And of course that will back things up and have ramifications for children. Robert Leder, a former president of the Bronx Family Court Bar Association and a 10-year veteran of Family Court, says that high caseloads and low pay led to lawyers refusing to take new cases in January. The situation has not improved. It's gotten to the point where to pick up more cases would be to do a disservice to the cases we already have. Leder and Fisher say that the solution to the crisis is higher pay.
Lawyers typically charge at least four times that from paying clients.
Gov. George Pataki and the State Legislature formed a task force in early January to consider raising pay statewide. Whether that will translate into actual budget allocations any time soon is debatable, says David Gruenberg, counsel to the state Senate Judiciary Committee. While the state sets the rate, it's the town and city governments that pay it. The rates were set by the State Legislature in 1986, and lawyers say that the low rates make it next to impossible to run their already meager offices. I'm not reimbursed for photocopies.