The U.S. federal government shutdown this week is continuing to delay payments to defense lawyers who have been waiting for months to be compensated for their work.
The U.S. Courts announced on July 3 that funding for the Criminal Justice Act panel attorneys — the private lawyers who pick up federal public defender cases — ran out of money.
The problem was that Congress kept funding flat in fiscal year 2025 — leaving the judiciary with an estimated $116 million shortfall it couldn’t fill, according to a release.
Local attorneys previously told the Post-Tribune they would work to minimize the effects on their clients’ rights. When the federal fiscal year restarted on Oct. 1 – some had hoped they would start to get paid again.
Criminal defense lawyer Adam Tavitas, 56, his Chesterton firm’s only attorney, said it was 25% of his business.
“For me to change my entire practice, that’s not going to happen,” he said.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers issued a report last month anecdotally detailing the financial strain – particularly from small, or one-lawyer firms across the country.
The report cited anonymous feedback from defense lawyers who wrote they had to start paying their business’ bills with credit cards, lay off employees, were forced to ask for delays on those cases until they start getting paid, or stop taking federal public defender cases altogether. A handful wrote they were owed from just under $10,000 to $55,000. One Pennsylvania lawyer wrote he was waiting on $150,000.
About 90% of federal defendants can’t afford to pay a lawyer. Across the country, about 60% of cases are covered by a federal public defender’s office, while 40% are covered by a panel attorney.
Most of the 12,000 private attorneys in the U.S. picking up these cases are typically self-employed or work for a small law firm. The federal government pays them when the case is over.
Tavitas said he hadn’t asked to delay cases, but it was conceivable in the future.
“It makes it difficult working on a case when you know an interpreter is not going to get paid, an investigator is not going to get paid,” he said.
Adding the shutdown was frustrating.
If politicians “didn’t get paid for three months, if they had a business,” he said, “something would have gotten done.”
Others said federal cases weren’t a large part of their private practice.
Lawyer Marc Laterzo said he was waiting for payment on a smaller criminal case submitted in July. He’s working on a couple of ongoing federal cases. The money was still important, but “not substantial.”
Federal courts are expected to remain open during the shutdown with court staff – not including private defense attorneys – getting paid through at least Oct. 24, according to Reuters.
Without addressing the shortfall, it was expected to snowball.
In a news release from mid-September, the U.S. Courts warned that although the U.S. House proposed to increase funding to the Defender Services account – which covers staff public defenders and private lawyers but it wasn’t enough – leaving it $196 million below the Judiciary’s request.
If that happened, it could force layoffs for more than 600 public defender positions across the U.S. and/or stop payments to private defense lawyers for at least 77 days starting in June 2026.
“It’s going to be a fluid situation,” said Jerry Flynn, executive director of the Northern Federal Community Defender program, who oversees career federal public defenders.
One of his lawyers recently retired, leaving him with about 17 people. He’s been under a hiring freeze for more than a year. His staff is sufficient for now.
“If I lost another lawyer, I’d be in big trouble,” he said.
Post-Tribune archives contributed.
mcolias@post-trib.com
