Appointed Counsel Vol. 7 – Attorney Compensation Rate Increase

In this very short episode, host Joe Byrd explains the compensation rate increase for indigent attorneys in Tennessee, and how it has been implemented as of July 1st of 2024. There has also been an increase in the cap, based on hours worked. This podcast is intended for attorneys.

Produced by David Stripling, Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;37;12
Host
Welcome to Appointed Counsel podcast presented by Tennessee Court Talk. For those involved in indigent representation, I'm Joe Byrd, lead attorney for the Indigent Services team of the Tennessee Administrative Office of the court. Episode seven Attorney compensation rate increase. Well, by now, most practitioners should know that during the legislative session this year, when the revenue was projected to be flat, our state legislature approved an additional $8.6 million for the Administrative office of the courts for Indigent representation.

00;00;37;18 - 00;00;59;12
Host
What that means is essentially is an hourly rate increase of $10 per hour, moving from $50 an hour to $60 an hour. Now, this isn't the amount that the Tennessee Supreme Court had originally requested. Originally, the court was requesting to increase the hourly rate from $50 an hour to $80 an hour. This only gets us to $60 an hour.

00;00;59;14 - 00;01;23;02
Host
However, as Patsy Hazelwood said during the House Finance Ways and Means Subcommittee, this is a start. It's not market compensation, but it will allow us, hopefully, to address a problem that's important coming from the House Finance Committee chair. Today we're going to talk about how this is going to get unrolled. And by the time you're listening to this podcast, it's already been unrolled.

00;01;23;02 - 00;01;50;03
Host
And hopefully it is unrolled without a hitch. A cap has been updated so that all the time entries after July 1st, 2024 will be calculated at $60 an hour. All time entries prior to July 1st, 2024 will be calculated at $50 an hour. The rate increase became effective on July 1st. It should not require you as an attorney to do anything differently when you're filing your claim.

00;01;50;06 - 00;02;15;03
Host
The program in the cap should take care of this automatically. Now, the rate change also changes the caps proportionately. What this means is, is that if the current cap was set at $50 an hour, let's say, then the new cap is set at $600. That's because the caps are based upon hours. A $500 cap means that it was ten hours of work times $50 $500.

00;02;15;06 - 00;02;42;21
Host
Now it's $60 an hour. So ten hours is $600. The complex cap, by the way, will also go up proportionately as the default cap went up from 500 to 600. Now, the new complex cap will go up from 1000 to $1200. Same can be said across the board for all the caps. If the current cap was $1,000, now it's going to be $1,200 and the complex cap will be $2,400.

00;02;42;23 - 00;03;02;27
Host
And you can follow it right on through. Eventually, the rule will be published and it will be changed to show all of these increases as it relates to the caps. Now, the AOC recognizes all of us here. The staff recognizes that this increase would not have been possible without the support of the attorneys and our judges across the state.

00;03;03;04 - 00;03;27;17
Host
And the Tennessee Bar Association. I wanted to take this podcast to just thank all of you who supported this effort, and also wanted to say the AOC is committed to continue its effort to improve indigent representation in Tennessee. We agree with Patsy Hazelwood, and we're looking to see that this is a start, and we hope to see this continue to improve in many different ways.

00;03;27;19 - 00;03;36;10
Host
For more information, check out the Indigent Representation web page at TNcourts.gov.