The County Bar is a complex organization comprised of many different groups and functions working together to enhance the system of justice, the lawyers who serve it and the community served by it. One of the more important, but perhaps least recognized, components of the Bar is the Indigent Defense Panel (IDP), a sub-committee providing representation to indigent individuals when the public defender's office is conflicted or overloaded. The Bar Association recruits, classifies, and provides peer review oversight for the attorneys in this group, who are then assigned cases and paid by the County.

When I say least recognized, I speak from personal experience. I served as a Member at Large on the Bar Council for four years and then as an officer for another two years, but barely knew a thing about IDP. That has changed dramatically for me in the past year as the County Bar has renegotiated the terms of IDP's memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the County of Sacramento.

It has certainly been an eye-opening experience to learn about these attorneys who justifiably consider themselves to be overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. A recent article in USA Today highlighted this very fact, recounting examples from around the country where underfunded and overburdened public defender systems abound. Perhaps some solace can be found in the fact that our attorneys are not as poorly paid as in Virginia, where caps on fees paid to courtappointed lawyers are the lowest in the nation: fees on a felony sentence of 20 years or less are capped at $428, while felonies with a sentence of more than 20 years are paid no more than $1,186! Nonetheless, with the highest rate paid for death penalty cases still less than $100 an hour in our county, we have some work of our own to do.

Over the past year we have striven to favorably renegotiate the terms of our MOU with the County of Sacramento. Along the way we determined that a reorganization of the entire structure of IDP was necessary within the Bar itself to reduce fees charged to the members and to provide better services to the dedicated attorneys who devote their time. With the assistance of a blue ribbon committee including Michael Sands, Dennis O'Reilly, Stacy Boulware-Eurie, Mark Millard, Kevin Adamson, and Emory King, we are close to completing that task.

Special thanks go to Dennis O'Reilly, Chair of the IDP committee, who has worked tirelessly as a volunteer leading the program and helping steer its course with the Bar. As we embark on our newly defined relationship with the County, we look forward to the promise of a brighter future for both these dedicated attorneys and the public they serve.

September / October 2005