Correction: The starting salary for an assistant attorney in the Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office is $73,500. The starting salary for a paralegal is $44,096. Additionally, the city of Richmond supplements the salaries in the Office of the Public Defender and the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. The information was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.
Virginia’s lawyers of last resort, public defenders, say they’re straining under the weight of “crushing” workloads. New national standards, and a forthcoming study from the state legislature, will clarify the scope of the issue.
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Jankowski
The data was measured against new standards for public defenders published by a collaboration that includes the American State Bar Association and the National Center for State Courts.
Maria Jankowski, executive director of Virginia’s Indigent Defense Commission, the state agency that manages and trains public defenders and court-appointed attorneys, said the workloads are unsustainable.
Jankowski said public defenders offices face “an acute need for more staffing.”
“We are truly at a tipping point, and we cannot simply arrest our way out of this problem,” Jankowski said. “We have to rethink who we chose to arrest, who we chose to prosecute and why we have a criminal justice system.”
In Virginia, even the most conservative calculations show a similar strain.
In Suffolk, eight public defenders shoulder the weight of 1,900 cases, according to data shared by the office. Under the new standards, each lawyer is taking at least 98 more cases than they should. In Staunton and Virginia Beach, the numbers were similarly high. Lawyers in those offices each take 82 more cases than they should be expected to, on average.
Stephen Hanlon was Holland & Knight firm’s pro bono partner for 23 years before starting his firm, Lawyer Hanlon. He represented Black school children in a ‘70s lawsuit challenging Florida’s “Functional Literacy Test.” The children called him “Lawyer Hanlon.”
From Richmond to Roanoke, Fairfax to Fredericksburg, nearly every lawyer charged with protecting the poor is overworked, the data show.
Just how overworked is unclear.
Jankowski’s agency doesn’t track caseloads by type, which muddies the picture: murder cases can wind through the courtroom for months, while probation violations can be resolved in hours.
That means the new standards don’t neatly explain which offices have the most need. The numbers above assume a Virginia public defender only took on the least time-intensive cases.
Hanlon
Even still, just four localities shared caseload data within the bounds of the new standards. They are Petersburg, Alexandria, Portsmouth and Martinsville.
A clearer assessment of the problem is forthcoming.
In 2022, the Virginia legislature tasked their main auditing body, JLARC, to review how the state funds public defense. The bill was presented by state Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke.
JLARCs findings will become public in November of this year. The report will be the first of its kind in over a decade and is expected to break out Virginia-specific data, said Justin Brown, senior associate director at JLARC.
“I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that we don’t expect Virginia data to be too different from the national data,” said Brown, who is leading the study. “It’s clearly something that has been a concern for a while.”
Virginia’s system is complicated by some of the state’s idiosyncrasies. Some localities, like Henrico, do not use public defenders but court-appointed attorneys — lawyers in private practice who are paid at a rate set by the State Supreme Court.
It’s not clear whether that system is preferable to having full-time attorneys for indigent defense. But what is clear is that the pool of court-appointed attorneys is shrinking. In 2022, the pool of lawyers certified to take on indigent defendants shrunk by 11%.
Tracy Paner, chief of the Richmond public defender’s office, is shown in front of photos of public defenders at the office in Richmond on Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022.
At the Richmond Public Defender’s office, junior public defender salaries hover closer to $55,000, according to data. The starting salary for an assistant attorney in the Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office is $73,500 and the starting salary for a paralegal is $44,096.
Both are paid from state coffers, but prosecutors typically pick up supplements of up to $20,000, according to 2021 reporting in the Virginia Mercury. The city of Richmond also supplements the salaries in the Office of the Public Defender and the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.
Stephen Hanlon, the author of the national workload study, is adamant that all public defense systems need more public scrutiny.
He says it’s unethical for defendants to be stuck with attorneys that don’t have time to return their calls, and unethical for judges to be giving overworked lawyers more cases — an allotment system known as “docket management.”
“This will be very valuable to Virginia both for its funding to the legislature and its docket management for the court system,” said Hanlon.
From the Archives: Scenes from Grace Street in the RTD archives
07-12-1961 (cutline): Corner of Second and Grace where Parking Board recommends garage. Garage would have to cover half the block along Second from Grace to Franklin.
11-28-1959: Grace Street during busy Christmas shopping day.
11-09-1944 (cutline): Pedestrian wades through early morning grime on Grace Street.
12-26-1968: Grace Street
12-29-1953: Grace Street
05-22-1947 (cutline): Traffic congestion in Richmond--The west-bound flow on Grace Street in the evening peak hour, shown left near Adams Street, is close to the street's present capacity, an expert says.
06-11-1964: Grace Street
07-30-1962 (cutline): Turns off Ninth St. onto Grace St. can cause perplexing situations. Double parkers at Hotel Richmond sometimes make added confusion.
12-13-1959: Rainy day shoppers on Grace St.
11-29-1963 (cutline): Downtown traffic--Both pedestrian and vehicular--is heavy despite rainy skies. Pace picked up as rain slackened on traditional first day of Christmas shopping.
