Outrageous Fortune

Only one criminal-defense attorney under contract with the county collected more than $200,000 in 2006, according to billings provided to New Times: Phoenix lawyer Nathaniel Carr, who was paid $354,800.

Superior Court judges make about $135,000 a year, which is slightly more than the annual salaries of the county's most experienced homicide prosecutors and public defenders.

"It's presumptively an issue when a private attorney working as an independent contractor makes more money than the highest-paid prosecutor or defender," says Peter Ozanne, assistant county manager for criminal justice. "That, among other things, including the huge caseloads that some of these dependency attorneys are carrying, is going to stop."

As of now, however, the not-so-secret avenue to success as a juvenile dependency lawyer in Maricopa County is quantity, not quality.

Someone inside the legal system recently dubbed the busiest (and, not coincidentally, the biggest moneymakers) of the county's dependency lawyers "case whores," an ugly phrase that bears analysis.

Obviously, it suggests that attorneys are taking on every client who comes their way because the money's so good. And the public record confirms the nasty sentiment.

Attorney O'Connor was able to earn almost $400,000 in 2006 and is on track for an equally lucrative 2007 because of her sheer number of clients.

A sole practitioner, O'Connor took on exactly 500 new juvenile cases last year, according to a spreadsheet provided to New Times by the Office of Contract Counsel.

Those cases came on top of the 789 cases that the county claims she had pending at the start of 2006.

According to the spreadsheet, O'Connor started this year with 860 cases still pending.

"You've got to be kidding me," one Superior Court judge said in a typical response when told of O'Connor's earnings and caseload. "There aren't enough hours in a day, are there?"

But O'Connor says her records (collated, she says, by her computer-expert husband) tell a different story. She says she's working 468 cases, including 316 dependencies, which she admits is a full load, but not nearly what the county has in its computer.

"I know that it's a lot of cases," she says, "but I don't get bar complaints, or complaints from the judges or, most important to me, my clients. I hope that fact comes into this discussion."

By all accounts, O'Connor is a real pro at dependency work, a team player known for taking on cases at a moment's notice and who, indeed, does get high marks for her work from the judges contacted by New Times.

"Ms. O'Connor is strong advocate for her clients, and she always does what's needed, " says Judge Louis Araneta, who works exclusively on juvenile cases out of the Mesa courthouse. "There have been several instances when I have needed to appoint an attorney right at that moment, so I tell my bailiff to go out in the lobby and see if there are any OCAC (Office of Contract Counsel) lawyers out there. I don't play favorites, but Patty has a large caseload and needs to be at the courthouse a lot, so she is out there a lot and so she has gotten many of those appointments."

O'Connor employs two full-time social workers and other assistants to keep up with her intense schedule, which means an average seven-day, 80-hour work week, she says.

But by virtue of her position at the top of the dependency court money tree, O'Connor has become a lightning rod in a part of the legal system that previously has operated under cover.

"At this point, I'm not looking into anything fraudulent that may be going on with any specific attorney," says the county's Peter Ozanne, "but there definitely has been a systemic problem, both with our inability, because of the lack of staffing, to assure quality control, and with the judges who continue to assign a handful of people case after case after case."

Rich Scherb, a Phoenix attorney also with a juvenile law practice, notes, "It becomes a huge, huge burden if you're carrying dozens of dependency cases, much less hundreds, like a lot of my colleagues. Once you get beyond a certain number, it just becomes impossible to do your job correctly. I can't believe that the powers-that-be in this county have let them get away it."

Scherb himself is not doing so badly as a contract juvenile delinquency and dependency attorney in neighboring Pinal County. Records from that county show it paid him $183,033 in 2006.

Business in Maricopa County also continues to boom for the dependency bar's biggest guns. In the first three months of this year, the county paid Patricia O'Connor a little more than $100,000.

"I didn't make up the pay scale, and I don't beg for cases," she tells New Times. "I just say, 'You got a case, I'll do it.' Call me on Christmas Day or any other holiday, I'll be there. My goal [with] this work is to maybe save a life or two, and to maybe give some kids a chance. It's what I'm about.