Suzanne Brown joined the Shelby County Public Defender’s Office in 2017 because it was more “people-centered” than other areas of the law. She also had a family member go to jail on a drug charge, so she felt like she could offer a valuable perspective.

Yet after just two years, she left the office.

Brown cites low pay and a high caseload among the reasons she didn’t stick around.

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“There wasn’t a lot of incentive to keep on keeping on,” she said. 

Now an associate at Rogers, Brackin & Davis PLLC, Brown started as an extern in the defender’s office, climbing the ladder until she became a full-time attorney. 

She estimated having eight to 10 clients a day and sometimes around 100 per week, most of whom were in custody, while working in the public defender’s office.

“You just don’t have the time to devote to each client,” she said.

For her work, Brown was making about $60,000 annually.

When she received an offer to join a private firm, she said it was “irresistible.”

‘We tend to train what we call the baby public defenders for the other judicial districts’

Hiring challenges and overwhelming caseloads for public defenders aren’t new, and experts say they aren’t exclusive to Shelby County.

The Shelby County Public Defender’s Office uses a competitive internship program to help with recruitment, and it’s addressing pay inequities to try to keep younger attorneys in their jobs longer.

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The office secured $557,665 in additional funding last year to raise salaries.

In arguing for the money, which was included in the county’s fiscal year 2023 budget, Chief Public Defender Phyllis Aluko told Shelby County commissioners in May 2022 that attorneys in the office, legal secretaries and legal investigators were paid much less than their counterparts across the state. 

She told commissioners that the office was doing well with entry-level pay for attorneys but was struggling with pay for more experienced attorneys. 

“Once we train them, they get some experience, they can go to almost any other judicial district in Tennessee and make far more money,” Aluko told commissioners. “We tend to train what we call the ‘baby public defenders’ for the other judicial districts.”

Full-time assistant public defenders make a minimum of about $66,000 annually and top out at about $114,000, according to salary information The Daily Memphian obtained. Supervisors and other administrators make more, from about $115,000 to $128,000 per year. Aluko is the office’s highest-paid employee with an annual salary of $178,450.

At the time of Aluko’s commission presentation in May 2022, she said the office had five legal secretaries and three vacancies. It has now doubled its number of secretaries, according to the salary records.

There were 11 investigators at the time and also three vacancies. The office is now up to 13 investigators.

As for attorneys, the office had 83 last year and 11 vacancies for full-time positions. There were 21 vacancies total, but Aluko told commissioners five were part-time and another five were temporary positions.

The office now has 82 attorneys and 13 vacancies but has plans to cut that number roughly in half; Aluko told The Daily Memphian in a recent interview that the office will soon hire an additional attorney and has plans to hire five recent interns once they pass the state bar exam. 

‘The interns are actually doing what the attorneys are doing minus the practicing law part’

On the recruiting side, the office has been building a talent pipeline by way of its Law Clerk Internship Program for at least the last several decades.

Aluko started as an intern before becoming the first woman to lead the office in 2018.

In 1993, Aluko finished law school in Pennsylvania. She passed the bar there and was studying for the exam in Tennessee. She needed contacts in the local legal system and figured the public defender’s office was a good place to make them.

“And really probably my first week there, I realized that was where I was supposed to be … absolutely was the type of work that I wanted to do,” she said. 

The program was less formal back then, Aluko said. Prospective interns simply volunteered their time, got paired with an attorney and received on-the-job training. 

Aluko and her team have since instituted changes to make the program more formal and worthwhile for interns. 

There’s now a competitive application process. The office interviewed around 500 students for its current cohort but only hired 25, or 5%. The program also lasts longer now. Instead of eight weeks, interns now train for 10.

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What hasn’t changed is that the internship still isn’t paid, and Aluko conceded that an unpaid internship might deter some applicants.

“It can, but it didn’t deter me. And my student loans were fully due,” she said. 

Some law schools are public interest-focused, meaning they provide funding to students to help cover housing and meals during the program, said Vincent Ores, assistant public defendant supervisor and co-leader of the office’s Law Clerk Internship Program.

Elizabeth Shearon was a veteran intern who now works for the county public defender as a full-time attorney. 

After a suggestion from her father who also did public interest law, she interned with the public defender’s office for the first time during her first year in law school. She did it again every summer after that.

During her internship, she trained under Aluko, who was head of the appellate division at the time. 

“A lot of people don’t look back, and I came back every single summer until I started full-time,” she said. 

Shearon said the county’s public defense interns aren’t just making copies. They’re writing legal memos and briefs and conducting extensive case research. 

“And so I think this internship is really special in that way. The interns are actually doing what the attorneys are doing, minus the practicing law part,” she said. 

Another recent addition to the program is the new moot courtroom the office built last year. Both interns and full-time attorneys now use the space.

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The room is set up for several scenarios, including jury trials and appellate court proceedings. It includes space for law clerks and court reporters. The judges’ panel supports up to five so that attorneys can practice arguing before the state supreme court. 

Aluko wished she had something similar as an intern.

“This was something I envisioned if I ever got a chance… the way to do this was always: If I ever win the lottery, I’m going to donate,” she said.

Public defender recruitment is a national struggle, experts say

Malia Brink, senior policy attorney at the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, said shortages in public defender’s offices and other legal government offices are everywhere. 

Part of that, she said, is due to backlogs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The backlogs created by the courts shutting down during COVID have dramatically increased caseload and created problems with both recruitment and retention,” Brink said. “On top of which, I think that these are not the most kind of taught and celebrated aspects of lawyering in law schools. So we have kind of a pipeline problem.”

To increase the number of public defenders, Brink said offices must increase salaries and implement a good recruitment program. Recruits also need training and access to support staff and services.

Stephen Hanlon is an attorney who has served as a project leader for American Bar Association public defender workload studies conducted in seven states. He said the public defender’s office is a great place for good lawyers who like challenges and conflict, have an anti-authoritarian streak and like working with marginalized people.

“The problem is it’s not a great place to work,” Hanlon said. 

The reason is not because of low pay, he said, but because of caseloads, which can be emotionally and psychologically devastating for a public defender.

“There are not enough public defenders,” Hanlon said. “And, frankly, it increases the pressure to just roll these cases through.” 

‘Knowing that ... you failed almost all day long’

Danielle Inez, director of innovation and performance analysis for Shelby County, said the public defender’s office handled 19,695 cases in 2022.

Although Inez said that actual caseload can fluctuate per attorney, the average number of cases handled by attorneys last year was about 490.

Brown estimated having eight to 10 clients a day and sometimes 100 per week.

Hillary Samuels, a former attorney in the office who started and left around the same time as Brown, estimated that she handled roughly 1,000 cases during her tenure. 

Taurus Bailey, who worked at the office part-time and also ran his own practice, estimated handling 15 cases a day. 

Hanlon said the ABA is getting ready to publish new national public defense workload standards. 

“We can demonstrate that with rare exception, public defenders have at least three times as much work as they can handle competently,” he said. “And in many, many, many places, that number would be four, five, six and seven times as much work as they can competently handle.”

“There are not enough public defenders. And, frankly, it increases the pressure to just roll these cases through.”

Stephen Hanlon
Attorney and public defense law expert

According to the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, The Defense, a public defender’s caseload should not exceed 150 felonies, 400 misdemeanors and 200 juvenile cases per year. 

“When you do something like that, the same thing as say, an obstetrician treating three times, or four times, as many patients as that person could competently treat, it’s a horrible job because horrible things happen to your clients when that happens,” Hanlon said. 

He added: “You’re going to have to routinely get used to going home at night, knowing that there are people who went to jail or prison that day who shouldn’t have, or they went for longer periods of time than they should have. And that you, you failed almost all day long.”