<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/3/1583933608784.png" alt=" Public defenders make less money than prosecutors or attorneys in private practice. Chris Neal / Shooter Imaging" />
 <figcaption> Public defenders make less money than prosecutors or attorneys in private practice. Chris Neal / Shooter Imaging</figcaption>
 </figure>By NOMIN UJIYEDIIN, <a href="https://www.kcur.org/post/kansas-public-defender-agency-still-fire-struggling-keep-staff#stream/0">Kansas News Service</a>TOPEKA — The state lost 13% of its public defenders over the past year.That’s actually an improvement. Nearly a fourth of the state’s public defenders quit <a href="https://www.kcur.org/post/one-four-kansas-public-defenders-quit-last-year-leaving-agency-crisis#stream/0" target="_blank">the year before</a>.But
 the turnover of those attorneys still represents a chronic problem for 
the State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services, the agency that provides
 lawyers to criminal defendants who can’t afford their own.Maban Wright makes $66,000 as one of those public defenders, up from the $43,000 she earned at the agency 10 years ago.“It
 can be emotionally exhausting,” she said. “People who are very kind and
 giving and softhearted have to develop a thicker skin pretty quickly to
 survive.”She manages 50 to 60 clients at a time, working six or
 seven days a week. But Wright finds personal satisfaction in the long 
hours and hard work. For others, it wasn’t enough. The agency still has 
about a dozen unfilled attorney positions out of more than 120.Heather
 Cessna, who heads the public defender agency, credits a small pay raise
 from the Legislature for slowing turnover in 2019. But, she says, the 
agency will need more money to fill jobs that have stayed open for 
years. And the lawyers who remain need better back-up — from support 
staff to information technology.&nbsp;“We have a lot of things that 
are on fire in our agency,” Cessna said. “We need to stabilize what we 
have before we really start to move forward.”<h2>Agency needs</h2>Wright,
 based in Topeka, spends much of her time reviewing evidence. It takes 
longer than it used to, now that police wear body cams that record hours
 of footage. Plus, she often takes care of her clients in other ways.“You’re
 representing a case, but you’re also representing a human being who may
 have no money,” Wright said. “You gotta get them out of jail. You gotta
 orchestrate all of their business for them. So it feels like a lot.”Wright
 doesn’t keep track of how many hours she works on each case. It varies 
based on the type of charge, which can range from serial shoplifting to 
sex crimes against children.Some states have established standards for the amount of time a defender should spend on each case. Attorneys surveyed in a <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/images/abanews/LouisianaProjectReportFinal.pdf" target="_blank">2017 study</a>
 of public defender workloads in Louisiana recommended about 8 hours of 
work per case for misdemeanors to 70 hours for high-level felonies. 
Attorneys surveyed in a <a href="http://tidc.texas.gov/media/31722/150114_WCL-Final_Reduced-file-size.pdf" target="_blank">2019 study</a> of Texas public defenders recommended about 10 hours for misdemeanors to 30 hours for high-level felonies.But
 Kansas public defenders don’t have the case management software that 
would allow for a study of workloads. The agency does keep track of the 
number of cases each attorney juggles simultaneously and completes over 
the course of a year.The maximum number of concurrent cases 
varies by office, Cessna said, but it usually ranges between 55 to 65 
per attorney. When every defender in an office hits that maximum, the 
office “shuts down” and stops taking new cases. Currently, one office in
 Wichita is shut down, with defenders handling 100 cases each. Offices 
in Topeka, Chanute and Independence have also stopped taking cases.&nbsp;“You
 either need more attorneys or fewer cases, and we don’t get to 
determine how to have fewer cases,” she said. “All we can do is ask for 
more attorneys or shut down so those cases are not in those offices.”When
 an office shuts down, cases go to private lawyers paid through state 
contracts. When those private practices get overwhelmed, cases go to a 
list of court-appointed attorneys who are paid an hourly rate of $80 — 
the maximum rate allowed by the state Legislature.“Eighty 
dollars an hour is not enough for anybody to keep their lights on in 
their office and run a law practice and do criminal law extensively,” 
Cessna said.On average, cases that go to private attorneys cost 
the state $282 more than cases handled by public defenders in fiscal 
year 2019. The extra cost totaled $4.3 million.The solution, Cessna said, is encouraging staff attorneys to stay with the agency by increasing salary. In 2019, the <a href="https://klic.dol.ks.gov/gsipub/index.asp?docid=768" target="_blank">median salary</a> for a lawyer in Kansas was $83,000, according to the state Department of Labor.&nbsp;More
 employees means fewer cases per attorney, less reliance on private 
lawyers, and more specialized knowledge of criminal law accumulating in 
the agency over time, Cessna said.&nbsp;In late December, she 
requested an additional $500,000 from the state for the current fiscal 
year, to increase salaries for vacant positions in Topeka, Wichita and 
Salina. In the agency’s budget request for fiscal year 2021, Cessna 
asked the state Legislature for another half million for those 
positions, plus a 2.5% raise for all agency employees at a cost of 
$400,000. Other requests included $1.2 million to keep the hourly rate 
for private attorneys at $80, and $200,000 to improve the agency’s IT 
systems.&nbsp;Over the long term, Cessna wants to hire more support 
staff, like investigators and paralegals, so defenders won’t have to 
spend so much of their time writing letters and making phone calls. She 
also wants to improve training for new defenders.“It’s kind of 
like when you’re on a plane and they tell you when the oxygen masks 
fall, you have to put on your own mask first,” she said. “You can’t help
 people if you’re in crisis yourself. And that’s kind of where we’re 
at.”<h2>Impact on clients</h2>Experts say pay 
and working conditions for public defenders ultimately have the biggest 
impact on the lives of the people they represent.&nbsp;But prosecutors tend to be paid more and have more salary increases as they gain experience, compared with public defenders.“There’ll
 be a progressively wider gap that tends to develop between the public 
defender and the prosecutor as they move through their experience,” said
 Bonnie Hoffman, a former public defender and director of public defense
 reform and training at the National Association of Criminal Defense 
Lawyers.&nbsp;That difference in pay leads to a difference in 
experience and skill levels between the prosecution and the defense, she
 said. In turn, a lack of experienced defenders leads to poorer outcomes
 for defendants.“That certainly leads to a lot of consequences, 
increases the risks of wrongful convictions,” she said. “It increases 
the risk of excessive convictions.”In Kansas, prosecutors typically work for county governments. Some are employed by the state attorney general’s office. A <a href="http://www.kcdaa.org/jobs" target="_blank">job board</a> for the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association advertises jobs paying between $56,000 and $97,000 a year.Prosecutors
 also have the advantage of collaborating with police, said Ernie Lewis,
 executive director of the National Association for Public Defense and a
 former public defender in Kentucky. Defense attorneys, meanwhile, have 
to hire their own investigators.“Prosecutors don’t have to pay 
for their investigators,” he said. “When you add the prosecutors’ budget
 to the police budget and compare that to the defender budget, I bet in 
Kansas it’s pretty dramatic, the disparity there.”For decades, 
the legal community has been aware of the low funding and high workloads
 for public defenders across the country, Lewis said, with organizations
 commissioning studies on the issue every few years. But there’s been 
little change, despite the fact that public defender offices require 
much less funding compared to most government agencies.In the 
long term, he said, that leads to more and more people going to prison, 
which puts even more strain on a government’s finances.“If you don’t fund your public defenders sufficiently,” Lewis said, “you’re going to get mass incarceration.”Nomin
 Ujiyediin reports on criminal justice and social welfare for KCUR and 
the Kansas News Service. You can follow her on Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/nominuj" target="_blank">@NominUJ</a>.

Kan. public defender agency 'on fire,' struggling to keep staff