Lawyer for Indigent Refuses to Share Caseload : Justice system: William W. Stewart rejects judges’ recommendation, saying it would leave bad impression.

Brushing aside criticism about his law firm’s performance under a million-dollar contract to defend poor people accused of crimes, local attorney William W. Stewart rejected a recommendation from local judges that he share the massive caseload with two other law firms.

In a letter to Santa Ana Municipal Court judges, the flamboyant attorney said that agreeing to modify his existing contract would create the “appearance . . . that there really is something wrong with the level of my performance.”

The judges had left it up to Stewart to decide whether he should share the work--and roughly $1 million per year in fees--even though some local jurists had expressed concerns that Stewart had not been in court in more than four years, that he had farmed out many of the cases to lawyers outside his law firm, and that his firm apparently lacked enough lawyers to ensure that defendants were always represented at scheduled court hearings.

Because Stewart’s existing contract to defend indigent clients in Santa Ana Municipal Court runs through next July, Presiding Judge Gregory H. Lewis has said that the judges could only make recommendations to the attorney and could not unilaterally modify a valid contract that has been awarded to Stewart without interruption for more than a decade.

“I don’t want it to appear that there is anything wrong with the representation we are providing,” Stewart informed the judges. “It has always been my primary objective to service the contract and to provide indigent defendants with quality representation.”

Stewart has held the contract for the past 15 years. But in an interview Monday he said that he “probably” would not seek an extension next summer because of the recent controversy, and because fewer indigent cases are being referred to private law firms under contract to the county.

The public defender’s office generally represents poor people accused of crimes. But on those occasions when there are multiple defendants or other potential conflicts of interest arise, the cases are referred to private criminal defense attorneys under contract to the county.

Stewart’s firm handles the largest number of indigent defense cases assigned to private contract attorneys--up to 1,200 a year. However, Stewart said Monday that he has seen referrals from the public defender’s office drop by 40% this year because of fewer conflict claims.

Because of this decline, Stewart said it would be “totally impractical” to divide the caseload equally among three law firms, and insufficiently profitable to make it worth pursuing an extension of the contract. He estimated that potential attorneys’ fees from the contract could drop from nearly $1 million in previous years to about $450,000 this year.

“The difficulty is in maintaining a balance between quality and quantity in these economic times,” he told judges in his letter. “I opted for quality over quantity. To be sure, I would like to put a lawyer in each courtroom. But these economic times have affected all levels of service in all areas of life, not just this contract.”

Meanwhile, the same Santa Ana Municipal Court judges have also allowed attorney Patrick McNeal to continue serving as one of two backups to Stewart’s firm, even though McNeal has been placed on three years’ probation for legal misconduct by the State Bar of California.

Judge Lewis has said the terms of McNeal’s county contract state that disciplinary action by the State Bar is grounds for termination, but the judges are allowing McNeal to continue his county work because the legal misconduct did not involve a county contract case.

McNeal could not be reached for comment Monday, but Santa Ana Municipal Court Executive Officer Robert B. Kuhel said the McNeal matter was reviewed and “no steps were taken against him.”

McNeal was placed on probation in May after he failed to provide status reports or file appropriate documents for a client in a divorce case, according to State Bar records. It was the bar’s second disciplinary action against McNeal in the past five years.

Had Stewart agreed to a reorganization of his contract, McNeal’s firm would have been one of the two firms in line to share in a greater number of indigent cases.