NACDL and the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants (SCLAID), serving as a consultant, will provide TTA to help the Rhode Island Public Defender: (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 RIPD 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 Rhode Island 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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Colette Tvedt, Geoff Burkhart, and Steve Hanlon met with Dan Bright (IT), Mary McElroy (Executive director), and Michael DeLauria (Training Director) in Rhode Island, to discuss how things are going with the workload study and to look at the numbers of their line defenders. They talked about challenges and benefits that have come from time study. They also met with about 35 of their 49 defenders for a couple of hours to talk about how things are going with the time tracking. There was an open forum to discuss what some of the difficulties are with tracking time and to ensure that everyone was on the same page. Some of the line defenders who are working busy dockets/calendars were concerned about practical challenges regarding which case to track their time under when multiple cases were intertwined. Geoff Burkhart and Colette also went to court in RI to observe how the Sixth Amendment is being upheld in RI as well and to meet with one of the busiest line defenders who was in court and couldn’t make the meeting. All in all, we felt like they were invested in making this a success.
During the trip they also spent the first afternoon going over case types and case tasks to ensure that the information was being uniformly captured and to determine which case tasks should be included in the Delphi study and how to diagram the case types. Then on the second day, they met with Blum and Shapiro, the accounting firm, to talk about the workload study and the Delphi process.
Met with administrators from PDs office including the chief, trial chief, training chief, and IT chief to talk about how the time tracking was going and to talk about the Delphi panel.
The first round of survey questions was sent 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 first survey round was distributed on May 16, 2016.
The second round of survey questions was sent 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 07/05/2016.
A Delphi study with approximately 20 luminaries of the criminal defense bar, including private practitioners and public defenders, will be the last step in the workload study prior to the writing of the report.
Colette Tvedt, Diane Price, Bonnie Hoffman, Kyle O’Dowd, Malia Brink, Stephen Hanlon and representatives from BlumShapiro drafted, reviewed, edited and completed The Rhode Island Project: A Study of the Rhode Island Public Defender System and Attorney Workload Standards.
On August 8, 2017, the completed Rhode Island Project report was submitted to the BJA reporting portal for approval.
NACDL staff including Bonnie Hoffman and Cathy Zlomek completed the formatting, layout and design of the report. The completed report was released to the public in both an electronic and hard copy format on November 16, 2017.
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- 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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