Eric Fredericksen

In 2022, Governor Brad Little signed House Bill 735, shifting all legal and financial responsibility for indigent criminal defense away from the counties and to the State.[1]

The State Public Defender was slated to begin work on July 1, 2023, but I wasn’t appointed to the position until late September and started working on building the agency immediately. Contracts had to be written, policies and processes needed to be developed, a new case-management system had to be built and hiring had to happen, all within a few short months.

The State Public Defender Office (SPD) emerged from the Public Defense Commission as a free-standing, independent agency on October 1, 2024.[2]

We faced a daunting task: How to take 44 different county systems, each with their own identity and ways of doing things and unite them as a single agency.

Why the urgency? The State of Idaho identified deficiencies in the county-based criminal justice system for indigent defendants. This determination led Governor Little and the Idaho Legislature to create the SPD with a mandate: improve public defense for all of Idaho—no matter where people live—and get started right away.

One thing was clear – we are all passionate about our duty to protect the Constitutional rights of those who cannot afford representation regardless of what county they reside or work in. Every day we work diligently for our clients. I am so proud to lead this dedicated group of 300+ employees and 200+ contract attorneys who believe in zealously protecting the Constitutional rights of everyone in the great State of Idaho.

The State Public Defender has institutional offices in 18 of Idaho’s 44 counties, covering most of the major population centers in the state. Each of Idaho’s seven judicial districts has a District Public Defender to help manage public defense work and ensure local needs are met.

Each office is staffed with attorneys and support staff and has a managing or lead attorney to ensure all SPD policies and procedures are followed and the work is being done to the highest standards. Many offices also have in-house social workers and investigators who support the indigent clients.

In parts of the state that do not have an institutional office, the SPD has contract attorneys who serve the remaining 26 rural and remote counties. The Alternate Counsel Division (ACD) of the SPD manages a statewide network of contract attorneys who represent clients in conflict and Child Protective Act cases across Idaho. The ACD is ethically walled off from the SPD and has its own division director. Conflict cases are assigned and overseen exclusively by the ACD.

Resourcing the Agency

One of my biggest priorities since I was appointed has been ensuring the agency has the resources needed to provide the level of representation that is constitutionally required. I worked closely with Governor Little’s staff and the Idaho Legislature to increase our budget from $54 million in fiscal year 2025 (year one of our existence) to approximately $85 million for fiscal year 2026.[3]

This money allowed us to staff cases appropriately, hire experts when needed, create new positions and develop and improve attorney training. It has allowed the SPD to pay for certain types of evaluations, transcript costs and other expenses that have been shifted from the counties onto the State.

That money also went towards increasing salaries for our staff attorneys and made us more competitive. SPD salaries are now similar to what county prosecutors and other state agencies pay their attorneys. 

It also went towards raising contractor rates from $100 to $125 an hour. The rate increase brought new contract attorneys into the agency, which has made it easier to assign cases. It has also reduced contractor caseloads in many parts of the state. Despite the rate increase, contractor shortages remain in certain counties.

We also created and staffed four new institutional offices in Jerome, Elmore, Benewah, and Shoshone counties. These new offices allow us to provide consistent service to areas with growing populations in a more cost-effective way. It also reduced the need to rely on contract attorneys who already have full caseloads. This year, we hope to add institutional offices to serve Latah and Nez Perce counties which will result in agency cost savings.

Like most Idaho agencies and departments, the Idaho Legislature reduced our budget by 5% in fiscal 2027 to deal with projected revenue shortfalls, but through responsible management of resources, we were still able to add six new attorney positions in offices where more attorneys were needed. While budget constraints are challenging, I am committed to making cuts in ways that will not impact the quality of the representation the SPD provides to our clients.

Overcoming Challenges

One of the biggest challenges we faced during the transition was having a handful of contract attorneys across the state that withdrew from over 1,300 public defense cases on day one. That was a surprise – and it presented a significant problem. Those clients needed immediate representation in a state that needs more lawyers in general. 

But our district public defenders, managing attorneys, staff and contractors across Idaho stepped up. It was all hands-on deck. I was in court on day one handling cases. We could not have gotten through those early chaotic days without the incredible dedication of everyone in this new agency. This commitment to the clients – and the SPD – in the first six months of our existence allowed us to catch up, hire more attorneys and recruit new contractors. It was a crisis averted. 

We lost 28 attorneys after we took over on October 1, 2024 and the months that followed. That was difficult. We didn’t want to lose a single member of our staff. But since then, we’ve hired 63 new or returning attorneys. We’ve added three new social workers and three new investigators to our institutional offices – a priority for our agency we plan to expand.

Hiring public defenders is a challenge, especially in a state like Idaho, which needs more lawyers in general. An American Bar Association survey from 2024 revealed Idaho has the second lowest number of attorneys per-capita in the U.S., at about 2.07 per 1,000 residents, just 1-100th of a percentage point better than South Carolina, which is dead last at 2.06 per 1,000 residents.[4]

So while we have made gains, we are still working hard on recruitment because we continue to have openings in some our offices, especially those in the Fifth Judicial District.

We are in close contact with the Idaho State Bar and other local bar associations about job openings. We work closely with the University of Idaho College of Law and other regional law schools who regularly funnel qualified applicants our way.

We have created legal intern and extern programs in our institutional offices to help create an attorney talent pipeline, introducing some of Idaho’s brightest legal minds to the world of public defense. We had 28 internships/externships completed by summer 2026–and expect more in 2027. Many of our former interns/externs accepted full-time attorney positions with the SPD after they graduated and passed the Bar Exam.

We are now developing a similar intern/extern program for social work students. Having more social workers and social work students in our offices to support our clients will improve outcomes in their cases. We know clients who have housing, employment, access to medical care and addiction treatment have better results in their criminal cases, helping prevent recidivism and relieve the burden on the Idaho Department of Corrections and the system as a whole.[5]

We recently hired two mitigation specialists who will work on capital cases statewide.  One will be based in Boise and another one in Coeur d’Alene, with the goal of adding more to other parts of the state in the future. Previously, the SPD had to pay contract mitigation specialists to do this work, often at great expense. Bringing them in-house saves money and improves collaboration between the mitigation specialist and our attorneys. Initially, these positions will focus on capital cases but we hope to expand this mitigation work to serious felonies as more positions are added. Developing robust mitigation also improves outcomes at sentencing.

All of this heavy lifting was done in less than two years. Our LegalServer Case Management system, which tracks all active SPD cases, shows our attorneys handled about 79,000 active cases in 2025. The latest count shows the SPD had 56,000 active cases between January 1 to September 1, so we are trending towards a similar total in 2026.

Ongoing Projects and Goals

Attorney training and mentorship remain a focus of mine. SPD staff put on two annual conferences and curated more than 50 unique Continuing Legal Education (CLE) sessions specific to public defense. We had presenters from across the state and country speak on current topics relevant to public defense, including Fourth Amendment issues, social media and cell phone evidence, handling challenging clients, probation violations and DUI defense. These training sessions are archived for our employees and contractors who couldn’t attend.

Improving attorney efficiency and reducing attorney and staff workload are also top priorities. We just rolled out LexisNexis Protégé to all our institutional employees. Protégé is an AI assistant embedded across the LexisNexis research platform. For public defenders juggling caseloads and deadlines, Protégé accelerates research, summarizes documents, drafts motions, and analyzes discovery materials. Incorporating the use of cutting-edge AI into the work of the agency should improve efficiency and reduce support staff workload.

Another ongoing project is establishing an Idaho specific workload standard. We are finally getting the time-keeping information we need to develop this. It’s taken some time for attorneys to learn the ins-and-outs of the SPD’s LegalServer case management system. That was a heavy lift for our staff, but we are starting to collect useful, case-specific data. This data will allow us to monitor workload in real time, to review the work being done in the cases and ensure that attorneys are not being overloaded.

That takes us to our second birthday. I am very proud of everyone at the SPD. Our institutional attorneys, staff, and contract attorneys from across the state have come together and worked tirelessly for our clients over the past two years. They exemplify client-centered representation and our clients are better off because of it.

Idaho has a rich history of supporting public defense, and the SPD is honored to be part of that ongoing story. Please stay tuned as our agency continues to grow and evolve into a national model for a statewide public defense office. It’s been quite a ride, with many lessons learned along the way and I’m sure more to be learned in the future. There is no better education and training in criminal law than to be a public defender. I am always working to find new and better ways to meet our constitutional obligation to provide indigent defense.

If you are interested in joining us, please let us know. I think it’s the most rewarding job an attorney can have.

Eric Fredericksen is Idaho’s State Public Defender, where he oversees the state’s indigent criminal defense system. Eric grew up in Jerome and earned his law degree from the University of Idaho in 2002. Eric spent much of his career working for Idaho’s State Public Appellate Defender Office before being appointed to run the SPD in September 2023.

[1] Text of House Bill 735 https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2022/legislation/H0735.pdf

[2] Text of State Public Defender Act https://legislature.idaho.gov/statutesrules/idstat/title19/t19ch60/

[3] SPD budget documents for fiscal 2025 and 2026 https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2025/legislation/S1202SOP.pdf

https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2025/legislation/S1202SOP.pdf

[4] American Bar Association attorney per capita study. https://www.americanbar.org/news/profile-legal-profession/demographics/

5 Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, “The Importance of Strong Public Defense in Idaho.” Oct. 2025 https://idahofiscal.org/the-importance-of-strong-public-defense-in-idaho/