Assistant Public Defender and Case Management Chief

The Case Management Chief is responsible for the management of a team of assistant public defenders assigned to a specific individual criminal judge. The Case Management Chief I Acts as liaison with the individual criminal court judge during day-to-day operation of that court, and is responsible for the overall management of cases within the team, including case assignment, preliminary hearings, pretrial motions, probation/parole violation hearings, trials and miscellaneous criminal matters. The Case Management Chief drafts initial requests for pretrial motions, investigations, and social service referrals to efficiently and effectively represent the client, monitors performance of assigned attorneys and provides training, counseling and mentoring as required. The attorney in this position would also try the most serious and high profile cases assigned to that courtroom.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following:
• Take inventory of new cases, assigns cases to most qualified attorney in the team for most effective representation, drafts initial pretrial motions, and requests initial investigation, social service referrals, reviews caseloads and productivity of caseloads with individual attorneys, and acts as liaison with individually assigned court judge for entire team during day-to-day operations of that court.
• On serious and high profile cases, the Case Management Chief is expected to promptly interview clients, and represent clients at preliminary hearings. He/she also works with case investigator, locates and interviews witnesses as necessary, and requests additional investigation, including the retention of expert witnesses as required.
• The Case Management Chief negotiates with assigned assistant district attorney to achieve a non-trial disposition if circumstances warrant. Focused attempts to reach resolution of cases wherein the client is incarcerated and where prompt resolution of the file would terminate incarceration and attempts to provide a satisfactory result for all clients where pretrial resolution is advantageous.
• The Case Management Chief prepares and effectively defends client before a judge or jury in all cases where client requests trial or trial is necessary for proper resolution, and must have thorough knowledge of evidentiary rules, criminal law, criminal procedure, and current law.
• The Case Management Chief will provide training and supervision to the assistant public defenders assigned to their team and will participate in annual evaluations as required.

PHYSICAL DEMANDS: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand; walk; sit; and talk and hear. The employee is occasionally required to use hands to finger, handle or feel objects, tools or controls; reach with hands or arms; and stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, color vision and depth perception.

WORK ENVIRONMENT: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential function.

The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.