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It’s true that Romney inherited the mess, but he quickly signaled his lack of empathy — along with his penchant for grandstanding — by announcing in early 2003 that attorneys should take indigent criminal cases pro bono (i.e., without pay). During the current flare-up of the crisis, he publicly scolded the attorneys to get back to work or be barred from state work forever — not the way professionals like to be spoken to, much less the way officers of the court like to be addressed by the executive. "If you already have a shortage, and you treat those you have with disrespect, you’re not going to draw more in," says Deborah Sirotkin Butler, an attorney in Arlington. Earlier this year he submitted a plan with the FY 2005 budget that would have dramatically changed the way these attorneys are compensated — discarding the hourly rate for an à la carte figure per case — that his staff dreamed up, down to the dollar, without consulting anyone in the bar-advocate world. The Democratic-led legislature disregarded Romney’s scheme, but offered nothing in its place. The governor didn’t exactly strain himself fighting for his reform plan — not unlike the way he handled the death-penalty scheme he announced earlier this year, or his notion to wrest judicial management from the legislature, or the ideas stemming from the Governor’s Commission on Criminal Justice Innovation, all of which he seemed to forget about soon after the press conferences ended.

His latest suggestion — to move the CPCS out of the judiciary and into the executive branch — drew immediate fire. "The provider of the prosecution is also determining what legal opportunity is afforded to the defendant? The idea is dreadful," says Michael Greco, attorney with Kirkpatrick & Lockhart in Boston and president-elect of the American Bar Association. Not to worry; Romney hasn’t mentioned it in the two weeks since he declared it a necessary response to an "unacceptable" and outrageous" threat to public safety. (He immediately left for the Olympic Games in Greece; now, he’ll be heading off to join President George W. Bush on the campaign trail, followed by a week in New York for the Republican convention.) The earliest his plan will be revisited is January, and it seems unlikely that he will pursue it any more actively than he has his previous jousts at judicial reform. His main advocate on CPCS reform, chief counsel Daniel Winslow, is hoping to leave the administration for a judgeship, and the governor’s other voice on criminal justice, Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, has so far demonstrated no interest at all in the defense-counsel issue.

On the other side of the aisle, the AG’s office has spent the past several months representing the state against the bar advocates. Reilly has been quick to blame the CPCS and to denounce Romney’s plan, but has not indicated what he would do about the situation. For his part, House Speaker Tom Finneran helped block bar-advocate raises this year, and announced that he will not call the House back into session to consider Romney’s bill, a raise in bar-advocate rates, or any other solution to the situation. It turns out that nobody has even nominated members for a commission charged by the legislature with studying the issue — an initiative put forward at the same time that halfhearted $7.50 raise was announced and ignored.

Advocates for legal advocates, it seems, are in short supply.

IN THE ABSENCE of political action, the state’s defense-counsel system has changed by necessity. The original idea was that a great many attorneys would each take a small number of indigent cases. But it hasn’t worked out that way: over three years, the number of private attorneys available for these cases has declined by approximately 200. Since public defenders are able to handle only about 10 percent of the cases, private bar advocates must average 70 new cases annually. But in the current circumstances, only a small batch of lawyers is willing to be swamped by these cases either full-time or for a large portion of their practice. One attorney who accepted a duty-day appointment in Springfield District Court — an assignment to hang around at arraignments and take any indigent clients without counsel — received 47 cases in that one day, according to court testimony before Superior Court justice Francis X. Spina in May on the bar-advocate situation.

At $30 an hour, attorneys doing primarily bar-advocate work cannot possibly afford the basic trappings of a law practice, such as a secretary, researcher, and basic office materials. Michael Rich, an Arlington family-law attorney, has declined new court-appointed cases for the last two years, although such cases once made up between 80 and 98 percent of his practice. Rich has a son nearing college age, and his wife grew more than a little tired of struggling to pay the mortgage and her husband’s law-school loans. The Riches will soon be able to afford health insurance for the first time in years. "When I was doing mostly court-appointed work, I was sinking deeper and deeper into debt," says Rich. "Since stopping taking new [court-appointed] cases, my income has at least doubled, with about a quarter of the caseload."

It should come as no surprise that these lawyers often end up working harder for their $175-an-hour clients than for their $30-an-hour ones. The neglect shown to these indigent defendants is startling. According to the Spangenberg survey, 61 percent of attorneys admit that they frequently fail to conduct basic in-person client interviews in their assigned cases. Nearly two-thirds frequently fail to conduct adequate factual investigations. A quarter frequently fail to file all necessary pretrial motions.