Maine’s court-appointed lawyers are ‘saturated’ with criminal, parental caseloads

When Maine raised the reimbursement rate for defense attorneys taking court-appointed cases to $150 an hour, the state had a record low number of lawyers available to represent poor Mainers.

A year later, the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services says it has fewer attorneys at its disposal than ever – even though lawmakers say they increased the rate to revive the state’s rosters.

… Jim Billings, the commission’s executive director, told the committee that Maine’s indigent defense system is struggling with an ever-growing backlog of criminal cases and protective custody petitions.

“There are attorneys that are just saturated with cases,” Billings said. There were only about 140 attorneys accepting new court-appointed cases as of Wednesday, Billings said, compared to more than 400 in March 2020.

But the number of new cases coming in has not slowed down. The commission was responsible for taking on more than 32,000 new cases in 2023, it said.

Defense lawyers are burned out, Billings said. More than 75% of the attorneys the commission surveyed last fall said they felt overwhelmed by their work, and nearly half said the workload was getting worse as more courts started requiring in-person attendance after years of holding court hearings via Zoom.

“This suggests to me that attorneys are busy and aren’t willing to put themselves on the roster because they’re worried about getting a bunch of new cases,” Billings said.

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