The Ventura Superior Court Probate Department maintains a Private Counsel Panel for Conservatees. You may not know it, but our local deputy public defenders represent nearly all of our conservatees in over 1000 conservatorship cases in our county. That is a lot of people to represent.
The Office of the Public Defender is charged with representing indigent clients, and has determined it should not be representing conservatees who have the means to pay for private counsel. I have worked with the public defender’s office to determine certain criteria to define indigency in a conservatorship case. Over 6 months, I examined every conservatorship case and have found approximately dozens cases in which the conservatee does not meet the requirements of indigency and therefore does not qualify for appointment of a public defender. As such, we have appointed counsel in those cases from this private counsel panel. The panel also will be available for future cases as they arise. Please note this is not a request for volunteers. Appointed counsel will be paid from the conservatorship estate.
PANEL QUALIFICATION. The California Probate Code and California Rules of Court referenced at the bottom of California Judicial Council Form GC-010 outline the education and experience requirements to represent conservatees. They were recently updated to require more education, and I understand there were only two counties that provide such education, the closest of which is Los Angeles. The Ventura County Bar Association is providing this MCLE. See below for more information.
MCLE. In order to help interested counsel qualify for this panel, I, along with Deputy Public Defenders William Lenehan and Daniel Taylor, have conducted a 3-hour continuing education course which not only satisfies these statutory requirements, but also provides insight into successful local practice here in Ventura County. We presented this course in two 1.5 hour sessions, which were recorded and are available through the Ventura County Bar Asssociation, We may update this education annually as needs arise. If you are interested in a court appointment for a conservatorship case and did not take the course, please contact VCBA to take the course, complete Judicial Counsel Form GC-010 and submit it to the court to be added to the panel. Also, please let the judicial secretary to Judge Lund know you are interested and have completed the MCLE from VCBA.
Thank you for considering this potential appointment.
Judge Roger L. Lund, Dept. J6
Presiding Probate Judge