By Bob Needham
Michigan Law
Michigan needs a new statewide office providing legal services to families involved in the state’s system of child protection, according to a new report from a task force that included Michigan Law Professor Vivek Sankaran.
Sankaran was one of 31 people serving on the state’s Child Protective Legal Representation Task Force. The group was formed in 2023 to consider improvements to the current system, which operates on a somewhat haphazard, county-by-county basis. A statewide office could, among other things, establish minimum standards for attorneys representing parents and children in child protective proceedings; develop attorney compensation standards; set caseload caps; and create an attorney application and appointment process.
Sankaran—a clinical professor of law who is also director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic—recently answered five questions about the task force’s work:
1. What are the problems with the current system in Michigan for representing families involved in child protection proceedings?
With 83 counties in the state, we have 83 different systems of legal representation.
Each county decides how to train and how much to pay the lawyers. And none of the counties are doing these things at a level that any of us would want. Counties don’t really have the resources to pay for these lawyers, so some counties haven’t changed their rates in 20 or 30 years.
This is coming to a crisis point because we’ve had significant reforms in criminal defense in Michigan—we’re fixing a lot of existing problems in that system.
But this creates a perverse incentive where attorneys are leaving the child-protection ranks and going to do criminal defense work instead because the money is much better. We often hear from counties that they just can’t find people to do child-protection work.
2. How did we get to this point, and why hasn’t it been addressed previously?
Juvenile court is a relatively new field. Juvenile court really only really emerged in its current form in the 1960s and ’70s. People thought of it initially as kind of a social-service type of program, until we realized that it actually involves the government’s ability to take people’s children away from them. Then the due-process mindset emerged—and with that, the lawyers—but it has been a slow development.
Honestly, when you’re dealing with people who may be marginalized and in poverty, maybe with mental illness, maybe victims of domestic violence or human trafficking—people whose trauma and background often causes them to harm children—in some ways it is not the most popular constituency to serve.
But research shows that so much of this is poverty related, and research also shows that children want to have relationships even with flawed human beings. As a result, we’re getting more of an understanding that we need to be investing in protections and lawyers to guide people through what is a pretty complicated process.
3. The core recommendation of the task force is a creation of a new statewide office. What would that office do?
The two things that would be game changers are having some parity across counties and enforcing standards. Then you can start imposing requirements for basic training and qualifications. A centralized office would take care of a lot of those things.
It’s also important that whenever we’re pairing qualifications and training, it has to be met with a commensurate living wage for a lawyer.
4. What will it take to turn this recommendation into reality?
Legislative action and budgeting. I’m encouraged that we had a number of state legislators in our group. They could start having hearings on this issue to scope out what this would look like.
One of the things that’s exciting about this statewide model is that in other states where they’ve done this, there is a pretty significant cost savings because foster care is expensive. Skilled lawyers for children and parents can help guide people in a way that reduces adjournments and continuances. It shortens the length of stays of children in foster care to go home or to go elsewhere if they can’t go home.
Child welfare is largely nonpartisan. You have folks on the right who are a little skeptical about government overreaching in individual liberties, and you have folks on the left who are really concerned about marginalized populations. So you get this confluence of right and left to form alliances, which is really nice to see.
5. What is the importance to you as a faculty member of taking on a role like this task force?
A lot of my policy work is informed by my work with students. I feel strongly that we have an obligation as faculty members to do both. It’s the trinity of the university—teaching, research, and service.
I love that when we do clinical work, if we do it well, we are using our direct experiences with students in courtrooms. We are writing law review articles and helping to theorize the field. But that third part—how we take that information and actually implement change—is how I interpret what I’m doing here.
My colleagues and I have the privilege of a little more space to think about these issues than most practitioners. That’s why I feel we all need to take a leadership role in public policy issues like this.
Michigan Law
Michigan needs a new statewide office providing legal services to families involved in the state’s system of child protection, according to a new report from a task force that included Michigan Law Professor Vivek Sankaran.
Sankaran was one of 31 people serving on the state’s Child Protective Legal Representation Task Force. The group was formed in 2023 to consider improvements to the current system, which operates on a somewhat haphazard, county-by-county basis. A statewide office could, among other things, establish minimum standards for attorneys representing parents and children in child protective proceedings; develop attorney compensation standards; set caseload caps; and create an attorney application and appointment process.
Sankaran—a clinical professor of law who is also director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic—recently answered five questions about the task force’s work:
1. What are the problems with the current system in Michigan for representing families involved in child protection proceedings?
With 83 counties in the state, we have 83 different systems of legal representation.
Each county decides how to train and how much to pay the lawyers. And none of the counties are doing these things at a level that any of us would want. Counties don’t really have the resources to pay for these lawyers, so some counties haven’t changed their rates in 20 or 30 years.
This is coming to a crisis point because we’ve had significant reforms in criminal defense in Michigan—we’re fixing a lot of existing problems in that system.
But this creates a perverse incentive where attorneys are leaving the child-protection ranks and going to do criminal defense work instead because the money is much better. We often hear from counties that they just can’t find people to do child-protection work.
2. How did we get to this point, and why hasn’t it been addressed previously?
Juvenile court is a relatively new field. Juvenile court really only really emerged in its current form in the 1960s and ’70s. People thought of it initially as kind of a social-service type of program, until we realized that it actually involves the government’s ability to take people’s children away from them. Then the due-process mindset emerged—and with that, the lawyers—but it has been a slow development.
Honestly, when you’re dealing with people who may be marginalized and in poverty, maybe with mental illness, maybe victims of domestic violence or human trafficking—people whose trauma and background often causes them to harm children—in some ways it is not the most popular constituency to serve.
But research shows that so much of this is poverty related, and research also shows that children want to have relationships even with flawed human beings. As a result, we’re getting more of an understanding that we need to be investing in protections and lawyers to guide people through what is a pretty complicated process.
3. The core recommendation of the task force is a creation of a new statewide office. What would that office do?
The two things that would be game changers are having some parity across counties and enforcing standards. Then you can start imposing requirements for basic training and qualifications. A centralized office would take care of a lot of those things.
It’s also important that whenever we’re pairing qualifications and training, it has to be met with a commensurate living wage for a lawyer.
4. What will it take to turn this recommendation into reality?
Legislative action and budgeting. I’m encouraged that we had a number of state legislators in our group. They could start having hearings on this issue to scope out what this would look like.
One of the things that’s exciting about this statewide model is that in other states where they’ve done this, there is a pretty significant cost savings because foster care is expensive. Skilled lawyers for children and parents can help guide people in a way that reduces adjournments and continuances. It shortens the length of stays of children in foster care to go home or to go elsewhere if they can’t go home.
Child welfare is largely nonpartisan. You have folks on the right who are a little skeptical about government overreaching in individual liberties, and you have folks on the left who are really concerned about marginalized populations. So you get this confluence of right and left to form alliances, which is really nice to see.
5. What is the importance to you as a faculty member of taking on a role like this task force?
A lot of my policy work is informed by my work with students. I feel strongly that we have an obligation as faculty members to do both. It’s the trinity of the university—teaching, research, and service.
I love that when we do clinical work, if we do it well, we are using our direct experiences with students in courtrooms. We are writing law review articles and helping to theorize the field. But that third part—how we take that information and actually implement change—is how I interpret what I’m doing here.
My colleagues and I have the privilege of a little more space to think about these issues than most practitioners. That’s why I feel we all need to take a leadership role in public policy issues like this.
