Defendants meet their public defender for the first time at the plea hearing

The 'meet and plead' system is a documented practice in which defendants meet their assigned attorney for the first time at a court hearing where they are expected to enter a guilty plea. Over 94% of state criminal cases and 97% of federal cases end in plea bargains — a criminal case is settled by plea every two seconds during a typical workday. For overloaded public defenders, the math is simple: there is no time to investigate, research, or prepare for 200+ cases, so the only way to manage the caseload is to convert every case into a quick plea. Defendants who are detained pretrial are especially vulnerable — prosecutors offer harsher plea deals to detained defendants, knowing they will accept almost anything to get out of jail. The person pleading guilty may not understand the charges, may not know what evidence exists against them, and may not realize they have viable defenses. They plead guilty because their lawyer told them to and they want to go home. This persists because the volume of arrests and charges generated by the criminal legal system vastly exceeds the capacity of the defense system to process them as adversarial proceedings.