Lawyers who represent poor adults and children in New York City are demanding a pay raise, which they haven't gotten in 17 years.
Attorneys assigned to represent indigent clients receive hourly rates as low as $60, about one-sixth of what a typical New York lawyer charges, according to a new lawsuit brought by seven lawyers' associations against the city and state of New York.
Attorneys working on state felony cases make only $75 per hour, less than half the $155 that lawyers are paid on federal matters, the suit claims.
Attorneys are also capped at $2,400 in total fees for misdemeanor cases and $4,400 for felony cases, where there is a risk of years of jail time, no matter how many hours they work, according to the suit.
The low fees mean that fewer and fewer attorneys have been willing to participate in assigned-counsel systems, where courts assign lawyers to those who can't pay themselves. In the Bronx, the number of lawyers volunteering to represent poor clients in family court has fallen 22% over the past six years, the lawsuit claims.
As a result, the constitutional rights of New Yorkers are at risk, the suit claims.
"What you're seeing is a diminution of the number of people that are willing to enroll in the program at those rates," said Richard Swanson, a vice-president of the New York County Lawyers Association, which filed the suit along with several other groups. "As a result of that, the workload falls on fewer and fewer people."
Like many states, New York uses a patchwork of government lawyers, nonprofits, and attorneys in private practice — so-called "18B" lawyers — to help poor people. While the 18B lawyers who are the subject of Monday's lawsuit do a minority of the indigent-defense work in New York City, they play an important role, especially in cases with multiple defendants where a public defense service like the Legal Aid Society is conflicted out of representing everyone.
There have been numerous efforts in Albany to raise the rates over the years, but none of them have gone anywhere. With rates stagnant, the system is approaching a crisis once again, advocates say.
Attorneys representing poor New Yorkers haven't gotten a raise since 2004. Even after that case led the legislature to set the $60-to-$75 rate schedule, a judicial commission concluded that New York's system was "severely dysfunctional and structurally incapable of providing each poor defendant with effective legal representation,"according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In the new lawsuit, attorneys are asking for automatic rate increases. Even though the chair of the New York Assembly's judiciary committee said in 2004 that she hoped "we will not have to wait 17 more years to adjust rates," that's exactly what happened, the lawsuit claims.
Other groups bringing the lawsuit include the Bronx County Bar Association, the Queens County Bar Association, the Richmond County Bar Association, the Assigned Counsel Association of New York State, the Macon B. Allen Black Bar Association and the Latino Lawyers Association of Queens County.
A spokesman for the New York City Law Department said the city is reviewing the lawsuit.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How racism contributed to marijuana prohibition in the US