It was business as only-slightly-unusual yesterday in New York City courts, on the second full day of a strike by staff lawyers of the Legal Aid Society. Lawyers in private practice took on all the new cases, and snappish Legal Aid supervisors handled the old ones, as chants from picketing lawyers wafted through courtroom windows, intermittently drowning out proceedings.
While administrators were relieved that caseloads were light and that the courts were functioning in a manner that habitues would describe as normal, there were warning signs that problems could erupt by week's end. Supervising lawyers with the Legal Aid Society, which represents the city's indigent in civil and criminal matters, were asking for postponements deep into November. Judges predicted that backlogs would begin to accumulate.
"Cases will begin to pile up, and the strain on the system will become greater as the strike continues," said Richard A. Brown, the Queens District Attorney, who said he hoped for a prompt settlement.
But at the end of the day yesterday, prosecutors and court administrators conceded that things had not yet deviated much from the usual courthouse chaos. "Things went pretty smoothly," said Barbara Thompson, spokeswoman for Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney.
The strike did produce some tense moments for clients and members of their families, who grew testy and confused as they searched unsuccessfully for their regular lawyers. As Lou Torres waited throughout a long morning in a courtroom gallery in Manhattan, a look of disgust crossed his face when a Legal Aid supervisor mistook him for his brother, Steve, a defendant.
"Well, where is he?" asked the exasperated lawyer. Mr. Torres indicated that his brother had been sitting in the holding pens.
Legal Aid supervisors were growing weary, too. When the 1 o'clock lunch break was announced, Dawn Martin, a supervisor who represented defendants on narcotics charges, flung herself back in a chair and sighed. "I had nearly 30 cases this morning," she said. "I am exhausted and I have a headache."
Tension was also rising between the striking Legal Aid lawyers and the lawyers in private practice, who were in the courts yesterday to pick up new business.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has expressed concerns over the cost and quality of the private court-appointed lawyers, who are paid by the hour. Last month, in response, Legal Aid lawyers in Manhattan courts took over some 20 percent of the cases that would otherwise have gone to the private lawyers. With the strike, the much-maligned private lawyers are getting back their original caseloads and more.
At the Queens County Courthouse in Kew Gardens, about 100 Legal Aid lawyers and support staff were picketing, carrying signs that read, "On Strike for Justice" and chanting, "Rudy, Rudy is his name; union busting is his game." Nearby, on the grass, they had strewn their coats, knapsacks and a food cooler.
Asked if he was frightened by Mr. Giuliani's move to break the city's contract with the Legal Aid Society, Allan Popper, the picket captain, said, "You'd have to be foolish not to be scared of a man who was a union buster when he worked for the Justice Department."
Inside the courthouse, Jason Carrion knelt beside the baby carriage of his niece, 1-year-old Star Destiny Fuentes, and said he feared for the strike's effects on his sister, Rosalina, who is the baby's mother. She "has not been assigned a lawyer yet, and that's worrying me," he said. "I'm concerned for my sister and her daughter. I want her to be a mother to her daughter, not a jailbird."
In Brooklyn Criminal Court, arraignments and plea-bargaining negotiations continued as usual in the courtrooms and corridors -- albeit with some new faces -- while outside, nearly three dozen of the striking lawyers picketed, carrying signs that said, "No Contract, No Work" and chanting, "It's Disgusting, Union Busting." The strike's impact will take a while to be felt, the demonstrators said.
In downtown Manhattan a line of police officers separated dozens of chanting Legal Aid lawyers from the Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street.
