Many employees wouldn’t bother sticking with a job that didn’t give them a pay raise in 15 years, and John Frydman is no exception.

Frydman, a Lawrence defense attorney, recently took his name off the list of court-appointed attorneys for criminal defendants who can’t afford to hire a lawyer. He’d been on the panel since the late 1980s, when the rate of pay from the state for handling felonies was $50 per hour. It hasn’t gone up since.

“I don’t want to come off as being a whiner making that kind of money,” said Frydman, who specializes in drug-related cases. “Most of this community makes a lot less.”

But the rate paid to court-appointed attorneys in Kansas lags that in some neighboring states. And some attorneys and at least one judge worry it means some people charged with high-level crimes may not be adequately represented.

Not so glamorous

While $50 an hour may far exceed the average wage in Douglas County or Kansas, it doesn’t tell the entire story. Throw in administrative costs of running a one-man law office, combined with things that the state doesn’t pay for — such as time spent waiting in court and driving time to the Douglas County Jail to meet with clients — and the hourly rate doesn’t look as glamorous.

“There’s absolutely no perks — no paid vacation, no leave, no medical benefits,” said Frydman, who’s now focusing on private practice.

Douglas County has no public defender’s office. Instead, judges choose from attorneys who agree to put their names on an appointment list. Money to defend misdemeanor cases comes from the county and also is paid at $50 per hour.

The pay for court-appointed attorneys in Kansas lags that in at least two nearby states. Iowa pays attorneys as much as $60 per hour. In Omaha, Neb., where the district court sets the local rate of pay, it’s $80 per hour for courtroom work, $65 per hour for out-of-court work.

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Little incentive

Many new lawyers start out on the list as a way to build clients and experience, but there’s little financial incentive for them to stay on as they get more seasoned in court. The going rate for a privately hired criminal attorney in Douglas County is roughly $100 to $150 per hour.

But the issue is more important than mere pay rates, attorneys say.

Frydman and others worry that unless the pay improves, Douglas County could be left with a shortage of lawyers qualified to represent people charged with high-level crimes. Now, there are roughly eight attorneys the court regularly appoints to handle high-level felonies such as murders.

One of those attorneys, Martin Miller, said he wished more of his colleagues in Lawrence would pitch in.

“I know of some attorneys that have associates to handle their workload that are not involved in taking appointed criminal cases,” he said.

No crisis yet

Losing Frydman and others like him recently has taken a toll on district court, Administrative Judge Robert Fairchild said, but there’s not a crisis yet.

“We still have enough experienced attorneys to take the more serious cases,” Fairchild said.

Pat Scalia, executive director of the State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services, the board that pays attorneys in felony cases, said her agency would request $4 million from the Legislature during the upcoming session to help boost the hourly rate of pay to $80.

The prospects of that happening aren’t great. Earlier this year, the agency suspended payments temporarily because of a combination of budget cuts and expensive capital-murder cases. Since then, the board has found a way to help boost its revenue somewhat: It added a $50 application fee that requires those disadvantaged clients to shoulder some of their legal costs.