When the Defender Association of Philadelphia voted to unionize earlier this week, it became the second organization of public defense attorneys to unionize in Pennsylvania over the past year.

In May, the public defenders and prosecutors in Lancaster County voted to organize through the Teamsters Union.

Their decisions come as several other public defender offices across the country have decided to unionize over the past five years—including lawyers at the Connecticut Public Defender Services and attorneys at the Los Angeles County Public Defenders. Lawyers in Massachusetts have also recently been fighting to change state laws so that they will be able to form a union, and the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys in New York continued to expand the number of lawyers it represented last year—noting that, by mid-2019, it had gained 300 new members.

Although it is difficult to gauge exactly how many public defender offices have formed unions recently, according to labor attorneys, there appears to be a rising interest in the public defense bar to unionize.

"I do think that, even though this has been something that's ongoing, there is a renewed push," said Carla Katz, an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and of counsel to Cohen, Placitella & Roth.

Jessica Brown of Willig, Williams & Davidson said that, although it might not be an overwhelming trend, public defender offices have recently been stepping up unionization efforts.

Public defender offices voting to unionize is not new. New York's Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, which is organized through the UAW, was founded in 1969, and claims to be the oldest union of public defenders in the country. In Cook County, Illinois, public defenders unionized under the AFSCME in 1986. In Pittsburgh, both the public defenders and prosecutors offices have been unionized under the United Steelworkers union since 1995.

But, according to Katz, the latest efforts could be a result of the growing awareness and appetite for criminal justice reform.

"Public defenders are poorly paid, they have excessive caseloads, work under generally poor working conditions, and often feel a lack of influence on real criminal justice reform," Katz said. "These are attorneys that are defending constitutional rights and ensuring everybody gets a vigorous defense. Unionizing brings not only the things like better wages, reductions in caseload, but those things bring stability not just to the public defenders, but also to their offices and the community."

In Philadelphia, attorneys voted Monday 142-65 to form the Defenders Union with the UAW.

In a statement announcing the vote, the Defenders Union said the move came out of a desire for transparency and a greater voice in the decision-making processes.

"Now with the power of collective bargaining, we will improve our workplace, promote criminal justice reform, and strengthen our client representation," the union said in the statement.

According to an organizing committee member, who declined to be named for the story, there was no single reason the lawyers wanted to unionize, but rather it came out of a growing interest in preserving benefit packages and bringing parity between the public defenders and lawyers from the District Attorney and City Solicitor's offices, as well as an eagerness by the lawyers to expand on recent criminal justice reforms in the city.

The next step for the Defenders Union is to elect members to a bargaining committee, which will then begin the process of negotiating a contract with the Defenders Association.

The Defenders Association, however, is in a somewhat unique situation in that it is a nonprofit that is funded through the government, and so, while most unions have the ability to negotiate directly with those who hold the purse strings, when it comes to the Defenders Association, Philadelphia City Council provides the funding.

According to the committee member, although the union will negotiate directly with the nonprofit, having a union will give the attorneys a greater voice in fighting for salaries and benefits that could help the office attract and maintain talent. The Defenders Union, the committee member said, is largely modeled on the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys, which is also a government-funded nonprofit, and, according to the committee member, has long been successful in lobbying the New York City Council when it comes to the lawyers' interests.

The Defenders Union includes all non-management assistant defenders and law clerks, but the committee member said the union would be supportive of efforts by staff to unionize as well if those arise.