Lawyer shortage creates chain of strain in LA defense system

The Los Angeles Alternate Public Defender's Office has declared itself unavailable to take on 83 homicide cases since August, citing "workload issues," according to Marco Saenz, who oversees the indigent defense conflict panel, the next link in the chain of strain across the county's already burdened indigent defense system.

Each homicide case that Alternate Public Defender Erika Anzoategui's office declines is transferred to the Independent Defense Counsel Office, directed by Saenz, creating a "significant impact" on his office's capacity and the county's budget, he said. Not being able to provide adequate defense to each client is a "constitutional crisis," Saenz said.

He noted the financial ripple effect each reassigned case creates as private attorneys are paid to fill in for the county's salaried defenders.

"We have no economies of scale," he explained. "We cannot assign that additional case to a lawyer without there being compensation to that lawyer or that additional case assignment. Every time a lawyer opens the case to do any work on it or refers it for ancillary service provided to assist them in the case, it costs the county. Every single time that occurs, every single case."

Alternate Deputy Public Defender Jane Yang said in a phone call Friday the reason they declared unavailable on homicides is because the office only generally receives serious felony cases and rarely takes on misdemeanors.

"LA county is going through kind of a historical budget here because of the fires and because of the probation lawsuits," said Yang. "We're seeing an issue we were having to work with getting additional attorneys because they, at some point said there's a hiring freeze."

Yang said there had been a 20-30% increase in cases for her office in 2025. There are around 200 lawyers working there.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Public Defender's office, the first link in the chain, has not declared unavailability.

San Francisco County's public defender's office has however, declining to represent 470 felony and misdemeanor cases since May. This led the court to announce Oct. 21 that it would begin releasing criminal defendants who cannot be held longer without trial. So far, one defendant was released, the court said last week.

San Francisco Judge Harry Dorman has held days of hearings for the county's justice system partners to advise how he can do his duty to provide indigents with attorneys when the public defender's office and the contact panel have said they are running low on lawyers.

Dorfman asked if he has the authority to order the Bar Association of San Francisco to make private attorneys available, and Public Defender Manohar Raju's office said he does.

In Los Angeles, the Central District of California federal courts asked the same question of the U.S. attorney's office and got the same answer, even though the federal courts would not be able to pay the attorneys during the government shutdown.

Many private attorneys and the State Bar have said judges do not have such authority, but the fact that judges are contemplating it illustrates the seriousness of the situation.

Saenz commented Friday, "If you're going to force a lawyer to represent a client without compensation, that sounds like indentured servitude to me."

The Independent Defense Counsel Office has 290 attorneys under contract and 45 that are qualified to handle capital cases, Saenz said. Few if any of the 83 homicide cases passed over by the Alternate Public Defender are capital cases.

Saenz said his office was currently able to handle the influx of cases, but he was planning to add more lawyers to the panel.

"I'm going to do everything I can to build up the panel with additional lawyers that have the requisite experience to provide effective and zealous representation to these clients because they are facing the most serious consequences of any clients that we represent," Saenz said.

Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia said in an email Thursday, "My office, like many Public Defender's Offices across the state, continues to navigate the resource challenges brought on by new laws, such as Prop 36."

The voter approved 2024 law increased penalties for repeat theft and certain drug crimes, including fentanyl-related offenses. It reclassified some misdemeanor theft and drug charges as felonies, creating a new category called "treatment-mandated felonies," allowing offenders to enter treatment instead of prison. The law seeks to deter repeat retail theft and drug possession. Public defenders have said it has led to more criminal filings.

"Despite prosecutorial filing decisions and the county budget crisis, we remain fully committed to zealously advocating for the people we serve and take the impact and concerns of workload seriously," Garcia wrote.

"We've brought in the RAND Corporation to take a hard look at our workload data," he mentioned. RAND will look at "hours spent working on cases and give us an objective assessment of our resources and needs."

The RAND Corporation published guidelines with the American Bar Association in 2023 to develop new national public defense workload standards. The guidelines say a defense attorney should only work on eight felony murder cases per year using an assumption they have 2,080 hours available annually for case-related work.

Based on these guidelines, the San Francisco public defender would need at least 25 to 30 more attorneys, Assistant Chief Attorney Hadi Razzaq said during last week's court hearings.

Scott Sanders, who is on the Los Angeles County courts conflict panel, has worked on a homicide case passed over by the Alternate Public Defender and said the conflict panel was dealing with the new cases "quite well" but that it was not a "long-term solution."

Sanders, who retired in March after 32 years as an assistant Orange County public defender, said he has been "impressed with how the panel is run. "They do a nice job of selecting lawyers and utilizing lawyers based upon their level of experience," he said.

However, Sanders said he did not "want to diminish the crisis within the alternate office" and said that "every public defenders' office in the state is dealing with just a tremendous shortage of lawyers."

San Diego attorney Wendy Patrick, who was a chair of the California State Bar Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct, outlined what attorneys should do if a judge appoints them against their will. If the court denies the motion to withdraw, "and any available means of appealing such ruling is unsuccessful, the lawyer must continue with the representation while taking whatever steps are feasible to ensure that she will be able to competently and diligently represent the defendant."