NACDL and the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants (SCLAID), serving as a consultant, will provide TTA to help indigent defender organizations in Tennessee: (1) identify the lawyering tasks required for effective representation across the full spectrum of case types; (2) capture personnel time to determine how much time attorneys are spending on these critical tasks; (3) employ user-friendly technologies to promote compliance with newly established standards of practice; (4) use established methodologies to determine how much time attorneys should be spending on these tasks; and (5) use this new data-driven system to continuously and permanently evaluate attorney performance and support requests for adequate resources. NACDL and SCLAID will also work with technical assistance (TA) recipients over the course of the grant period to ensure they have the capacity to implement these practices on a permanent basis.
SCLAID and NACDL will provide TTA in Tennessee (specifically Nashville and Knoxville) to develop workload metrics by combining a permanent timekeeping system similar to that used in the private sector with specific tasks, and the estimated time required to complete those tasks, necessary for effective representation using the Delphi method.
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ABA/SCLAID
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Site visits to Nashville and Knoxville to meet with line defenders, executive directors, and accountants in preparation for the Delphi Study.
In March, the Answering Gideon’s Call workload team comprised of Colette Tvedt (NACDL), Geoffrey Burkhart (ABA-SCLAID), Stephen Hanlon (ABA-SCLAID) and Peter Sterling (consultant) traveled to Tennessee to meet with the public defenders in Knoxville and Nashville and the accounting firm of Crosslin & Associates who will be conducting the Delphi study. We began our trip at the Knox County Public Defender's Community Law Office, meeting with Executive Director Mark Stephens, the IT Director Isaac Merkle, line defenders, and two accountants from Crosslin who will be working on the time tracking project. It was a fascinating day. We started the day talking to the line public defenders about the challenges and benefits of tracking time. We then spent several hours educating the Crosslin accountants about all of the various case tasks that are conducted each day by public defenders. The IT director walked us through the software tracking system and the time tracking reports that have been generated over the last several months.
We next traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to meet with Dawn Deaner the Executive Director of the Public Defender of Metropolitan Nashville & Davidson County. Similarly, her office has been tracking their time for the last several months. We had the opportunity to meet with her line defenders, the IT team, and the Crosslin accountants to review the Nashville data as we prepare for the Delphi study.
First survey round was sent to participants
Workload studies involve two parts: (1) a study of what is, and (2) a study of what should be. The first part involves time-tracking. The second part includes two rounds of surveys and a Delphi study to build consensus on what should be. The first survey round was distributed on November 6, 2015.
The second round of survey questions was sent out to survey participants.
Workload studies involve two parts: (1) a study of what is, and (2) a study of what should be. The first part involves time-tracking. The second part includes two rounds of surveys and a Delphi study to build consensus on what should be. The second survey round was distributed on 12-21-2015.
Defenders from Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis came together in Nashville on April 13, 2016 to participate in a day-long in-person Delphi panel to build consensus on the appropriate amount of time to spend on certain types of cases.
NACDL received the data from the workload study. Following the examination of the data gathered from both the Delphi panel and the time tracking data from the Knoxville and Nashville defender offices, Crosslin (the accounting firm hired to collect and analyze the data) drafted their initial report and submitted it to NACDL and ABA-SCLAID for editing and review. The process has proven extremely challenging due to some unique issues relating to the structure of the Tennessee court system, data collection disparities between the two jurisdictions under study - Knoxville and Nashville, and discrepancies in the Delphi process. Efforts to complete the editing of this report and data are ongoing.
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Please submit a signed letter of support from your agency’s executive or other senior staff member. The letter can be emailed to or uploaded with this request. The letter should be submitted on official letterhead and include the following information:
- General information regarding the request for TTA services, i.e., the who, what, where, when, and why.
- The organizational and/or community needs specific to the request for TTA services.
- The benefits or anticipated outcomes from the receipt of TTA services.
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