Two months after bar advocates stopped taking new cases to demand pay raises, legislative leaders last week rolled out a take-it-or-leave-it proposal that some dissatisfied attorneys quickly slammed as insufficient. The bill — part of a $259 supplemental spending measure— was approved by House and Senate votes last Thursday, the last day before lawmakers took a traditional-but-not-mandatory August break. Gov. Healey signed the law on Monday.
One bar advocate at the center of the months-long fight criticized the measure, calling it a “slap in the face” and questioning whether it would succeed at bringing the private attorneys back to court for new cases.
Lawmakers landed on a proposal that would both increase pay for bar advocates, who are private attorneys contracted to represent defendants that cannot afford representation, and reshape their working relationship with the state. Attorneys contracted to represent indigent clients would get raises of $20 per hour over two years, less than the single-year $35 per hour bump they sought. Lawmakers expect that to cost about $27 million per year, with money for the raises coming from the fiscal year 2026 annual budget and then the eventual fiscal year 2027 budget.
Right now, bar advocates earn $65 per hour for their work in District Court, $85 for most Appeals and Superior Court work, and up to $120 per hour on murder cases. They contend those rates are the lowest in New England, and argue that most other neighboring states pay at least $100 per hour at a base level.
“This is a 30 percent increase over a two-year period in a very difficult fiscal time period that we’re in,” House Ways and Means Committee Chair Aaron Michlewitz said. “Most of the folks working for state government are not getting 30 percent increases over the next two years, so we are hopeful that they will accept it.”
The bill would require bar advocates to sign a biannual contract with the Committee for Public Counsel Services detailing minimum coverage requirements. If the attorneys once again bonded together and agreed not to take new assignments unless they receive a pay raise, that would constitute an antitrust law violation under the new legislation.
Lawmakers also proposed a $40 million injection for CPCS, which would allow the organization to hire about 320 additional public defenders.
“Massachusetts is an outlier in relying on private [lawyers] to handle 80 percent of the cases of indigent cases. That’s unlike anywhere else in the country,” Sen. Michael Rodrigues said. “So, we now are making significant investments to more than double the number of public defenders in order to alleviate the need for as many bar advocates as we’ve had.”
In a statement, House Speaker Ron Mariano said the bill “takes steps to ensure that the Commonwealth will no longer be over-reliant on the bar advocates.”
“The right to legal representation is a crucial element of the Constitutional guarantee to a fair trial, which is why I urge the bar advocates to return to work so that they can resume upholding that right and put an end to this public safety crisis,” he said.
Jennifer O’Brien, a veteran bar advocate who has been a major figure in the issue, said that the proposal lawmakers rolled out “doesn’t go far enough.”
“It’s very disappointing. They really obviously haven’t heard us,” O’Brien said. “To me, it just looks like they’re doing everything to retaliate against us or not fund the program — everything they can do except for solve the crisis, which is just to pay the market rate, which is what other states have been doing.”
The labor action by bar advocates, who work as independent contractors, has been somewhat informally organized. O’Brien said she is on a listserv with more than 500 “like-minded” attorneys frustrated by their pay for public defense work.
For many, she said, “the consensus is that this is a slap in the face.”
“I don’t know that this proposal is going to get current bar advocates that are not taking cases to run back to court, or incentivize the attorneys who have already been taking cases to take more cases,” O’Brien said.
Many bar advocates stopped taking new cases in late May to protest their pay after what they describe as several months of outreach to lawmakers. Amid constitutional concerns, the decision prompted some courts to begin releasing defendants or dismissing cases.
Michlewitz said there had been a “communication breakdown between the bar advocates, CPCS and the Legislature.”
“These last couple weeks exposed that, I think, for both of us. We were not ready to hear that it was at this boiling point that it was after both of our budgets had passed,” he said.
The Senate added language to its annual budget proposal that would have increased annual pay for bar advocates by $5 to $10 per hour, but the final accord that emerged from private House-Senate talks made no such change.
Before lawmakers announced the deal, Gov. Maura Healey described the situation as “a matter of public safety.”
Asked how damaging it would be for hundreds of cases to be dismissed, she replied, “Look, it’s all the more reason why there needs to be a resolution. Because, you know, for the sake of defendants who are entitled to due process, for the sake of victims, who need to have their cases heard. I mean, for our whole system of justice, we need folks back at work, and we need the wheels of justice to start moving again.”
Ella Adams and Colin A. Young contributed reporting.
