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Standard Thirteen: Limitations on Private Practice of Contract Attorneys

American Bar Association, Standards for Criminal Justice, 4-1.2(d):

A lawyer should not accept more employment than the lawyer can discharge within the spirit of the constitutional mandate for speedy trial and the limits of the lawyer's capacity to give each client effective representation

American Bar Association, Standards, 5-3.2, Restrictions on Private Practice:

Defense organizations should be staffed with full-time attorneys. All such attorneys should be prohibited from engaging in the private practice of law.

National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Task Force on Courts, 1973, Standard 13.7:

The office of public defender should be a full-time occupation. State or local units of government should create regional public defenders serving more than one local unit of government if this is necessary to create a caseload of sufficient size to justify a full-time public defender. The public defender should be compensated at a rate not less than that of the presiding judge of the trial court of general jurisdiction.

National Legal Aid and Defender Association, Standards for Defender Services, Standard III-3:

In order to properly perform their function it is essential that the defenders achieve professional career status. Toward that end, hiring and promotion policies must be based upon merit. No defender attorney shall be discharged from his employment except for cause. Defenders should be full-time employees of their offices, with no private practice.

National Legal Aid and Defender Association, Standards for Defender Services, IV-1:

No defender office or defender attorney shall accept a workload which, by reason of the excessive size thereof, threatens to deny clients due process of law or places the office or attorney in imminent danger of violating any ethical canons governing the practice of law. To this end, the following actions should be taken and principles should apply:
1. In each jurisdiction, formulas establishing maximum workloads shall be established for defender organizations and shall govern the size of attorney and other staff workloads. In establishing such maximum workloads, up-to-date, accepted principles of manpower planning, statistical analysis and methods, and systems analysis shall be used. Such formulas shall include or be addressed to, the following:
  1. In establishing such formulas, it must be recognized that no single rigid numerical formula can be valid for all time or valid in all places. Therefore, maximum workload formulas must be sufficiently specific and definite in their application to objectively and promptly demonstrate with credibility whenever a work peak or work overload is approached or reached, yet must also be capable of scientifically sound modification based on changes (including upgrading) in the practice of criminal defense law and variables as they exist between communities and jurisdictions.
  2. In establishing such formulas, the goal of overall total high quality criminal defense representation must be kept paramount, with due regard for the fact that in most jurisdictions today the concept of overall total high quality criminal defense representation tends to be an unrealized aspiration rather than an attained reality.
  3. No defender office or appointed attorney shall accept any appointment which exceeds or jeopardizes his ability to render effective assistance of counsel in each case. No defender office or appointed attorney shall represent co-defendants in the same case, or otherwise accept appointment to any case which potentially places the organization or such attorney in danger of violating accepted standards of professional responsibility.
  4. In jurisdictions possessed of, or having reasonable expectation of obtaining electronic data processing programs which include workload management components, it is desirable that the defender workload formulas established hereunder be capable of implementation through such electronic data processing and that such implementation occur at the earliest feasible date.

National Legal Aid and Defender Association, Guidelines for Negotiating and Awarding Indigent Legal Defense Contracts, 1984, III-6, Allowable Caseloads:

The contract should specify a maximum allowable caseload for each full-time attorney, or equivalent, who handles cases through the contract. Caseloads should allow each lawyer to give every client the time and effort necessary to provide effective representation. Attorneys employed less than full-time on handling a mix of cases should handle a proportional caseload.

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Standard Thirteen: Limitations on Private Practice of Contract Attorneys