Judicial Selection and the Court Appointed List

G

GALS

Guest
Jurisdiction
Kentucky
I have a history of doing public service law in my career. I have worked at Legal Services, the Public Advocacy and as a private attorney who focuses on public service law. This has included ten years in the social service area representing indigent parents and children when they are removed by the state. I have worked four years as an attorney in the Family Court in defense of civil contempt on child service. There is approximately fourteen years in juvenile law.

A new Family Court Judge was nominated when our prior Judge retired about a year ago. That person was elected last judicial election.

The Judge has made changes in her office and the court administration. She has sent letters to the lawyers in the social service juvenile court telling us what we do wrong including being too noisy, going into her secretary's office, and so forth. Then she thanks us for our service.

The most recent letter has really upset me. There are nine attorneys on the court-appointment list, various ages, sexes, races, and just a diverse group. I am one of them. The letter she sent mandated that we attend all training, meet with the child if you are a child attorney, be available every Tuesday, the day they hold court and so forth. There will also be one additional court appearance required. We are paid a set fee for these cases no matter how many hours we put in by statute. The Judge stressed that there would be more time and court requirements. The Judge wrote to think about the additional commitment seriously. If we still wanted to remain on the appointment list then let her court administrator know about it.

After she found out how many of the attorneys wanted to remain on the list, she would evaluation. Further, as one of the changes in the court, she was going to cut the appointment list from nine to about half.

For the last year, the Judge has made all of the court appointments herself based on who she wanted on what case representing who she wanted them to represent. Now she is picking what specific attorneys she wants to remain in the court and appoint from there.

Previously, there had been a roster of the attorneys, and the clerk would go down the list and appoint attorneys from the next one on the list. It was fair. The prior Judge did not make the appointments.

This is about a third of my income. I work as a sole practitioner. The whole letter and words of the future have really upset and depressed me. I spoke to the Judge today, asking her to reconsider her possible decision to remove attorneys from the list as a group. I stressed that we are a small county, and if you chose to do that type of work, this is the only county that has this court. It is a rural area. I stressed my interest and experience as a public service attorney and how I enjoyed the court and this role. I spoke very generally, not speaking about anyone by name, just how it appears everyone really enjoys working in the court. I also told her that I really supported other things in the letter. Should I have done this? I shared it would make me very sad not to be able to continue to assist people in the court.

Any advise on how to process this or handle this?
 
Only time will tell if your approach and intentions were perceived by the judge as you wished them to be, counselor.

I won't criticize or critique what you've done. It's hard to get others to understand your intentions, so don't second guess yourself.

Hopefully your words will be received as you intended.

All you can do now is await the outcome.
 
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