Overview

• Lawmakers advanced a midyear budget amendment to boost bar advocates’ pay by $10 an hour starting August 1 and another $10 an hour next year while funding the hiring of 320 additional public defenders.
• The proposal still awaits full legislative ratification and Gov. Maura Healey’s signature before any pay changes or new hires can begin.
• Private attorneys have called the agreement a “critical starting point” but say the increases fall short of their demands and refuse to resume new case assignments.
• Under the Lavallee Protocol, unrepresented defendants are released after seven days and face charge dismissals after 45 days, contributing to over 220 dropped cases this month in Suffolk and Middlesex counties.
• The ongoing dispute highlights structural flaws in Massachusetts’s hybrid defense model, which relies on private bar advocates for roughly 80% of indigent cases at among the lowest pay rates in New England.