In the interest of full disclosure, part of the work I do is representing indigent parents and children in cases where DSS has taken children out of their homes, or as an appointed Guardian Ad Litem guarding the education or medical care or safety of a minor who is a ward of the state. These are the accounts that were either underfunded [line item 0321-1510] or vetoed [0330-0300]. But then kids don’t vote, and there is no money in fighting for the indigent, and for basic rights.
Yes, I also take full rate private clients and fight for them as well. If I did not, I would be bankrupt, and I do care about all my cases.
But there is something about these kids, at the mercy of the system, that means I never say no to an appointment. It could be life and death, after all.
there is no excuse for such mistreatment of people vital to the system.
I hope a few judges take some initiative and conscript a few $400/hr white shoe types to serve for a while – THAT will get the ‘right’ people making phone calls!
immune from the draft? đŸ˜‰
Yes, it’s August, time for the Members of the Great and General Court to head for Truro and lie on fainting couches and fan themselves with shredded copies of the Herald while they eat bon-bons and chit chat with the shrinks on vacation from Manhattan at The Colony. (NEVER have a breakdown in August!)
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I would say they are a PERFECT first line of attack!
would you want a legislator [with a law degree] who hasn’t been working real hard at these kind of cases representing you?
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I think it’s a swell idea, if I believed that legislators were [still] good lawyers. Of course, I’ve never even been in a court room, so WTF do I know?
At 19 years old I argued for a PJC over a speeding ticket in Raleigh, NC. Got nailed on a “downgrade” of the speed where the sign was 100% behind a bush. 36 in a 25 on a street with no sidewalks, and 2 lanes in each direction. I even told the cop: I’m glad you’re finding legit reasons for pulling over college kids at midnight on a Friday night — but I’m coming back from the computer lab.
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The judge liked me, and I got the PJC. I didn’t have to pay the $100 ticket, but did have to pay $85 in court costs. Yeah, it was crap, but so it goes. I haven’t gotten a speeding ticket since, but it’s really hard to get pulled over for speeding on the T or a bicycle.
Whatever the critical mass of calls needed for relief, it has not happened yet! And the pay for guardian ad litems is also at risk, and does not even have any organization to fight for it. We bar advocates decided we needed to stick together, so formed a 501(c)(6) called MACAA [Mass. Assn. of Court Appointed Attorneys] and I believe that this has helped, somewhat…it is very interesting and useful to be in touch with other attorneys who work for the indigent statewide. But, still, here we are – underfunded and many unpaid for months…again.
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[one correction]
…is there anything in the contracts that the bar advocates sign regarding timing of payment after submission of invoices? If there is, then the bar advocates could quite rightly claim that non-payment within the contractual time period is a breach of contract with the state, which would mean that the bar advocates could, basically, not provide further service until they are paid.
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I understand your emotional desire to provide service to clients who have been assigned to you under your contract, but, looking at it rationally, you have to protect yourself, as well. But, unless somebody pays you, you aren’t going to have a roof over your head, much less an office.
The contract for Bar Advocates (which technically only means the criminal defenders who have to join a county bar advocate program to receive appointments) says that payment is subject to appropriation at rates set by the legislature. Many of the panels (e.g. Children and Family Law, Mental Health, Appeals) have no contracts at all.
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The contracts do not obligate the bar advocate to take any number of cases only to zealously represent the clients whose cases they do take.
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State procurement law does say that providers are to be paid within 30 days of the timely submission of an invoice.
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Unfortunately for your proposition that appointed attorneys could refuse to provide services if they aren’t paid in a timely fashion, the Code of Professional Conduct for attorneys requires lawyers to continue to work on cases in court (assigned or privately retained) until the court gives the attorney leave to withdraw. Contract issues aside, an attorney cannot just stop working on a case s/he already has just because payment is late.
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The other leverage that court-appointed attorneys have is refusing to take new cases (called NNC) when the commonwealth is defaulting on its obligation to pay in a timely fashion. But for attorneys who rely on their state work for the great percentage of their income, that may not be a helpful option. The Committee for Public Counsel Services HAS funds to pay for work perfomred in this new fiscal year (FY08). So, if a bar advocate takes a NNC posture, s/he may be speeding up payment for 4th quarter FY07 bills but will have reduced his/her CPCS billing for 1st Q FY08. Unless s/he can develop significant private billings in that time and unless a large percent of appointed attorneys go NNC, the NNC attorney will have only managed to further reduce his/her income.
…I understand what you are referring to by the Code of Professional Conduct. But who, exactly, is the client in a situation like this? As far as I’m concerned, the client is the person paying (or not paying, but is supposed to pay) the bills–in this case, the state of Massachusetts. In other words, the bar advocates’ representation of the individual clients is essentially “ex rel,” and so forth.
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Quite frankly, maybe the bar advocates who are not getting timely paid should walk out en mass and move to withdraw from cases for which the state is not paying them. That would make for an interesting conundrum.
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Amber’s problem appears to be that she is too emotionally involved in her practice regarding the children, that she is unable to pull back and recognize that the state government doesn’t particularly care about the children. That’s true all over, not just in MA, not just in the US, but I’ve seen it in the foreign press as well. This might be a topic for another thread, but the sad fact is that in most areas of the world children are an afterthought.
Some kinds of bar advocate work have contracts, some do not. All other vendors are paid interest if the state takes more than 30 days to pay them – but the court appointed private attorneys some call bar advocates do not get interest [unlike snow plow operators, who receive twice as much per hour!]. There is language in the Comptroller statutes that invoices are supposed to be paid within 30 days, or interest is due – except for court appointed attorneys [I kid you not]. And if court appointed attorneys do not bill within 30 days of completing work on a case, then THEY are docked 10%.
or more accurately how they fail to pay their bills.
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A snowplow company can wait up to a year to get paid for the prvious year. Yes that’s right, they wait one year and historically have waited longer.
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Ma Bell waits up to ninety days and longer. Don’t know about Edison.
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Vendors is a least ninety days. Point being. the only bills the state pays on time is their active payroll and sometimes they screwed that up (Dukakis Administratio) we had several pay less pay days.
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Lawyers are whining? Gee that’s too bad. Doctors and dentists too a lot of pro bono/gratis work. Lawyers are immune? What profession gets their fee 100% up front?
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Mark twain had some pithy comments re lawyers.
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My experience with public defenders and most district court attorneys: throw the defendant under the bus. Most aren’t worth five bucks an hour in court. They play let’s make a deal with the prosecution and then tell the defendant it isn’t a triable case, whether it is or isn’t.
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I’ll stay awake tonight worrying about hack attorneys.
I have never stipped anyone out [I do not do criminal law, friend] but child welfare law. There are many varieties of law where the constitution or statute consider that what is at stake to be lost [liberty, your children, your parents, etc.] is so important that folks who cannot afford counsel are entitled to appointment of counsel. I do not know where you have been, but what you describe sounds more like a TV show than the lives, courts, and cases I experience.
…the person(s) hiding behind the MCRD handle have shown themselves to be numbskulls, but let me ask you this.
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Given the haphazard nature of payment by the state, and given the fact that the state refuses to pay interest on past-due bills, has there been any move by the bar advocates to demand retainers before taking on new cases? In other words, payment up front, to be banked and deducted from on a recurring basis. If not, why not? Whether or not statute allows for it is not a reason for not demanding a retainer to take on a case.
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I re-iterate my comment above. As far as I can tell, the client is the state, since it is paying the bills. If the state refuses to pay its bills, it doesn’t get services, even in what is essentially an “ex rel” situtation.
Go to http://www.bristolcpcs.org and check out the archives. Not much has been added for a while, but I think you fill find the answers to your questions, raj.
The client is not the Commonwealth simply because they’re paying the bills. The rules of professional conduct and Massachusetts case law make it quite clear that the client is the person being represented or assisted by the attorney, not whoever is paying the legal fees. If, for example, my mother wanted to pay an attorney to represent me, that doesn’t mean that the attorney suddenly represents my mother instead of me. All of the attorney’s duties under the MRPC- competence, diligence, communication, confidentiality, etc.- would apply to me, as the subject of the representation, not to my mother, although she is paying the bills. That may seem strange to you, but think about the repercussions were it otherwise. For instance, a court-appointed attorney would have no duty of confidentiality to an indigent client. The attorney could feel free to divulge whatever information he or she wanted to to the Commonwealth and its agents (ie: ADAs and other government attorneys). Obviously that would completely destroy the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship, since indigent clients would know that they couldn’t trust their attorneys.
http://blog.masslive…