I am a lawyer employed by the Public Defender’s Office in one of Pennsylvania’s counties. My office is extremely overworked. Many of the lawyers have left and have not been replaced. The caseload is impossible. What are my duties and responsibilities?

The question is an interesting and timely one. This column in the past has discussed problems with court appointed and public defenders offices and the ethics of many of the policies that have been accepted in Pennsylvania. For instance, there is no question that court-appointed counsel who just receives a flat fee for an unlimited number of cases are in a total conflict of interest with their court-appointed clients. A flat fee of $3,000 or $3,200 per month, which does not include overhead, and where there is no cap on the number of cases the lawyer handles is just absolutely unethical. It puts the lawyer in a total conflict with a client. A lawyer cannot go to trial on all of those cases. It is in the lawyer’s interest to work things out, but it might not be in the client’s. Public defender’s offices have many of the same problems. It is just not as obvious as the flat fee conflict with sometimes 100 or more cases assigned to court-appointed counsel in the counties.