By Anthony Duarte, Sophia Hunt, and Matthew Clair

This report describes—and offers recommendations for improving—the quality of attorney-client relationships in a criminal courthouse in Santa Clara County, California. We draw on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations collected between July 2021 and June 2022 from the Hall of Justice, one of four state courthouses in Santa Clara County that deals with adult criminal cases. Interviews with a diverse sample of 37 defendants suggest that they hold mostly positive views of their relationships with defense attorneys, though such perceptions vary by type of counsel and income. Moreover, among those who hold positive perceptions of their current defense lawyers, some defendants expressed negative attitudes toward, and recounted negative experiences with, current and previous lawyers. Ethnographic observations of public court proceedings further reveal recurring negative attorney-client relationship attributes, including silencing and sidelining, miscommunication, brevity of interaction, and cooperation with the state (or, coercion). We conclude with several immediate and long-range suggestions for improving the quality of defense provision in the county.

Court Listening Project, Report no. 2. Court Listening Project ((c/o Matthew Clair, Stanford University) 2022. 25p.