Pros and Cons of Private vs. Public Defense

¶ … private vs. public defense

Anyone who has been charged in the court of law automatically needs to some form of legal representation. Criminal defense lawyers therefore represent those people who have been charged with crime. However there is a difference in the criminal defense lawyers there are those ones that work on their own as private defense lawyers and others are public defense team. In some constitutions it is stated that everyone is permitted to be represented by an attorney be it a public defender or a private attorney. Any lawyer can represent a person in court but public defense lawyers specifically offer to their clients experience and knowledge that is only available through their daily practice in the criminal defense law. Public defenders are lawyers who have been appointed to represent people who are not in a financial position to hire an attorney to represent them. Public defense agencies are supported by public funding but are ethically expected to be independent and not in any way supposed to take directions from the government when it comes to accepting to handle cases or when they hire their staff. Public defenders operate from a public defense office and they are paid country, state or a federal jurisdiction in which they are located on the other hand private defense lawyers often practice on their own or as partners.

There are pros and cons of the use of each type of attorney this paper will therefore look at the various props and cons of private and public defense. Before the pros and cons are critically examined we will look at how really are the public and private defenders similar and different. Public defenders and private attorneys have the same schooling and are bearers of the same license truly speaking they have more in common than differences. A public defender is just a fully fledged lawyer attorney like any other lawyer. When it comes to experience, public defenders experience would vary from an individual just like a private defense attorney. One major difference between the two is the resources that are available to them. This difference is clearly manifested through the public defenders having a large caseload as compared to the private defenders. It can also manifest in the fact that public defenders have less access to tools such as private investigators which are important tools ( Mia, 2010).

The amount of resources at the disposal of public defenders greatly depends on how well funded the public defense office is funded. Private defenders on the contrary have unlimited time, and resources that they can spend on their clients this only depending on how much the client is willing to pay. The final difference is that public defenders cannot refuse a case provided a case qualifies under public defender program; the assigned public defender is not in a position to refuse it not unless they have a very good reason like having conflict of interest with another client. On the contrary private defenders can refuse taking up cases with any reason they have. However there are pros and cons of the use of each type of attorney this paper will therefore look at the various props and cons of private and public defense (Bonadio, 2012).

The pros of using a public defender are first low income clients also have access to legal representation as oppose to defending themselves. To sought legal advice is preferred when it comes to defense in the court since prosecutors and judges can be intimidating especially when it in the case for people who have committed an offense for the first time. Another pro-is the fact that the services of public defenders are free in most states. When it comes to the cons of having a public defender they are such that public defenders are government employees and so they are paid civil servants who get a pay that is way lower than that of their counterparts in the private sector. Another con is the fact that they have caseloads that are overwhelming they can be expected to handle 100 to 200 cases at a time this means that they are overworked compared to their private counterparts aside from being underpaid.

There are also non-specified as they are expected to handle a wide range of cases at a given time and they range from rape, drug possession, murder and many of them may often not need the same level of specialist knowledge. There is also minimal client face time; in most cases they meet up with the clients just a few minutes in short that is not enough time for the public defender to make sense of their client that will form a basis for the formulation of a strong defense. In most cases the public defenders are only interested in solving the cases as quickly as possible since they get a fixed salary regardless of their success rates. A client does not have any choice when it comes to choosing an attorney. In most cases that are handled by public defenders a lot of time is taken to resolve since they have a lot of cases on their table hence the likelihood for there to be appearance conflicts with their clients (My DUIattorney.org, 2013).

When it comes to the use of private defense there are various pros this include the fact that one is entitled to choose from a vast selection of many attorneys who are all qualified. The private defenders are having fewer cases and hence they have more time to take on each case. They can typically handle just about 10-50 cases at a time which is a manageable number than public defenders and hence they are able to more thoroughly analyze and do investigation on a particular case. They also have a lot of resources that is at their disposal such as a network of private investigators, private chemical testing laboratories, expert witnesses as well as associate lawyers who can work on a case effectively.