Court Attorney Cost Data Disputed : Lawyers’ Spokesman Charges Error in Computing Savings

Los Angeles County officials who claim that the courts could save money by depending less upon appointed individual private attorneys to defend the poor are basing their argument on phony figures, a spokesman for the lawyers contended Wednesday.

In telling municipal judges that it would be cheaper to assign more indigent cases to an organization of lawyers that contracts with the county for set salaries, the county’s chief administrative officer was using data based on a computer programming error, according to Charles L. Lindner, vice president of the Criminal Courts Bar Assn.

Lindner said last week in a letter to Municipal Judge Larry Fidler, chairman of an ad hoc committee to consider expanding the alternate defense counsel system and cutting down on the number of private attorney appointments, that the report failed to take into account between 20,000 and 30,000 cases in which appointed attorneys pleaded their clients guilty at arraignment.

That oversight, Lindner said, occurred because those particular attorneys were working on a per diem basis and the computer counted a single page of cases as one case, thus increasing the cost-per-case figure.

The attorney said these were “inaccuracies of enormous magnitude.”

Penny Van Bogaert, chief analyst for the chief administrative office, responded that the programming discrepancy made little difference, because most arraignments are at the central arraignment courts downtown. The alternate defense counsel program being recommended for expansion currently operates only in San Fernando, Van Nuys and West Los Angeles.

Van Bogaert said there is still “absolutely no question” that the alternate defense counsel system is cheaper.

The county auditor-controller’s office reported to the Board of Supervisors last week that it had found “significant abuses” by some private lawyers and concluded that the county could save millions of dollars a year by expanding the alternate defense counsel program or similar contract system.

The auditor-controller’s report looked at the payment claims of five unidentified private attorneys to conclude that the county has been drastically overcharged in some cases.

“They picked five lawyers,” Lindner said, “out of 3,300 doing this kind of work. Of the 600 lawyers that had Municipal Court appointments last year, 540 made less than $10,000 for the year off the court system. What you’ve got are a few out of 3,300 who are making big bucks.”