15 May 2023

What Do Colorado Attorneys Do?

It is helpful now and then to examine the relative importance of different kinds of practices that lawyers in Colorado engage in to understand the "typical" kinds of legal practices out there. 


From the 2022 Annual Report of Colorado's Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel.

A very large share of all criminal litigation in the state, which makes up a large share of all court business, is conducted by lawyers who work in a DA's office (15% of government lawyers) or a public defender's office (13% of government lawyers), of whom there are about 1,355 combined out of about 29,000 active lawyers in the state (about 5%).

A few criminal cases are handled by the state attorney-general's office (with 430 attorneys), and some ordinance violation cases are handled by city attorneys (357 attorneys, mostly part-time), and county attorneys (242 attorneys, many part-time in smaller counties), but the lion's share of the criminal case work is done by the DA's office and the public defender's office. There are some criminal defendants who are represented by private criminal defense attorneys, but these defendants are definitely a minority of all criminal defendants.

A very large share of all jury trials in the state are in criminal cases, which are mostly handled by a tiny percentage of all lawyers in the state. As noted here:
For example, in 2006 in Colorado, in state courts there were 1,776 criminal or quasi-criminal jury trials (plus about 35 quasi-criminal parental rights termination jury trials). . . . In federal court, there were 22 criminal jury trials. . . . 

As of 2006, there were 337 civil jury trials, about 240 of which were in tort cases (the vast majority of which involve personal injuries in accidents), and about 97 of which were in other matters: 

There were just 17 limited jurisdiction civil trials in state court. . . . About 54% of civil trials in federal court (43 jury trials and 36 bench trials) and 50% civil trials in general jurisdiction state courts were to juries (277 jury trials and 280 bench trials), with about 75% [of civil jury trials] in tort cases)[.]

Of course, the vast majority of litigated case of all types are resolved without trials, either by a default judgment, in motion practice, by settlement, or by a guilty plea.

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