Only for the Biglaw attorneys, that’s $650 an hour, while for court-appointed lawyers in Pennsylvania, it’s $650 for preparation of a felony case (or a whopping $2,000 for homicides).

It’s a cute way of comparing a harsh reality.  While many will complain about the $650 an hour lawyer, there are many more in the other category, trying to work within a $650 cap.  Where are the public screamers calling them vultures now?  They won’t know.  It’s not Stossel-worthy.

While court-appointed lawyers aren’t entitled to the same pay as their large-firm clients (whose clients can afford to pay huge fees), at the same time, $650 for a felony or $2,000 for a homicide is unconscionably low. At a bargain rate of $50/hour, that’s 13 hours for the felony case or 40  hours for the homicide. Kind of hard to squeeze in a trial with caps like that. 

If you’re a criminal defense lawyer, what do you do? Do you press your clients to take a plea? And how many of these cases do you handle at a loss before you stop accepting them at all? 

There’s the conundrum.  Most lawyers will ignore the cap, do their best to represent their client and, in essence, pay out of their own time for the cost of fulfilling the promise of Gideon, a cost that is supposed to be borne by society.  Then there are the others, the “plead ’em and weep” crowd, that will max out the cap and walk away.

Few will show any sympathy for the lawyers who defend the poor.  Even the good-guy lawyers can’t get a tear now and then.  But the numbers, as Carolyn shows, just don’t add up.  So what if they get $100 an hour.  The cap at the back end reduces the hourly rate to a farce.  Or the representation to a farce.  Take your pick.

Anybody at Biglaw want to limit their time to 13 hours preparation for a felony?  They can’t even prep for lunch that fast.  Welcome to the world of criminal defense.  For lawyers and indigent defendants.  Now that you see the numbers, you know what you’re getting.

And if your lawyer does his job regardless of the cap, he’s doing it on his own.  Remember that the next time you’re inclined to make fun of your “worthless” indigent defender.