“Listen, Hear my Side, Back Me up”: What Clients Want from Public Defenders

Abstract

The current study was designed to understand what persons represented by public defenders want from their attorney and how they hope or aspire to interact with their attorney. The results of a thematic analysis of qualitative responses to those inquiries, from 120 people represented by a rural public defender agency, are presented in this article. Though extant literature in this area is scant, the findings here largely echo those prior works: participants articulated a desire for attorneys who effectively communicate, thoroughly investigate, and zealously advocate for them. The data here add nuance, however, to client conceptualizations of those distinct duties, and how clients report they might behave differently with their ideal attorney. Findings also highlight clients’ pronounced “resignation” (Casper 1970) related to systemic deficiencies in public defense and criminal justice systems more broadly, particularly following case disposition—despite overall satisfaction with their individual attorneys. We conclude by discussing implications for practicing attorneys and possible areas of future research.

Keywords:

• public defense
• client perceptions
• client-centered representation
• qualitative research

Acknowledgments

Confidentiality issues preclude us from identifying the specific Agency, Sheriff’s office, Security Center, or court involved in this study but we thank the many individuals at each of these agencies for supporting this project and ensuring that the data collection went smoothly. We also wish to acknowledge the Indiana Department of Correction, and the Research Division in particular, for facilitating our efforts to conduct interviews at various facilities across the state. Lastly, we express our gratitude to Holly Sims and Dylan Cunningham who helped conduct interviews, Steven Davis who provided research assistance, and Roanoke College which funded Steven’s work.

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest to report.

Notes

1 These statistics vary some by jurisdiction. (See, Smith and DeFrances 1996)

2 Implementation of these approaches is likely to require additional financial resources, as well. We do not mean to suggest otherwise, but instead to distinguish between efforts that are dependent more on external than internal initiatives.,

3 Steinberg (2013) further distinguishes between client-centered lawyering, community-oriented defense, and holistic defense. Client-centered lawyering stresses the significance of understanding and considering the needs and desires of the client during the legal decision-making process; this marked a broad shift away from “a conservative, paternalistic, attorney-as-decisionmaker strategy” (975) and is an assumed component of the latter two models. Community-oriented defense extended this approach in a tangible way by connecting people who were arrested to crucial community organizations and services that met their needs. This is an additional component of the third and final model Steinberg outlines, holistic defense. Beyond the aforementioned traits, holistic defense provides “interdisciplinary communication among advocates in the office and between the advocates and the client” (991); cross-trained attorneys with “basic training in family, housing, employment, and immigration law…educated on the complexities of school, welfare, and health care bureaucracies” and knowledge of the “different types of addictions and mental illnesses” (995); and “a strong connection to, and understanding of, the community it serves” (997).

4 Many of the goals of client-centered representation are similar to those of therapeutic jurisprudence (See Wexler, 2011a; Wexler, 2011b). Wexler and Winick (1991) define therapeutic jurisprudence as a consideration of “the extent to which substantive rules, legal procedures, and the roles of lawyers and judges produce therapeutic or antitherapeutic consequences” (xi) and applied the idea to mental health law initially. It has since been applied to other areas of law, including criminal law, and been subject to considerable scholarly critique (See Quinn, 2007); we anticipate that some of the criticisms and concerns raised in that debate may emerge in discourse surrounding the appropriateness of a client-centered representation model, as well.

5 Dewhurst (2013) suggests that the Canadian and U.S Codes of attorney conduct can also be read to support a “traditional model” and should be altered to explicitly allow for a broader interpretation of the “client’s best interests”. Dewhurst argues that the client’s best interests are traditionally limited to the understanding of their best immediate legal interest in an adversarial system – which limits an attorney from considering a client’s “actual best interests” that may significantly differ and require a wider problem-solving approach or a legal solution that is not typically understood as in the client’s interest (e.g., admitting to crimes not yet charged). According to Dewhurst, “actual best interest” consideration would at least frequently require consulting professionals outside of the legal field (mental health professionals or accountants, for example).

6 The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 193 incarcerated men in South Carolina.

7 The authors interviewed more than 150 men incarcerated in a New York prison.

8 “Client participation” was defined by these authors as initiative taking by client, client involvement in decision making, client disclosure of case-relevant information.

9 A detailed description of the sample and procedure are presented in Sandys and Pruss (2017).

10 Time 2 only interviews were administered when the individual’s case was already resolved by the time we conducted an interview.

11 Each response from the 105 participants was coded for each of these 6 themes as appearing or not appearing, regardless of the number of times a given theme was mentioned in that singular quote/by that participant. For example, even if a participant mentioned “theme 1a. instrumental communication” three times in their quote, it was only coded and counted one time, and thus reflected in the numbers presented in Table 1.

12 Another possible measurement concern is that participants interpreted this question to be whether they had been difficult with their previous attorney (Boccaccini and Brodsky (2001)).

13 At Time 1, 43 of 103 participants provided no useable data for this item by responding “no” [there was nothing else they wanted to share] or indicating the question was not applicable. There were several additional respondents explicitly articulating they had not yet met their attorney (presumably, some of the respondents indicating “no” or “not applicable” could have been in this position).

14 At Time 2, 11 of 32 participants provided no useable data for this item by responding “no” [there was nothing else they wanted to share] or indicating the question was not applicable. Of the 21 participants who offered an affirmative response to this item, 10 respondents (47.6%) were coded as articulating concerns with systemic deficits. Of the Time 2 participants coded for this theme, only one individual participant had been coded as noting systemic issues at Time 1.

15 Some in this debate go further to critique legal models that reach beyond legal issues and into more personal problem areas of the client (often identified by the attorney) as inherently paternalistic and problematic (Quinn, 2007).

16 Mather’s (2003) work also indicates that criminal defense attorneys point to low intelligence of their clients as an explanation for why they need to exert control in the relationship.

17 Moore et al. (2020) reported a similar finding among public defense clients who participated in a focus group only after their case had been adjudicated.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG), through the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, to the Public Defender Agency involved in this project.