By KELSEY SWANEKAMP
Buffalo Law Journal

The most important thing to Robert Lonski is quality.

But the director of the Assigned Counsel Program - which provides public defense for those who can't afford it - isn't doing too bad on quantity, either. Between 10,000 and 15,000 cases pass through the program's doors each year.

The program has a roster of about 300 attorneys who provide public defense in criminal matters, certain family court cases and parole hearings.

While the program is publicly funded, it is distinct from the public defender's office, which has an in-office staff of lawyers. Attorneys with the Assigned Counsel Program are private attorneys who work from their own offices but are compensated for their time.

Caseloads are based on the attorney's wants and needs, ranging from just a couple of cases each year to over 100.

Robert Lonski, the program's director, deemed this flexibility essential to the program's success - and the job satisfaction of its attorneys.

"There's a dialogue," said Lonski, "an ongoing conversation that allows us to avoid the situation where someone's feeling overloaded."

John Nuchereno, who has been with the program for 30 years, works primarily on murder cases and handles about five each year.

"It allows an attorney to participate in the legal system in the most meaningful way," he said, adding that his clients are often the ones "most deserving and dependent" on representation.

While he began working with the Assigned Counsel Program when he was a young lawyer hungry for experience, he stayed with it throughout his career because of a loyalty and devotion that developed during those early years.

From a numbers standpoint, Lonski pointed to the program's cost-effectiveness as one of its central strengths. Most years, he said, the program has cost increases of about 1 percent, as opposed to 4 or 5 percent in staffed public defender offices. The relatively steady costs stem from attorneys absorbing cost-of-business increases into their own practices instead of having them passed on to the program.

Nuchereno says that with his good-size support staff, the additional cases are easily assimilated into the network.

But Lonski was quick to say that an assigned counsel program is not the only effective or efficient model for providing public defense.

Still, he added, "we have some of the top criminal defense attorneys around here who are willing to do a few cases a year," said Lonski, but who "wouldn't even consider" working in a public defender's office.

Lonski came to the Assigned Counsel Program 16 years ago after a career working with "disadvantaged and underprivileged people of various kinds," including work with the Cerebral Palsy Association, now ASPIRE, and Prisoner's Legal Services.

"We all have to make a living, but for me, how I do it is as important as the fact that I make a living," said Lonski.

Still, assigned work isn't without some drawbacks. Speaking of his work with clients charged with violent crimes, Nuchereno said that clients sometimes take out their frustrations on the attorney, "even though you're working your heart out on their behalf."

He describes his work with the program as giving back to the community, and says that it will be the last thing he gives up when he eventually decides to retire from the profession.

"Their life is in your hands," he said.

Allen Birnholz joined the Assigned Counsel Program in 1991, the same year he was admitted to the Bar Association. He handles assigned work in family court, to the tune of 100 cases per year.

While he didn't intend to delve into assigned work when he went to law school, he now says that it has made him a stronger attorney.

And for him, the most rewarding moments come when a parent who is on the verge of losing parental rights "gets his or her act together" and is able to regain custody.

"When you see that happen," he said, "that's wonderful."