For the Oregon Public Defense Commission’s assignment coordinators, every day is a race against the clock.
Working quietly but doggedly behind the scenes, these vital positions find attorneys for financially eligible defendants, some of whom are in custody. It can seem like a Sisyphean task. As of Aug. 18, there were 3,080 unrepresented individuals involved with 3,640 cases in Oregon (excluding people with warrants), according to Oregon Judicial Department (OJD) dashboard data. But OPDC has only four assignment coordinators – although courts also have staff who match clients with attorneys.
Until this spring, as soon as one case was removed from the list of unrepresented cases, at least one more was added to it. In March, however, that changed. Each month from then through June, more cases were taken off the unrepresented list than were added to it, according to an OJD report.
But with about 3,000 people still on the list, the sheer volume means that every minute of every working hour counts. Every tick of the clock can mean another hour in jail, another day of uncertainty for defendants and their families, or, for victims, another day without justice. It can also mean that certain qualifying people in jail will be released if an attorney isn’t found within seven days, per a court ruling known as Betschart.
“That puts a lot of pressure on us,” said coordinator Cathy Hoffman.
Their cognizance of this urgency was made clear during this story. While being interviewed in an OPDC conference room, they were multitasking at their laptops. As her colleagues answered questions, Da’Kari Spears was scrolling through a list of unrepresented individuals and emailing attorneys to see if they could take the cases. Sitting nearby, Katie Stiller was rapidly typing an email to an attorney. A few feet away, Alex Halpern announced a small win: He just received an email stating an attorney had agreed to take a case.
Over the course of the first seven months of 2025, OPDC found attorneys for, or approved their appointment on, 6,661 unrepresented cases, according to OPDC data. That’s 52% of all cases that entered unrepresented status during that period, according to OJD data.
OPDC’s assignments ramped up this year after Spears and Halpern came on board in late January. Stiller had already joined the team in May 2024, and Hoffman started in May 2023. Funding for one of the positions is uncertain, and Gov. Tina Kotek in July expressed concern that legislators did not include the position in their 2025-2027 budget for OPDC. The governor wrote that she is worried that this lack of funding will impede OPDC’s ability to quickly secure attorneys for defendants.
“OPDC’s assignment coordinators are the backstop,” said Ken Sanchagrin, the agency’s interim executive director. “When normal processes cannot find an attorney, they step in.”
Ordinarily, the court assigns an attorney upon arraignment. However, when no attorney is available due to a lack of capacity or conflicts of interest, the court appoints OPDC as a placeholder. This puts the defendant on the unrepresented list and notifies OPDC of the need to locate counsel. OPDC’s assignment coordinators then contact hourly lawyers, state attorneys, and sometimes contracted attorneys to see if they can take those cases.
They can send up to 50 emails in a day to find an attorney on just one case, only to be turned down or receive no response, Stiller said. It’s challenging because of a shortage of public defenders. Additionally, some attorneys can’t take certain cases because they have conflicts of interest. For example, they might have represented a witness or the victim in a prior case. Other times, defendants go through a string of lawyers because they fire their assigned counsel.
The coordinators not only proactively find attorneys, but they also approve appointments that are made by the courts. Additionally, they approve requests from attorneys who submit an intake form to OPDC, asking to be assigned to specific cases. They confirm that the attorneys are qualified to take the cases. They also make sure that if an attorney under contract wishes to take a paid-by-the-hour case, they have first fulfilled their contractual caseload obligation.
The job requires attention to detail, the ability to multitask, good communication skills and persistence, Hoffman said. The coordinators spend eight hours a day in front of their computers, toggling between spreadsheets, emails, an online form, Teams channels, jail rosters, and a dizzying array of dashboards. The dashboards display attorneys’ contact information and qualifications, defendants’ names, their offenses, case numbers, upcoming hearing dates, whether the defendants are in or out of custody, the county they’re in, and the number of days they’ve been without an attorney – all crucial information for assigning cases.
As they email attorneys and update spreadsheets, the coordinators never forget why they do what they do. They know that behind the case numbers and names, people’s lives are involved.
“The gravity of what we are doing is never lost on me because I know that these are real people that we are trying to find lawyers for,” Halpern said. “They’re in possibly the worst situation of their lives, and we try to make it better for them.”
Although the workload can seem insurmountable, the coordinators stay positive by focusing on their successes: Finding representation for the most urgent in-custody cases highlighted in red on the time-sensitive Betschart list. Or quickly approving a batch of forms from attorneys requesting assignments to specific cases.
“You have to count those little victories because there will always be more work tomorrow,” Hoffman said. “I may not be able to solve the problem all in one day, but every day, I give OPDC my best. I really try to make a difference. It is a very fulfilling job, and I love what I do.”
