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The Jefferson County Public Defender Office has always operated with a very small administrative and legal staff. With an emphasis on efficient operations and with the creation and adoption of unique and innovative approaches to the resolution of certain types of cases, we believe we’ve been able to offer a level of service to our clients that equals or exceeds what is offered by other public defender offices across the Commonwealth – most of which are staffed at levels that dwarf our own.
Unfortunately, smaller operations such as ours are highly susceptible to disruptions relating to staff availability. Beginning November 5, 2021, we will be without administrative/clerical assistance – possibly for a period encompassing several months.
In order to minimize the impact this situation presents to our clients, we’ve made the decision to temporarily suspend staffed office hours and telephone service until further notice. We believe our clients are best served if our attorneys devote their available time to investigating cases, talking to the District Attorney and police officers, researching legal issues, etc., rather than spending valuable hours fielding telephone calls seeking generic legal advice, asking questions relating to child custody, landlord tenant and other legal topics we cannot be involved with, or responding to questions from client friends and family in the nature of “do you have any news?”.
Moving forward, we recommend our clients and interested family members should direct all correspondence to our email account: pd@jeffersoncountypa.com or (by mail) to the office address listed above. We will continue to review incoming voicemail as staff attorneys are able to do so.
We will post a series of informational/FAQ documents of interest to clients, family and friends on our web site. It is our hope that this resource will answer most, if not all, of the questions and concerns interested parties might have until we are again fully staffed and able to resume normal operations.
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