A state court judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday that New York City may proceed with plans to assign to institutional providers, such as the Legal Aid Society, as many as 44,000 conflict cases a year that up to now have been handled for indigent criminal defendants by individual private lawyers.
Acting Supreme Court Justice Anil Singh in New York County Lawyers’ Association v. Bloomberg, 107217/10, rejected the legal position of the five county bar association plaintiffs who sought to enjoin the city from making the switch. He said that accepting the bar groups’ position would render “meaningless” the key provision in Article 18-B of the County Law, which specifies the methods for providing representation to indigent criminal defendants.
