Title: A decision support model to facilitate new strategies and business models for appointing counsel in courts

Authors: Carl M. Rebman Jr., Queen Esther Booker

Addresses: School of Business Administration, University of San Diego, 5998 Alcala Park, Coronado 212, San Diego, CA 92110, USA. ' Department of Management, Minnesota State University, 150 Morris Hall, Mankato, MN 56001, USA

Abstract: The process of court appointed counsel can experience severe problems and cause societal damage if the counsel is not assigned properly. To overcome these challenges a new strategy facilitated by a business model and a prototype decision support system (Court Appointed Council System) is developed in this paper. This system is based on a strategic management assessment model to aid public defenders in improving the assignment of court appointed counsel for indigent clients. The proposed system demonstrates that with the appropriate collection of data and rules along with reengineering the appointment process, it is possible to improve personnel assignments by reducing unknown conflicts of interests and identifying the attorney most likely to be acceptable to the client while taking into consideration case-weighting. The study found that CACS was able to account for over 95% of qualitative and quantitative data to make more effective court appointed assignments. If fully implemented, such a system could create value by saving count appointed counsel offices significant dollars by reducing incarceration and attorney costs.

Keywords: decision support systems; DSS; expert systems; strategy formulation; lawyers; law courts; legal systems; court appointed counsel; societal damage; assessment models; public defenders; indigent clients; data collection; rules; reengineering; appointment processes; personnel assignments; conflicts of interest; attorneys; case-weighting; incarceration; attorney costs; defendants; criminal justice; Arizona; USA; United States; electronic government; e-government; strategic management; business models; model design.

DOI: 10.1504/EG.2010.035718

Electronic Government, an International Journal, 2010 Vol.7 No.4, pp.316 - 329

Published online: 03 Oct 2010 *

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