The costs of providing legal services to poor county residents has fallen nearly $1.3 million over the last year.
The costs savings come a little over a year after the board of supervisors consolidated the county offices that handle such work, including the Public Defender’s Office, the Legal Defender’s Office, the Office of Children’s Counsel and Office of Court-Appointed Counsel, under the new Department of Public Defense Services. Not including IT costs that are now included in yearly budgets, costs for all of the offices were $28.4 million over the most recent fiscal year, down from $29.6 million the year before.
Public Defense Services head Lori Lefferts said her department has undertaken a number of efforts to reduce costs, most importantly by prioritizing in-house attorneys over contract attorneys.
In fiscal year 2015, the year before Leffert’s position was created, the county spent $10.3 million on contract attorneys to represent poor clients, a figure that fell to $9.7 million the following year, according to data included in a recent memo from County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry. Costs for contract lawyers have been consistently over budget over the last decade, sometimes by more than $3 million. Those costs were $1.3 million over budget last year.
“We’ve been able to catch a lot of cases and keep them in house when before they may have gone to contract attorneys unnecessarily,” Lefferts said.
Administrative services and oversight have also been consolidated between the different departments, which have also transitioned to the use of electronic, rather than paper, documents.
“Not only are we saving money on not using paper and toner and printers, but moving information can be done much more efficiently and effectively … if it’s done through electronic means,” she said.
As a result, the the department is now evaluating positions when employees leave to determine if they need to be filled, and some have not been. Lefferts said there haven’t been any layoffs, and the number of attorneys has increased over the last year.
Lefferts said the moves have not negatively affected indigent legal services
“We haven’t cut services, we haven’t cut quality,” Lefferts said.
