• What We Do
• Why Leadership Matters
• History of NDLI
• Staff

What We Do

NDLI ensures that all public defense leaders have access to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and tools they need to garner sufficient resources, provide the highest quality and constitutionally effective representation to clients, and establish themselves as visible and equal partners in the improvement of their criminal justice systems. In coordination with the Research and Evaluation division, NDLI plays a central role in public defense system reform efforts, providing coalition-building, communications, training, and strategic planning expertise to reform advocates in the field.

NDLI provides:

• management and leadership training programs, on both a national level and on a regional level tailored to the specific needs of a system or jurisdiction;
• help when you want and need it, offered both remotely and on-site, to address specific leadership and management questions and needs;
• information exchange, through an on-line database of standards, implementation plans, and training materials, and through the nation's only network for public defense system leaders and managers.

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Why Leadership Matters

The hallmark professional obligation of all criminal defense lawyers is zealous, high-quality representation of each client. Providing effective client-centered advocacy is the core mission of every individual defender and defender organization. Yet public defense systems throughout the country face powerful forces that threaten their ability and the ability of individual public defense attorneys to provide this constitutionally required representation.

Defender leaders face significant organizational and fiscal challenges. The majority of public defense systems in the United States are grossly underfunded and lack the physical and human resources required to carry out their mandates. Without adequate funding and resources, defender agencies are forced to carry exceedingly high caseloads that prevent them from providing high-quality, ethical,conflict-free representation to their clients. Defender system attorneys and staff struggle to do their jobs well, without the time, tools, and training that are needed to do so.

One of the most difficult leadership challenges facing public defense system leaders is transitioning from being a trial lawyer to a manager and leader of staff and colleagues. Leading and managing a defender system is different than representing a client and requires defender leaders to think in new and different ways about the work they are doing. With training and adjustment, trial skills can be valuable assets and provide an effective foundation for leadership and management.

Defender leaders also face public perception challenges. Public defenders and defense systems boards, administrators, and management play a critical role in the criminal justice system. All too frequently, however, public defense leaders are viewed by policymakers, legislators,the judiciary, prosecutors, and the public as the people who "get the criminals off." Such distorted perceptions inhibit the ability of defender leaders to effectively fulfill their roles as equal partners in managing and improving the criminal justice system.

NDLI promotes in defender leadership the skills and habits of mind, action, and heart needed to address the array of powerful institutional forces that deeply affect client outcomes.

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History of NDLI

At the opening of the twenty-first century, NLADA recognized that strong leadership in public defense is an essential element for building and maintaining effective public defense systems capable of providing high-quality effective representation to clients. Yet there was no national program in existence capable of providing the leadership skills in indigent defense that were direly needed throughout the country.

NLADA took the first step to address this need by convening a meeting in Washington, D.C. in early September 2000. “Standing Together for Quality Public Defense” was a National Infrastructure Project meeting that resulted in a proposal to:

• continue the concluded work of the Vera Institute of Justice's National Defender Leadership project (NDLP), which had assembled curricular materials and developed defender leadership training techniques, through grant funding from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) of the U.S. Department of Justice;
• improve on past leadership training programs offered by NLADA; and
• disseminate defender leaders' ideas and papers produced at the Executive Session on Public Defense (ESPD) held at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government;

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Staff

Phyllis E. Mann, Director, Direct line 202-306-3792, p.mann@nlada.org

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