And no date on the horizon, either. So work done from 4/1/07 – 6/30/07 is still unpaid for 2371 attorneys. And, if the attorney waits more than 30 days to bill after a case closes – there is a 10% penalty.
If the Commonwealth takes six or more months to pay, there is no interest paid by the Commonwealth.
Why do I do some of this work? Because when a judge appoints me to represent a child, it could be life or death. Remember, 39% of court appointments are NOT for criminal defendants.
Please share widely!
…it is the most vulnerable who have been slashed and left behind. Not just in Massachusetts….
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Why? Well the vulnerable do not have lobbyists to take the DeLays of the world off to play golf in Scotland and the like….
DiMasi and Murray are.
number of attorneys that are licensed far in excess of the number actually needed to maintain the already outrageous quantity of frivolous and ridiculous law suits already clogging the system.
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IMO, the biggest problem with the USA is that there are far too many lawyers. They are considered an extremely low life form amongst the general public being held with a respect slightly below that of a used car salesman. Most of our politicians are low life lawyers….no wonder the country is a mess.
there’ll be fewer fires. brilliant!
First, 17% of the State Senators are attorneys. Not a majority. About 30% of the House are attorneys, not a majority.
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The court appointed attorneys do terrible things like try and protect kids in state care, try and ensure that the right to counsel exists, and speedy trial, and innocent until proven guilty. Surely you support these goals, right?
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Oh – and receive no health insurance, no pension, no sick time…and pay their own rent, for every sheet of paper, and receive $50 an hour, which at least for me after expenses is way, way less than that.
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Oh, and represent folk fighting against involuntary commitment, who have no attorneys….
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And of course, Abraham Lincoln was an attorney. John Adams was an attorney.
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Are you claiming the constitution that John Adams helped write – for Massachusetts and later the United States is a mess?
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And that the abolition of slavery under Lincoln and the survival of these United States as one country is a mess?
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I will tell you what is “a mess” – the fact that the average CEO [that is Chief Executive Officer in case you did not know] now earns 436 times the annual pay of the workers in their companies in these United States. And that Hedge Fund salesmen can earn $600,000,000 [thats right SIX HUNDRED MILLION] – now that’s obscene. Not that YOU asked ME.
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Oh yeah – and these poverty lawyers haven’t been paid for three months worth of work – 4/1/07-6/30/07 at those low rates…that they already did for vulnerable Massachusetts citizens. Hello!!!
lawyer reform
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The subsection on reducing the number of lawyers in politics
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politics
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As we see from this non partisan group, lawyers in America, in particular, have become a huge problem. All the way from ambulance chasing millionaires like John Edwards to ridiculous
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$60 M dollar dry cleaners pants torts…it’s out of control.
What does reducing the number of litigators out there have to do with paying court-appointed attorneys? Absolutely nothing.
…there was a promise by the State to pay, and the State reneged on that promise. It really is as simple as that.
and politicians, and businesspeople…are men. maybe we should start going to the source and start weeding them out a birth. what do you think?
Are you proposing parthenogenesis as a remedy?
(that is, in his line of rhetorical pursuit, not his System for the Transfer of Vital Fluids Throughout the Body and Its Extremities), I suppose the remedy I suggest is a bit of naval gazing by the likes of Master Tom. I might recommend that he have a measuring stick at the ready, so as to maintain some sense of proportion. The stick, of course should be subdivided on the normal and not on the logarithmic scale.
Too bad the link offered regarding lawyers was not read or given any consideration in the rush to be witty. God forbid something be learned or considered….. oops, sorry for using the awful “God” word.
But the assumptions behind the argument are too absurd. Sorry, I just can’t take it seriously.
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You may feel that lawyers a scum, but nevertheless the MA gov’t has extracted many hours of hard work out of that local scum and are now bilking them. Is that ok by you?
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Here is the equivalent situation for me: I think anyone volunteering for the military these days is an idiot, because they know they will be deployed in an illegal war founded on lies. However, if they do enlist, I insist that they damn well better be paid for services rendered. The government accepts their work and dedication, the government better follow through with a paycheck and promised bennies.
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As for the word god, use it as you will. It is people of faith who profess to have prohibitions against throwing it around casually as you did, not me.
Laurel – you get it.
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Here we have folks providing mandated services, required by our state constitution for below market rates. The shame is that the Commonwealth will not even pay for those services on time, after contracting for them.
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When the Governor or the MBTA Board contract for outside “independent contractor lawyers” at $400 or $600 an hour, I bet they do not make them wait like the grunts of the legal system who represent the poor – and are treated with the same disrespect their clients experience.
The State bureaucracy routinely late pays or “stiffs” sub contractors all the time. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the tradesmen who did Deval’s new drapes have yet to be paid. Join the club
insulted by omitting her from inclusion with the all the shifty lawyers, politicians and business people? Failure to include her amongst the sleaziest of the sleazy men is a bit chauvinistic, don’t you agree?
Unless a court of law finds someone guilty of something illegal, I presume they are innocent. Even if that someone is you.
The Trolls they eats with their fingers
The Trolls they eats with their toes
The Trolls is always right
‘Cause Trolls don’t need no facts
‘Cause Trolls is them that knows.
When heard by ears in denial, a childish, ad hominen attack on the speaker is all too common.
You were not interested in facts, but instead attacked an entire profession. You equate contingent tort lawyers with child welfare lawyers as if any zealous defense is wrong. When child welfare lawyers sought to be paid for work already done, you used that as a reason to attack all lawyers, and any person elected to office who happened to also be an attorney.
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THAT WAS CHILDISH – and an unprincipled attack on a learned profession and on ME. Worse, your post was not even related to mine, but you used it to post an ignorant, biased, and baseless attack on ME and what I do when I represent parents and children. When that was brought to your attention, you simply attacked all lawyers again. The internet, blog definition of a “troll” is one who seeks to attack and get a rise out of a blog community, but actually is not contributing information to the discussion. In my opinion, that is what you have done. Apparently, you do view my little limerick adversely – if it causes you to shape up and participate in a collegial manner, good.
I offered NO personal attack on YOU as you have done directly to ME. What you are correct about is that I believe that there are far, far too many lawyers and frivolous torts. I merely expressed this concern and then substantiated with a non partisan article which while you dismiss it and don’t agree with its contents, gives you no right to attack me personally as you have clearly done.Feel free to continue your ad hominem “troll” attacks. I prefer not to lower myself into the sewer of personal insults against dissenting opinion as you have chosen to do..
If you insist on complaining about not being paid for your services, perhaps you might be more successful in obtaining your overdue fees by lodging a formal complaint with the State Administration rather than whining about it on a blog.
And your choice of adjectives, going back to the beginning were “attacks” and I suggest that your links had no substance. You want information? First, there is no possibility of a suit – Go to http://www.bristolcpcs for your history lesson.
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Or how about: http://www.nlada.org… or http://www.abavideon… or http://calbar.ca.gov…
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Tell me if you want more! By all means, educate yourself as to the difference between the tort bar and indigent defense pursuant to the Sixth Amendment, Gideon, or Santosky v. Kramer… See http://www.law.corne… or what the federal government has done to the American Family, why there is a civil defense bar for indigents http://www.nccpr.org…
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Lumping the indigent defense bar in with tort lawyers is just plain ignorant. Calling a “notice post” whining is an ad hominem attack – your posts are chock full of denigration, pejorative word choices, and in fact, were not even in response to the original post. You simply used a post about the status of a line item for indigent defense to attack all attorneys. tsk tsk
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You asked to be educated. Get back to me when you have followed MY links and read them.
…you believe that state government should be permitted to reneg on its part of a bargain–a promise to pay for work done.
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Gotcha.
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Maybe those who might want to be “bar advocates” should demand retainers before becoming bar advocates. No retainer, no bar advocate.
first , a “credit check’ is done on the prospective customer ( in this case the State). If the client has a record of not paying in a timely manner or not paying at all, you refuse to do business…or at least until you get paid for the last service that they still owe you for from 6 months ago….pretty simple , eh?
The big mistake that State vendors make is that they think it’s no problem!,.. after all, ,it’s the State, right? ..they’re good for it”…Wrong! They’re among the biggest late paying deadbeats in the country.
Believe me, I’ve been there , seen it , done it. Unless your cash flow can handle 90 to 180 day payment terms, you will go out of business dealing with the State.
See above – “low life lawyers” OOOOOOOOOOOOHHH alliteration in ad hominem attacks, even. Or you think it doesn’t count if you trash an entire profession???