Absent: Robert Dvorak, Mark Hersh, and Geneva McKinley.

Reports:

Low Cost/No Cost Training: Evidence training was offered in February-April at various locations around the state to staff and the private bar for $20/person. The Training Division is currently revising juvenile training materials, which will be offered on the Wednesday before the SPD Fall 2004 conference. There will be a "nuts/bolts" OLR training offered on July 9. The training will be videotaped to replay around the state. The SPD will be offering discount coupons again for the fall conference. We will let the private bar know about the discounts in advance.

SPD Listserve/Forums: The State Bar/SPD listserve is up and running this past week. We have already had 200 people sign up for this service. Deb has received favorable comments from the private bar.

Online billing: A new staff member in the Assigned Counsel Division started on 4/19/04. ACD staff is working to reduce the # of days for invoices: 7-10 days for online and 20 days for paper bills. Staff anticipates they will work down to those numbers by the end of May.

Contracts FY 2005: Sent out contract extensions in April with new changes concerning payment of withdrawal cases (chart) and allowing replacement cases when counsel withdraws. There is also a modification to increase the maximum number of contract cases if more are available and the contract attorney is willing to take on more cases.

Post conviction/post case closing representation: In the process of developing a policy for both staff/private bar concerning duties of trial counsel at/after sentencing (handout). This will cover DV court reviews and other similar post sentencing proceedings.

Private Bar/Strategic Planning: Strategic planning (handout) took place in Madison on February 25th. Mark Rosen attended an agency strategic planning meeting in February. In addition, input for strategic planning was solicited by email from private bar. A summary of that input was provided to the committee.

Expert Database: The SPD expert database is up and running now. There are currently 250 entries of different experts and more will be added soon. A FAQ sheet about retaining and managing experts is posted on the SPD website.

Discussion Items:

Crawford v. Washington - This issue was put out on the listserve for comment. Motions have been filed in Milwaukee County, but none decided yet. Ramon Valdez mentioned that he has raised motions on Crawford, but every case has folded. Deb said she would follow-up on this issue and get more information out to the private bar/staff. It is unclear in which counties prosecutors proceed to trial using excited utterance statements instead of the victim.

Improving process for obtaining experts - The question of paying experts up front was raised. Deb advised that this is almost certainly not allowed under State purchasing rules. Some experts won't do PD cases because of the delay in payment. Deb advised that part of the problem is a small number of attorneys who do not bill promptly or do not pay the experts promptly. ACD will accept interim bills to get experts paid. Deb is also willing to write letter to experts confirming that their fees have been approved for payment.

New auditing procedures - Deb has started running a quarterly report that will show all private bar billing that is more than 15 hrs/day. Three private bar names came up in the report for the first quarter of 2004. Deb was able to contact/resolve all three issues within two days. Deb will run the report quarterly.

Other Private Bar Issues:

Deb is working on a practice guide for the responsibilities of counsel at and after sentencing. A draft was provided to the committee. This will deal with issues including the duty to provide successor counsel with the client's file.

Hiring paralegals has come up recently with expert requests. Deb said that in these tight budget times we need to be able to show that clients are getting better service for the same amount of money or the same service for less money. The difficulty is figuring out how to demonstrate that. Deb is willing to work with a couple of the private bar committee members on collecting data to see how cost effective paralegal services can be.

The private bar rate increase is likely to be a top budget priority. The budget item has not been fully developed yet. Some committee members indicated a desire to work with SPD administration in the development of this budget item. Deb will talk to Nick Chiarkis about inviting members of the committee to attend some SPD budget committee meetings.

Next two meetings will be in July 2004 and during the SPD Conference on Oct. 7. Meeting adjourned at 1:15 pm.