Head of Children’s Law Center steps down amid agency turmoil

The executive director of a nonprofit legal agency that represents abused children in Los Angeles County resigned Friday, amid turmoil that some lawyers contend put thousands of young clients at risk.

The head of Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, Miriam Krinsky, stepped down but will continue doing policy work at the organization.

Formed in 1990, Children’s Law Center represents an estimated 80% of the 30,000 abused children under dependency court jurisdiction.

“It has become increasingly clear to me that the demands of our organization’s day-to-day operations and legal work, when combined with our policy and reform agenda, can no longer be done by one person alone,” Krinsky wrote in an e-mail to employees Friday.

Her reassignment comes after two years of internal strife, sparked by a push to merge three independently operating legal units of the organization into one entity.

The three divisions used to separately represent mothers, fathers and children involved in custody cases. But it now handles only the cases of children. Yet the divisional structure remained until Krinsky began streamlining what she described in an e-mail to employees as an “outdated” system.

“The structure of having separate law firms was getting in the way of a more systematic approach to representing the children in the system,” said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Friedman, a former presiding judge of the county’s Juvenile Court who praised Krinsky’s policy work.

“Miriam inherited an organization that was utterly dysfunctional in terms of the way it was structured and the way it was run,” said Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-West Hollywood). Krinsky “catapulted the [agency] into the national limelight,” said Feuer, a former Los Angeles city councilman.

But as legal files and staff members were shifted during the reorganization, attorneys feared that privileged information was being inappropriately shared and that client confidentiality was being breached.

Some employees balked, worried that families with conflicting legal interests -- such as a child accusing a sibling of rape -- might not be fairly represented.

“I’ve not seen any real suggestion that the interests of any of these children are being compromised,” said Edward Lazarus, chairman of the center’s board of directors.

An internal ethics panel approved the restructuring plan, Lazarus said. “Any time that there’s been the suggestion that there’s a problem, there’s been new safeguards put in place.”

Under the organization’s new structure, a special group within the core firm would step in to represent additional clients who might present a conflict to the original lawyer.

Employees complain that during Krinsky’s tenure, seasoned attorneys fled the organization in droves, replaced by inexperienced newcomers who then became overburdened by huge caseloads.

Current and former lawyers allege that in the disorganization of the merger, many vulnerable youths were lost in the bureaucratic shuffle.

“Children are complaining they don’t know who their attorneys are,” one long-time employee wrote in an unsigned letter to the group’s board of directors.

A group of investigators and lawyers for the nonprofit who are represented by Service Employees International Union Local 660 also wrote a letter, listing “deteriorating conditions” at the agency and citing poor management, overtaxed staff, inadequate supervision and infrequent home visits by investigators.

“This crisis is diminishing our ability to provide quality representation to the abused and neglected children of Los Angeles County,” the union members wrote.

In her memo, Krinsky acknowledged “challenges we face in implementing our restructuring, addressing hiring needs, and ensuring adequate training and integration of our talented new attorneys.” Each of the roughly 90 or so lawyers at the state-funded agency represents an estimated 150 to 200 families, and in some cases more.

Lazarus recognized that employees were often short-handed: “There has been more attrition from the organization than we would like,” he said. But, he added, opposition to change is to be expected.

“Any time you try and reorganize an organization, there are those who don’t particularly care for” it, Lazarus said. “Lawyers are not big on change.”

susannah.rosenblatt@ latimes.com