Legal Defender

The Office of the Legal Defender was created in 1995 to provide the county an alternate indigent defense office that could render excellent legal defense while efficiently and cost-effectively handling the burgeoning number of indigent defense cases. Having the option of assigning conflict and overflow cases to another county agency allowed the county to significantly reduce the costs of directing these cases to private counsel.

The Office of the Legal Defender clientele comes from assignments by the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County. We are appointed to represent the following individuals:

• people charged with serious criminal offenses, or parents in juvenile dependency/severance actions,
  • AND
• individuals who the court has determined are unable to afford a private attorney