Noe PadillaLafayette Journal & Courier
LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Earlier this year, the Indiana Supreme Court established a commission aimed at addressing the state's critical shortage of attorneys.
”Virtually all 92 Hoosier counties have fewer lawyers per capita than the national average, and the gap is especially acute in Indiana’s rural and most socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, as well as in the public service sector. This shortage threatens the institution of the legal profession, public trust in the courts, the rule of law, and the civic health of our communities,” the Indiana Supreme Court statement reads.
This shortage has been an issue affecting Tippecanoe County over the last few years, with both the public defender’s and prosecutor’s offices attempting to attract new talent with varying success.
This issue was on display for the public defender’s office at June’s Tippecanoe County Council meeting, where the council approved Chief Public Defender Amy Hutchison's request to break up a full-time position into two part-time positions.
Within a year, Hutchison has filed this request a few times, seeing the county’s public defender office replace three full-time public defenders with six regular part-time positions.
“Indiana has a pretty significant attorney shortage,” Hutchison said. “In 2021, we had combined part-time and hired full-time people because we had people interested in the jobs at the time. But when I posted full-time positions in 2022, I had no bites. No applications.”
To ensure that the county had an adequate number of public defenders over the years, Hutchison said she would react to the market, either by consolidating part-time positions into full-time positions or vice versa.
But breaking full-time positions into part-time positions has occasionally seen pushback from county leadership, primarily because of the additional cost.
According to Tippecanoe County’s 2024 proposed pay grid, full-time felony prosecuting attorney and public defender's salaries could range from $82,875 to $106,005 with benefits, depending on the experience of the attorney.
But a regular part-time felony public defender is required to work only about 30 hours a week, and the prosecutor’s office is not allowed to hire deputy prosecuting attorneys as regular part-time.
Some of the pushback that the public defender office received was regarding the potential increased cost for the county by hiring two regular part-time felony public defenders over a single full-time attorney. Depending on the experience of the attorneys, the cost on average would increase by $30,000.
But Hutchison argues that although the overall cost would increase the county’s budget, when broken down on a case-by-case cost, having the two additional attorneys would ultimately save the county money because of an increase in active cases being handled per attorney.
Over the past few years, local officials have become more understanding of the attorney shortage hitting the state and, in turn, have been more willing to help out both the county public defender’s office and prosecutor’s office, Prosecutor Pat Harrington said.
Harrington noted that over the last seven years, the county’s prosecutor’s office has had trouble maintaining a full staff of 31 prosecuting attorneys.
“We’re down about 25 percent of our attorneys,” Harrington said about his current staff. “Last year, my attorneys put in 650 hours of overtime on average for which they did not receive one penny because they are exempt. That amount of overtime is equivalent to working 14 to 15 extra weeks with no pay.”
For many attorneys who have recently graduated from law school, this looming issue of unpaid overtime and a mountain of work is a high hurdle that prosecutor’s offices around the state have been trying to overcome, Harrington said.
And because of the high demand for new attorneys in both the public and private sectors, the going rate for an attorney in the private sector is much higher than most public prosecutor’s offices and public defenders’ offices can reasonably counter, he said.
Since the closure of Valparaiso University's Law School a few years ago, the pool of available attorneys has continued to shrink year over year, which has made the average graduating attorney more valuable to the legal market.
These are just short-term solutions to a long-term issue.
Harrington and Hutchison have been advocating for the state to work on a plan in hopes of addressing these issues, which is why the Indiana Supreme Court’s April commitment came as a surprise to many.
The Commission on Indiana’s Legal Future will explore several options aimed at addressing Indiana’s attorney shortage and offering recommendations to the court for future actions.
The commission goals:
- "Business & Licensure Models: Identify ways in which the current law firm business model and professional regulations can be improved to meet the needs of modern and future practice and make recommendations on alternative legal licensure models."
- "Pathways to Admission & Education: Identify and make recommendations on models for alternative pathways to legal practice in Indiana and on models to strengthen and streamline connections between secondary, undergraduate and law school institutions."
- "Incentivizing Rural Practice: Identify and make recommendations on ways to connect law students, practitioners and other legal professionals to business and professional opportunities within rural communities."
- "Incentivizing Public Service Work: Identify and make recommendations on ways to promote interest in public service-oriented legal work, including in the criminal justice system, in family services, in civil legal aid, and in municipal, county and state government."
- "Technology Applications: Identify and make recommendations on ways to safely and ethically utilize emerging technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence and online dispute resolution, to fill gaps in legal representation."
The commission is expected to submit its proposals to the court for action with a final report by July 1, 2025.
