King County Public Defense: A Strategy for New Caseload Standards
By Matt Sanders, Interim Director of the King County Department of Public Defense
Washington state is no exception to the nationwide crisis in public defense documented in last fall’s landmark National Public Defense Workload Study. Rural jurisdictions are experiencing chronic shortages of qualified defenders, dozens of people facing charges lack representation, and recently the ACLU has filed suit against one county (Yakima, Washington) for failing to uphold its residents’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
But this year, our office helped execute an unprecedented advocacy campaign to turn the tide in this crisis and begin transforming the work of public defense into a sustainable career. In partnership with DPD’s union leaders (locals Teamsters 117 and SEIU 925), we successfully lobbied the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) to adopt groundbreaking caseload standards for public defenders based on the recommendations from the 2023 ABA/RAND study – the first bar association in the country to do so.
That effort resulted in real caseload relief now with more on the horizon. Under the new standards, cases are weighted according to seriousness on a scale of 1 through 8. For example, a theft of a motor vehicle carries a case weight of 1 and most homicides are weighed at 7. Instead of allowing defenders to carry 150 felony cases of any kind, the new standards cap the credit maximum at 110 credits in 2025, 90 credits in 2026, and 47 credits in 2027. At DPD, we are already in the process of implementing the new caseload standards, which will help ease the burden on all of our public defenders, particularly those carrying felony caseloads.
For public defense offices in other states seeking to leverage the ABA/RAND study as a tool to secure similarly groundbreaking reductions in caseloads, this post will break down the two main takeaways from our advocacy campaign that made the difference in our success.
Ethics Drive Change
The only recourse for public defenders facing unmanageable caseloads in the past has been a broad directive that if accepting a new client would compromise their ethical obligations to their existing clients, they should refuse to take the new case. See e.g. ABA Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System, Principle 3 (August 2023), and ABA Eight Guidelines of Public Defense Related to Excessive Workloads (August 2009).
In practice, however, that advice falls well short of a meaningful remedy and places the burden on already overburdened public defenders. Without a clear, objective standard defining how many cases a public defender can ethically carry at once, attorneys in our profession face the impossible task of having to choose between the quality of representation we know our clients deserve and leaving a prospective client in custody without representation.
To take that choice out of the hands of individual attorneys, Washington’s public defenders sought relief through advocating at our state bar association to define our ethical capacity through caseload standards informed by the ABA/RAND study. As members of the WSBA’s Council on Public Defense, my predecessor as DPD’s Director and the president of our staff’s union were able to persuade the judges, prosecutors, and elected officials on the WSBA’s Council on Public Defense to seize the opportunity presented by the ABA/RAND study to address the escalating crisis in public defense.
When the WSBA’s Board of Governors voted to adopt the proposed standards with only one dissenting vote, the lawyers endorsing the standards rightly understood the importance of giving meaning to Gideon’s promise from fifty-one years ago.
Humanize the Crisis
In addition to choosing the state bar association as the forum for this debate, precisely how our staff pressed the case for clear ethical standards played a key role in winning caseload relief. They offered brutally honest testimony during the WSBA’s public comment period before the vote to adopt the standards, highlighting how the outdated caseload standards have made it all but impossible for public defenders to provide constitutionally effective counsel. Public defenders relayed stories of clients sitting in jail for years waiting for their lawyer to have enough time to work on their case, only to be acquitted once they finally got their day in court.
Our staff also shared deeply personal examples of the toll that unsustainable caseloads have taken on them and their families. One attorney spoke of his decision to delay starting a family after realizing he could not be the parent he wanted to be while also providing representation to his clients he could be proud of. Others testified to the harm to their mental and physical health resulting from the overtime required to carry their existing caseloads. These stories resonated with the decisionmakers.
The National Public Defense Workload Study makes it clear our staffs’ challenges are far from unique – these costs paid by public defenders and their clients are universal across the country. When confronted with the inhumane impact of the existing caseloads, our state bar association voted 12-1 in favor of new standards that will cut caseloads by roughly two-thirds over three years.
With the new standards in place, the focus at DPD has shifted to solving the challenges of implementation. We obtained dozens of new staff positions in our latest budget to support reducing caseloads and are pressing prosecutors to reform antiquated filing practices to better align with evidence-based approaches to address public safety issues. Public defense should be a sustainable career in every state. Our success in Washington can provide a playbook for achieving caseload relief elsewhere so that our standards become a new national model.
Feel free to reach out to Matt about strategies to advocate for caseload/workload changes in your local jurisdiction. All public defenders deserve these standards.