To provideeffective representation, apply enough time and attention to each client’scase, comply with ethical rules, and sustain their own health and well-being,appellate public defenders need reasonable workloads. That said, quantifying areasonable workload can be remarkably difficult. In 1973, 10 years after Gideonv. Wainwright,1 the National Advisory Commission on CriminalJustice Standards and Goals put out the first national public defense caseloadstandards. Since then, developing updated caseloadstandards has largely happened at the state level. As the National PublicDefense Workload Study published in 2023 recognized, “[t]he gold standard foranalyzing attorney need is a weighted caseload model. . . . Substantive law and court rules and procedures have an impacton the amount of time attorneys require to represent their clients. Becausethese factors can vary substantially from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, themost accurate weighted caseload model is developed specifically for anindividual state or jurisdiction.”2
In 2022, the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office (SADO) contractedwith the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to develop a weighted caseloadmodel for SADO appellate attorneys and Michigan Appellate Assigned CounselSystem (MAACS) roster attorneys. NCSC is an independent non-profit corporationwith more than three decades of experience developing weighted caseload modelsfor judges, court staff, and public defenders. The goal of the caseload studywas to develop clear and objective caseload standards to establish the numberof appellate defenders and roster attorneys required to ensure SADO and MAACS’clients receive constitutionally effective representation. While SADO hadcaseload standards in place at the time of this study, they were over 40 yearsold and had not been adjusted to account for modern criminal defense practiceincluding changes in policy, technology, and case law.
A weighted caseloadmodel is grounded in the understanding that different types (and sizes) ofcases vary in complexity and the amount of work they generate. A weightedcaseload model consists of (1) a set of case weights that specify theaverage amount of time required to provide quality representation in each typeof case and (2) an attorney year value that quantifies the amount of time onefull-time appellate defender has available for client representation in onework year, accounting for non-working times and non-case-related work.The model can be translated into numerical standards for the number of cases ofa single case type that can be handled per attorney, per year.
The caseload study was a multi-phase project.To start, SADO assembled a Workload Assessment Advisory Committee comprised of SADO management,senior SADO public defenders, experienced MAACS roster attorneys, and otherstakeholders, to oversee the project and make policy decisions regarding the content of thefinal weighted caseload model. The next step was to gather as much dataas possible. SADO provided several years of appointment data; MAACS providedvoucher and billing data; NCSC conducted focus groups with SADO and MAACSattorneys to gather information on how cases are handled; and SADO attorneysengaged in a time-keeping study. Following the data collection period, the timestudy and appointment data were used to calculate preliminary case weights.
In September2022, NCSC convened a quality adjustment or “Delphi” panel with SADO attorneys.The panel reviewed the preliminary case weights developed from the time studydata and compared those to SADO’s existing weighted caseload model. The datashowed that the average trial appeal transcript is approximately 600 pages, andthat, on average, SADO attorneys were spending 92.5 hours on a standard trialappeal – considerably more than the 48.2 hours allotted for by SADO’s existingweighted caseload model or 45 hours, the presumptive caps under the MAACSsystem. The panel was also asked to identify specific case types and caseactivities where more (or less) time is needed to provide qualityrepresentation.
Ultimately,after considering the workload adjustments proposed during the Delphi panel andthe way those adjustments would impact the maximum number of cases eachattorney could handle per year, the Advisory Committee chose to adopt thepreliminary case weights for jury trial appeals and keep the relative weightfor a plea appeal at .375 of the baseline weight for a standard trial appeal(1.0), consistent with SADO’s current model. In other words, the new caseloadstandards will be representative of SADO’s current practice but do notincorporate additional, wished-for adjustments.
From there, NCSC considered the new case weights and attorney yearvalue to make recommendations about the maximum number of cases (of each casetype) a SADO or MAACS attorney should be appointed each year. The final report3recommended a maximum case weight per year is 14.8, which translates intoroughly 15 standard trial appeals per year. In addition to the new caseloadstandards, the report proposed an implementation plan. NCSC recommended thatthe new weighted caseload model be implemented through an incremental,three-year process and that both SADO and MAACS grow to be able to realize therecommendations. NCSC further recommended that SADO expand to hire enough attorneys tosignificantly increase the percentage of overall appeals handled by SADO publicdefenders and reduce the overall assignment pressure on the MAACS roster.
So, what comes next? SADO is working to grow its public defenderdivision to meet the appellate indigent defense caseload standards developed bythe NCSC weighted caseload study. In addition to more assistant defenders, wewill bring on more investigators, mitigation specialists, and paralegals tomeet client needs. SADO will also continue to collect data to ensure a fairdistribution of cases, accurate information on caseloads, and the long-termneeds of the organization.
Katherine Marcuz
Managing Attorney, SADO
Endnotes
1 372 US 335 (1963).
2 Nicholas M. Pace, et al., National Public Defense Workload Study (RAND Corp. 2023), p ix.
3 Cynthia G. Lee, et al., Michigan State Appellate Defender Office Workload Assessment (NCSC 2024).
