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Standard Eight: Reports of Attorney Activity and Vouchers
- American Bar Association, Standards for CriminalJustice, Standard 5.1-2, Plan for Legal Representation, Commentary:
- In addition, those responsible for the administration of defense services programs should render periodic reports on operations, and these reports should be made available to the courts, to the bar, and to the public.
Regular reports help to maintain public confidence in the integrity of the services provided and are a standard feature of most public agencies. The Model Public Defender Act and the statutes establishing statewide defender programs require the preparation of reports.
American Bar Association, Standards for Criminal Justice, 5-3.3(b)xii, The Report to the Criminal Justice Section Council from the Criminal Justice Standards Committee, 1989:
- Contracts for services should include ... a system of case management and reporting.
National Legal Aid and Defender Association Guidelines for Negotiating and Awarding Indigent Defense Contracts, 1984, III-22, Management System:
- The contract shall provide that the Contractor shall maintain a case reporting and management information system, data from which shall be available to, or provided to, the Contracting Authority and Policy Board. Any such system shall be maintained independently from client files so as to disclose no confidential or privileged information. The case reporting and management information system shall be used to provide the Contractor, the Contracting Authority and the Policy Board with caseload information sufficient to assure compliance with Guidelines III-3, III-5, III-14, and III-16 particularly.
National Study Commission on Defense Services, Guidelines for Legal Defense Systems in the United States, 1976, Guideline 3.4, Nonpersonnel Needs in Defender Offices, supra, p. 52.
National Study Commission on Defense Services, Guidelines, 4.1, Task Allocation in the Trial Function:
- Specialists and Supporting Services:
Professional business management staff should be employed by defender offices to provide expertise in budget development and financial management, personnel administration, purchasing, data processing, statistics, record keeping and information systems, facilities management and other administrative services if senior legal management are expending at least one person-year of effort for these functions or where administrative and business management functions are not being performed effectively and on a timely basis.
National Study Commission on Defense Services, Guidelines, 5.2, Statistics and Record Keeping:
- Every defender office should maintain a central filing and record system with daily retrieval of information concerning all open cases. The system should include, at a minimum, an alphabetical card index system with a card containing detailed and current information on every open case, and a docket book or calendar which contains future court appearance activities.
Every Defender Director should receive, on a weekly or monthly basis, detailed caseload and dispositional data, broken down by type of case, type of function, disposition, and by individual attorney workload.
P/T Paralegal - TDA
