Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor Doreen S. Davis said the group vehemently opposed the plan, which affects 500 court-appointed lawyers a year.
"This is sort of like auctioning off the rights of poor people with little or no regard for the quality of justice," said Davis, whose association represents 13,000 members. "Cut-rate managed care hasn't worked in the medical realm; why assume it will work here?"
Davis said many of the cases involve poor women, children and families.
"Others involve the constitutional rights of people who may be wrongly accused. These cases go to the fabric of our society and the heart of our justice system," Davis said.
Bonavitacola said the court decision to seek bids, and enter into yearly contracts with individual lawyers or groups, arose from the "current dissatisfaction" among defense attorneys. He said the attorneys complained to City Council in March that their fees were being arbitrarily cut, without explanation, and with no way to appeal the court administration's decision.
"We've got to bring this to a head and do what other cities and states are doing, and the federal government is studying - to contract with lawyers to render these services over a given year for a specific sum of money," Bonavitacola said.
The plan would allow individual lawyers or groups to bid on the work, or a segment of the work, under a yearly contract. A lawyer, for example, could bid on Family Court legal work, Municipal Court legal work, or Trial Division work, handling criminal, juvenile and dependency cases, he said.
"I don't know if it will save any money. It sure will save a lot of judicial and staff time," the judge said.
Bonavitacola said that New York City, Washington, D.C., Arizona, and two other states have moved to a bid process to handle legal representation for indigent defendants.
"Apparently, it's working OK. We haven't heard to the contrary," he said.
Attorney George H. Newman, former chairman of the Bar Association's criminal-justice section, said that legal representation by the lowest-bid contractor "will be like your worst HMO nightmare."
"It will be a mass assembly line on criminal cases, where [contracted lawyers] will spend the least amount of time and resources possible," Newman said. "There would be enormous pressure to plead every client guilty because the rate of pay would be so low."
Newman said low-bid contractors would not be able to afford to spend money on expert witnesses and investigators for their clients.
Linda Loyd's e-mail address is lloyd@phillynews.com
