NCCRC works with Congressional members to fix appointment of counsel problem in federal courts
A federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1915, permits federal courts to “request” a lawyer to represent a pro se litigant, but it does not allow the court to appoint a lawyer and has no guidance as to when providing a lawyer should happen. In the absence of guidance, half the federal courts provide counsel from time to time while the other half require “exceptional circumstances” to exist that they almost never find. To remedy this, we worked with U.S. House Representative John Sarbanes (now retired) and U.S. Senate Chris Van Hollen to draft a bill giving the courts the power to appoint counsel, providing some factors to weigh in deciding whether to appoint counsel, and preventing courts from delaying requests for appointment of counsel until ruling on motions to dismiss. U.S. Representative Mary Scanlon, who is taking over the bill with the retirement of Representative Sarbanes, issued a press release about the bill, and we’ve written a FAQ about it. The bill was introduced late in 2024 and will be reintroduced in 2025 for the new Congress.
The NCCRC drafted the language for the bill.
