NYC Bar Associations Launch Task Force on City’s Assigned Counsel Plan

The New York City Bar Association, along with representatives from New York City’s county bar associations, has formed a task force – the Joint Bar Associations’ Task Force on the New York City Assigned Counsel Plan – to assess the City’s Assigned Counsel Plan (ACP) and make recommendations for how to strengthen the delivery of high quality indigent defense to low-income people in criminal and family court proceedings who cannot be served by the City’s institutional legal service providers.

New York City’s ACP, and the 18b panel attorneys who carry out its mission, play a critical role in defending the rights of low-income New Yorkers facing criminal prosecution and family separation. Collectively the approximately 600 panel attorneys overseen by the City’s ACP handle close to 30,000 criminal and family court cases and represent 100,000 clients who are issued summonses each year. Similar to the City’s institutional legal service providers, an effective ACP must be independent, ensure the provision of professional, skilled, ethical, and client-centered legal representation for all clients, provide access to training, supervision and mentoring, have sufficient resources to ensure quality representation, and provide access to non-attorney services such as social workers, investigators, interpreters, and mental health professionals.

In recent years, the New York State Office of Indigent Legal Services has introduced new standards for ACPs and the City and State have increased their investment in indigent defense.  The task force will examine critical issues such as the City’s ACP structure, funding, training, and services to ensure that the City’s ACP not only meets these standards and has access to all available resources, but also serves as a model for ACPs statewide.

The task force leadership team includes representatives from the Bronx County Bar Association, Queens County Bar Association, Kings County Bar Association, Richmond County (Staten Island) Bar Association, New York County Lawyers Association, Assigned Counsel Association, and the City Bar, and the task force membership includes stakeholders across the ACP and indigent criminal defense landscape. The task force is co-chaired by David Patton, Partner at Kaplan, Hecker, & Fink LLP, Philip Desgranges, Attorney-in-Charge of the Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society, and Justine Olderman, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU School of Law.

About the Association
The mission of the New York City Bar Association, which was founded in 1870 and has 23,000 members, is to equip and mobilize a diverse legal profession to practice with excellence, promote reform of the law, and uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world. www.nycbar.org