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Organizations and attorneys who represent low-income parents in New York facing the prospect of losing their children in abuse or neglect proceedings told a blue-ribbon panel that there should be more funding for parental representation and caps on the number of those cases that attorneys take on.

But the hearing before members of the Commission on Parental Legal Representation, which Chief Judge Janet DiFiore formed earlier this year, on Thursday at the Appellate Division, First Department, courthouse in Manhattan also showed some differences between institutional, nonprofit providers of legal services and lawyers provided under the state's Assigned Counsel Plan, known as 18-B attorneys, over the best way to provide legal services to low-income litigants in Family Court.

In terms of the issues that the two camps presented to the commission, 18-B attorneys are paid $75 an hour and that figure hasn't budged since 2004. This has led to a shortage of 18-B attorneys, said Rhonda Weir, a Brooklyn solo attorney who works as 18-B in Family Court.

Weir said that 18-Bs form the “backbone” of Family Court, taking on about half of all Family Court cases statewide.

“I asked an assigned counsel attorney who recently left the panel for employment with a law firm why he was leaving—without hesitation, his response was he pays $30,000 per year for health insurance for his family,” Weir said in her testimony.

Assigned counsel attorneys and legal service providers like Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS), which provides representation to parents facing abuse and neglect proceedings through its family defense practice, are in agreement that there should be caseload caps in place for Family Court attorneys, as there are for indigent criminal defense, and that social workers should be involved with most cases.

BDS' family defense practice, which was formed in 2007, when the number of abuse and neglect cases was spiking and the New York City government began moving away from the 18-B model for providing attorneys for parents and toward institutional providers.

“This change emerged from more than a decade of advocacy by attorneys, bar associations and parent groups, all of whom pointed out the stark inadequacies in the assigned counsel system as it existed at that time,” said BDS executive director Lisa Schreibersdorf and Lauren Shapiro, director of the organization's family defense practice, in written testimony submitted to the commission.

The institutional providers said they can provide a “holistic” approach to Family Court cases that 18-B attorneys can't—if a parent facing a neglect complaint needs help securing housing to help their cases or if there are immigration issues, BDS, The Bronx Defenders and other providers have attorneys on staff that can help.

BDS also submitted data to the commission from the New York City Administration for Children's Services showing that, in Brooklyn, when institutional providers are involved, children are sent to foster care at lower rates and for shorter stays than if their families were working with 18-B attorneys.  

Following her testimony, Weir said there is a “pseudo battle” between institutional providers and 18-B attorneys over provision of legal service that she said she finds “silly”—with assigned counsel model, 18-B panels are made up of lawyers from diverse backgrounds that can provide services in a wide array of areas.

Also, she said, the 18-B model can provide conflict-free representation in, for example, abuse cases where multiple members of the same family need their own lawyers, as opposed to a single institutional provider representing all the parties.  

But despite the differences in philosophy between the 18-B bar and the institutional providers in New York City, both sides said they can coexist to provide legal services to New Yorkers of modest means.

“We have to have a system that supports all forms of representation,” Schreibersdorf said.

The parental representation commission members who appeared at the hearing were commission chair, Karen Peters, who retired last year as presiding justice of the Appellate Division, Third Department; Judge Jeanette Ruiz, administrative judge of New York City's Family Courts; Bronx Family Court Judge Gayle Roberts; New York University School of Law professor Martin Guggenheim.

The meeting in Manhattan was the second of four hearings it is holding at points around the state to gather input.

The next meeting is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 10 at the Appellate Division, Third Department, courthouse in Albany, and the following meeting is set to be held at 10 a.m. on Oct. 23 at Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola.

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