The Committee for Public Counsel Services has reached out to 50 law schools and hired 22 new attorneys over a 17-day span in August as it moves forward with “the largest staffing expansion in the agency’s history.”
In a mandated update filed with the Legislature, CPCS said the hires were scheduled to begin training Monday.
The Legislature and Gov. Maura Healey this summer agreed to a law requiring the CPCS Public Defender Division to hire 320 attorneys over two fiscal years. The law also granted raises to part-time bar advocate attorneys, and its passage came after some bar advocates stopped accepting cases to protest pay levels.
The supplemental budget signed by Healey included a $40 million reserve to help fund the hiring. The law also required that the hiring expansion prioritize efforts to ensure that clients are “timely represented by counsel” and directed the committee to prioritize hiring in areas “with unrepresented individuals awaiting counsel assignment, including counties with a recent history of private bar advocate work stoppages.”
Before the expansion mandate, CPCS had already hired 20 attorneys for its fall 2025 class, and the number rose to 42 with the recent additions. Nearly 80% of the expansion hires were assigned to represent indigent clients in Middlesex and Suffolk counties, according to the update, and CPCS reported that those two counties “are among the most impacted areas and where the need for counsel is most urgent.”
In addition to continued hiring in fiscal year 2026, plans call for a single hiring initiative in fiscal year 2027 that will feature 100 new attorneys and “will require a nationwide recruitment campaign targeting law schools and public interest networks across the country,” according to the update.
“This expansion represents a transformational investment in the public defense system,” CPCS said in its update. “It provides not only a significant number of additional attorneys but also the supervisory, investigative, and administrative infrastructure to sustain a modern and effective indigent defense practice. By structuring growth around proportional staffing ratios and investing in training, CPCS is helping to build a sustainable, system designed for long-term stability and long-term impact for the communities we serve.”
