Carolyn Elefant over at Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch comments on Wisconsin Court-Appointed Lawyers Seeking Higher Pay.
For more info about Assembly Bill 224 regarding the reimbursement rate for private attorneys appointed by the State Public Defender, see the article in the Wisconsin Law Journal.
The public hearing in front of the State Assembly’s Committee on Judiciary and Ethics is the furthest that any proposal to raise the rate to $70 per hour has gotten. The in-court hourly rate was originally set at $45 in 1978. Although it rose to $50 per hour during the early 1990s, the state Legislature brought it down to $40 per hour in 1995.