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Bar advocates stop working indigent cases until they see better pay
Attorneys who take bar advocate work said the low pay has driven attorneys elsewhere and limited the pool in the state.
Defense attorneys who represent those that cannot afford a lawyer in court have temporarily stopped their work until they see an increase in pay.
Bar advocates in Massachusetts, who represent 80% of public defender cases, are paid $65 per hour for district court work as of their last raise in 2022. This is the lowest rate among neighboring states, some of which offer more than twice the Massachusetts rate.
Attorneys who take bar advocate work said the low pay has driven attorneys elsewhere and limited the pool in the state. Hundreds of bar advocates pledged to stop taking indigent cases this past Tuesday, marked by a rally outside of the Statehouse.
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“It was a very hard decision,” said Adela Aprodu, an attorney who started bar advocate work in 2021. “But it’s one of those situations where you’re doing something that might be painful in the short term, but in the long term, it will have a much broader impact on the greater good for everybody else.”
Criminal defense attorney Sean Delaney has been practicing for 30 years and has been a bar advocate in nearly as much time. He said Massachusetts used to be the “gold standard” in public defense work, but that he’s noticed many colleagues are quitting the work.
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Over the last 20 years, there has been an average increase of one dollar in district court hourly wages. Massachusetts has the second-highest cost of living behind Hawaii.
“The correlation is obvious,” Delaney said. “It’s because those well-qualified, zealous advocates have chosen to move on to practice in a different area, or just do exclusively private criminal defense work, or go to surrounding states and practice there.”
Attorneys said there are many monthly costs they need to cover in order to continue practicing efficiently, including office expenses, legal research software, malpractice insurance, and other costs, according to a press release. After all of those expenses, the average pay left for district court work comes out to about $30 per hour.
“I don’t know how anyone can survive just doing exclusively bar advocate work,” Delaney said.
A work stoppage took place in 2004 that resulted in a pay increase from $25 per hour to $50. Mara Dolan, a member of the Governor’s Council, started taking bar advocate work at that time and said it was difficult to get on the list. Now, the state does not have enough attorneys to fill the role.
A rally at the Statehouse Tuesday saw about 100 bar advocates join to call on the legislature to increase wages for the district court attorneys. Dolan said the work stoppage has brought public attention to the work they do, which many people were not aware of before.
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A spokesperson for Gov. Maura Healey’s office deferred comment to the trial courts.
“The public supports us,” Dolan said. “They know this isn’t right and they know that the work that public defenders bar advocates do is critical.”
Jamal Aruri became a bar advocate out of law school in 1993 and evolved his practice to represent private clients and do civil work. He continues to take bar advocate work because it is something he enjoys doing, he says.
He said frustration has built up over many years and enough people reached their “boiling point” to commit to a work stoppage and call on their legislators to enact change.
“We do not enjoy seeing chaos in the courtrooms,” Aruri said. “But we were boxed in for decades and decades of neglect, and this was really the only option that we had to get the legislature’s attention.”
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