By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
King County’s Office of Public Defense is among the first in the nation to adopt new, research-based caseload limits for public defenders, a move aimed at addressing what experts call a growing crisis in public defense. Public defenders across the country — including in Washington — face overwhelming caseloads and low pay, leaving them unable to devote the necessary time to each client and undermining the fairness of the justice system. In response, the Washington State Bar Association’s (WSBA) Board of Governors recently approved the standards, which are based on the National Public Defense Workload Study (NPDWS) and designed to ensure every client receives constitutionally adequate representation.
“What you’re seeing nationally is a sort of crisis in public defense,” said Matt Sanders, Director of the King County Department of Public Defense. “You’re seeing judges in Massachusetts having to dismiss cases, you’re seeing strikes in New York City because of salaries, and it’s not just on the East Coast — you’re seeing work stoppages in Portland, Oregon. You have Yakima County currently being sued by the ACLU because of defendants being charged and not having counsel, and so, this crisis in public defense.”
In Washington, public defenders handle thousands of felony and misdemeanor cases every year, often juggling court appearances, client meetings, evidence review, and legal research under intense time constraints. Sanders said that without intervention, the pressure on public defense attorneys threatens the very foundation of fair trials. “Every case represents a person whose liberty is at stake,” he said, “and when attorneys don’t have the hours they need to do the job right, the system fails.”
The American Bar Association and RAND have warned that excessive caseloads violate ethics rules and “inevitably cause harm,” forcing attorneys to choose which cases or steps to prioritize and allowing many to be resolved without due diligence.
The NPDWS found that the last national workload standards, created in 1973, were outdated and failed to reflect the complexity of modern cases. At the time, there were no smartphones, social media accounts, body cameras, or large-scale digital evidence to review. The old guidelines recommended just 13.9 hours per felony and 5.2 hours per misdemeanor, without accounting for the type or severity of the charge.
The new standards recommend an average of 35 hours for each felony and 22.3 hours for each misdemeanor, with more time for serious crimes — 286 hours for cases carrying life without parole, 248 hours for murder, 167 hours for sex crimes, and 99 hours for other high-severity felonies. These benchmarks, Sanders said, “more accurately reflect what it takes to provide competent legal representation in a modern world that includes social media, cellphones, surveillance cameras, and body cameras.”
“The Washington State Supreme Court asked for there to be a task force, the Council on Public Defense, to make a recommendation for what Washington State’s caseloads should look like for public defenders,” Sanders said. “The Council on Public Defense created a new standard for Washington that was based on that National Public Defense Workload Study — basically, a standard that would allow for public defenders to reach the recommendations in that national study over the course of three years.”
Washington’s approach has drawn attention from other states struggling with similar pressures. In Oregon, a severe public defender shortage has led to case dismissals. In New York City, low salaries have prompted strikes. In Yakima County, the ACLU is suing over defendants being charged without counsel.
The WSBA’s 19 new Standards for Indigent Defense Services address caseload limits, staffing, investigators, compensation, and attorney qualifications. They are designed to give public defense authorities the ability to conduct meaningful oversight and ensure attorneys deliver effective assistance of counsel, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.
Emma Andersson, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project, said the study reinforces a long-standing problem.
“The NPDWS study is yet another alarm indicating that we have much more work to do to make the constitutional right to counsel real for everyone,” Andersson said. “In this era of mass incarceration and overcriminalization, public defenders work to challenge systemic oppression every day. Despite their essential role, public defenders are consistently undervalued. Lawmakers and decision-makers must invest in public defense systems while simultaneously reducing mass incarceration.”
Former King County Deputy Prosecutor Alan Garrett said the new limits are a major step toward fairness in the justice system.
“The quality of your defense sometimes comes down to the size of your wallet, and that shouldn’t be the case,” Garrett said. “To be on equal footing — but we all know it’s not. So, I think to support new caseloads and compensation standards for public defenders is huge.”
The stakes are particularly high for communities that have historically borne the brunt of incarceration, including Black Americans, whose experiences helped shape constitutional protections like the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee, the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel, and the 14th Amendment’s application of due process to the states.
“The Constitution gives everybody a right to effective counsel,” Garrett said. “The problem is, in a lot of places, in Washington and all the other parts of the country, they don’t have the funding to support it. And so, people end up falling between the cracks. They end up going to prison when they should be going home. You know, police misconduct goes unaccounted for, and it disproportionately impacts people from my community, as well as other marginalized communities — LGBTQ+, nonbinary, people experiencing poverty, and of course, people of color.”
Garrett said part of the solution is ensuring that Black Americans and underserved communities know their rights.
“Then you ask someone about fantasy football, what are they going to tell you? They’re going to give you a rundown of the stats for the players who they traded, and so part of the pushback is, OK, I know fantasy football, I know the stats for the basketball players, all that,” he said. “Why not know something that’s going to really pertain to you too? Like the Constitution and the amendments that protect you. And as Black folks, we have to be more educated — or just educated, not more educated — because we’re smart. We just don’t give ourselves credit enough to want to learn those things that truly affect our lives.”
