County Urged to End Private-Attorney Use

San Diego County eventually could save $7 million annually by creating an in-house law firm to handle the thousands of court cases now assigned to private lawyers in which the Public Defender’s Office has a conflict of interest, county budget planners say.

Recommending formally that the county Board of Supervisors approve a switch from more costly private lawyers paid an hourly rate to a salaried in-house agency, budget experts also have urged the expansion of the juvenile court division at the existing Public Defender’s Office.

The two-pronged plan, which calls for hiring 40 new county lawyers, was similar to a tentative proposal outlined last month. The county was prodded by the unexpectedly high costs of providing poor people with a free private lawyer in certain juvenile court and criminal cases.

The tentative plan, however, projected an annual savings of $5 million while the formal proposal, detailed in a report presented Monday to the county board, figures the savings at about $7 million. The original figure was only a preliminary estimate, said June Komar, deputy chief administrative officer.

The county board is scheduled to take up the plan on June 5, after local bar leaders have had an opportunity to discuss it, according to the report. The county’s Superior Court judges already have indicated their support for it.

If approved, the plan would take effect Jan. 1, according to the report.

Bar leaders, however, said their first impression of the report was that its assumptions and calculations were suspect. “Just off the top of my head, those figures are not truly representative of what it costs on those cases now,” said Barton C. Sheela III, president of the Criminal Defense Bar Assn., which counts about 200 members.

Sheela said his group already is checking the numbers “so that we can show the figures are bad.” And he said he is worried that the county’s emphasis on the bottom line is diverting attention from the quality of attorney services.

The Board of Supervisors, he said, “shouldn’t look at (indigent clients) as sticks of wood. These people are their constituents. The county has a duty to provide these people with quality representation, not a warm body with a Bar card.”

Virginia Nelson, president of the San Diego County Bar Assn., said the bar has not been formally presented with the plan. But, she said, its board of directors voted at a recent meeting to affirm its support for “the importance of the contribution” made by private attorneys.

The county plan was prepared after Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey learned that the revised cost of the current system, which was budgeted for $2.3 million in fiscal 1990, had reached $14 million--a 609% increase.

Under the current system, that money is dispensed to about 350 San Diego-area lawyers in private practice through the Department of Alternate Defense Counsel, better known as the “conflicts office.”

The cases, those the Public Defender’s Office can’t handle because of a conflict of interest, usually involve multiple defendants or, in juvenile court, any number of relatives, all of whom may be entitled under the U.S. Constitution to a free lawyer.

The lawyers earn a fixed hourly fee--usually $40, $50 or $60 per hour.

Fueling the increase from $2.3 million to $14 million was a rise in the number of drug cases swamping the courts, officials said. But the major factor, it turned out, is that, in arriving at the $2.3-million estimate, county budget officials failed to count an entire category of juvenile court cases.

The new plan focuses significantly on juvenile court cases, particularly dependency cases, those in which the county seeks custody of a child it contends has been abused or neglected.

The plan calls for the addition of 14 lawyers to the four deputies already handling dependencies at the Public Defender’s Office. Those 18 lawyers would completely take over from the private bar the role of representing children, about 4,000 cases a year, or about 250 per lawyer, according to the report.

The Conflict Public Defender, as the new agency would be called, would begin operation with 26 lawyers. Those attorneys would handle 2,300 dependency cases--advising parents or other relatives--and 2,600 criminal cases.

Cases already assigned to private lawyers would remain with those attorneys, according to the report. And there would still be some conflicts that the new in-house office could not take--for instance, under the plan, about 500 dependency cases would still be farmed out each year to private lawyers.

Because of fixed salary costs--experienced county lawyers make from $44,500 to $74,048 annually--the report estimates that the new plan will dramatically cut per-case costs, saving the county about $7 million a year by fiscal 1992.

For instance, the report estimates that it costs the county $277,669 to pay a private lawyer to handle a death penalty defense. The same case, if handled by the Conflict Public Defender, would cost $160,901, according to the report.

The county would save money on more routine cases, too, according to the report.

The defense of property crimes, such as burglaries, which were estimated to cost $795 with a private lawyer, would cost $772 under the new plan. A crime against a person, such as a robbery or a rape, which costs $2,944 when handled by a private attorney, would cost $1,078 at the proposed office, the report said.

The report also promises savings at juvenile court. The cost of representing parents in a dependency proceeding is placed at $350 for a court-appointed lawyer, but estimated at $328 for the Conflict Public Defender.

However, a comparison involving the largest caseload--the 4,000 dependency cases involving the representation of children, to be assigned to the expanded Public Defender’s Office--was not detailed in the report. It compares only private lawyers and the new Conflict Public Defender, whose lawyers would represent the parents or other relatives.

Overall, though, in fiscal 1991--which begins July 1, 1990--and taking into account start-up costs and the plan’s late start in January, the plan would save the county $1,448,598. By fiscal 1992, the savings were estimated at $7,074,532.

The report warned that the calculation of any savings was premised, in part, on the overall number of criminal and juvenile court cases in the courts. If the number of cases continues to grow, it said, any figures would be subject to revision.