Forty-one years ago, I started out as a court-appointed attorney. Reason: I was just starting my personal practice after serving a year as a briefing attorney for Garland McKay on the Twelfth Court of Appeals in Tyler. I had no clients or reputation, yet. So, I accepted court appointments from Smith County’s misdemeanor and felony courts. My purpose was to build a client referral basis and also to gain valuable experience. After a couple of years, I withdrew my acceptance of this type of case.
Court-appointed clients were typically skeptical of my representation since I was being paid by the court system. I would occasionally be challenged by my client as ‘working for the State’ and not for them. I had to explain that although I was being paid by the court, I was in truth working for the benefit of the client. Still there were a few skeptics. After this experience client trust and confidence has always been golden to me. Accordingly, that is a valuable asset I strive for in my current clients.
Not to bash court-appointed attorneys, but through the years I have seen such attorneys do little to represent their clients because they are not compensated for their value by the courts. Sadly, it is about money. Court-appointed attorneys are often paid a small flat fee for a trial, no matter the difficulty or duration, and a much smaller flat fee for a plea. Understandably, incentive to put the requisite time and effort into the case is typically small.
However, I have witnessed a few young attorneys who accept cases to achieve the same status I did when starting out, that is reputation, referrals and experience. The other type of court-appointed attorney is one who does not have the referrals and reputation to independently survive, but must rely on court appointments to pay the bills. Again, I am not wanting to bash anyone, it is just my observation through the years.
On another note, a standard misconception of court-appointed lawyers is that they do not cost the client any money. Wrong! The fee paid by the court to the lawyer is later retrieved from the client through additional fees ordered by the court which are paid by the client through probation. Therefore, a court-appointed lawyer is neither free nor often generally effective.
An important caveat to this explanation of court-appointed lawyers is that occasionally a defendant is fortunate to receive a diligent, aggressive lawyer appointed to him or her who diligently tries to follow the oath taken to “zealously represent the client within the bounds of the law”.