The Real RTC Caseload Standard: 30, Not 48

June 11, 2025

By Navruz Baum

Workers at Community Resist picket for a fair contract — September, 2024

Legal services managers routinely cite the Universal Access (UA) caseload report to justify assigning housing attorneys four new eviction cases per month. But the report’s own data—when applied correctly—shows the number should actually be two and a half.

Commissioned by New York State’s Office of Court Administration, the UA report recommends a standard of 48 full-representation cases per year, based on an assumed 1,400 working hours annually. But it omits a crucial reality: attorneys don’t spend all of that time on casework.

The report includes data from seven legal services organizations showing that attorneys spend, on average, just 67.3% of their time on casework. The rest is consumed by essential non-casework duties—intakes, benefits advocacy, continuing legal education (CLEs), and administrative tasks. Despite this, the UA report inexplicably assumes 100% of attorney time goes to casework—a condition that did not exist at any of the organizations surveyed.

Correcting for that omission, 67.3% of 1,400 hours yields 942 casework hours per year.

The report also draws from time data provided by two housing providers, finding the average full-representation case requires 30.9 hours. That’s the number that should be used to calculate capacity.

Instead, the UA Working Group rejected the average as too generous, claiming it was “distorted” by less common, intensive cases. But housing attorneys don’t get to skip high-needs clients—they handle those cases alongside standard ones. Instead of using the average, the group chose a figure between the average and median without a clear method. But this logic misunderstands the purpose of the calculation. If the question is how many cases fit into a limited number of hours, the average is the only relevant metric. It captures the full mix of cases—including those that demand extra time. The median doesn’t. If five clients each take 10 hours and one takes 100, the total is still 150 hours—not 60.

Using the report’s own numbers, 942 ÷ 30.9 = 30.5 cases per year, or 2.5 cases per month.

That’s the real ethical caseload. Anything higher requires cutting corners, extending the workweek, or both. Each eviction defense can stretch across months or even years, with multiple court appearances and layers of advocacy. Attorneys must often help clients secure housing vouchers, apply for public benefits to cover arrears, litigate repair and service issues, and investigate whether apartments are even legally registered. These cases rarely resolve in a single hearing, and the clients facing them often need sustained, intensive support.

Treating 48 as a baseline isn’t just bad math—it’s a danger to attorneys, and to the tenants they’re fighting to keep housed.