The National Legal Aid & Defender Association Quality Indicators Project

• In Event: Legal Services for the Indigent – New Frontiers in Law, Policy and Research on Quality Legal Representation

Abstract

Nationally, conversation has grown around the need to identify “what matters most” and “what works and what doesn’t” in achieving quality indigent defense services. NLADA is synthesizing past efforts to define “quality” indigent defense and develop indicators to measure the identified characteristics. We are adding to this body of work the results from several roundtable discussions being held with indigent defense social workers and attorneys in 2016 about how they define quality representation (goals, activities, processes and outcomes). We will present this synthesis of past work and raw information to attendees of the Defender Research Consortium convening in July 2016. There we will attempt to develop and pilot an agreed upon set of “quality indicators” that defender programs across the country can track and analyze.

Defender programs that track the indicators will be able to document, empirically, how (if at all) the selected behaviors/processes are affecting indigent defense outcomes. Local results can be compared with those from other jurisdictions. With this information, programs will be to better equipped to justify resource requests and to reallocate existing resources (such as staffing and training) to maximize impact for clients.

Authors

• Marea Beeman, National Legal Aid & Defender Association

• Claire Buetow, National Legal Aid & Defender Association