As Utah’s largest law firm, Utah’s Attorney General Derek Brown said his office needs additional funding to increase its litigation resources and address attorney salary disparities. Brown said the current shortage is directly causing delays in criminal appeals and challenges in defending high-profile cases involving the state.
“We will defend the state. We’ll do it the best we can. But there are resources we need to have the bandwidth to do a good job of defending them,” Brown told the criminal justice appropriations subcommittee Thursday morning.
During a presentation to state lawmakers, Brown stressed that without increased pay funding, the attorney general’s office would continue to lose attorneys because of salary disparity challenges.
“We lose attorneys all the time who are looking for pay increases. ... So just know that this is something that is an ongoing issue,” he said. While a lot of people think that we may be losing our attorneys to the private sector, and indeed we are, we also lose them to the public as well because we are substantially below the median in that arena.”
Between 2021 and 2023, the office lost more than one-third of its attorneys in the criminal appeals division while simultaneously seeing an increased workload. Also, the complexity of the cases and “average page count of these briefs in the same time has almost quadrupled,” he added.
The reality is that without a supply of staff, appeals were not being processed fast enough. Browns said his office averages five to 10 months for reviewing and responding to briefings, while the industry average is two months.
As a solution, Brown requested that the legislature fund seven new attorneys and one paralegal to combat criminal appeals delays.
Regarding Utah’s high-profile cases (such as the ban on e-flavored cigarettes, the federal public land lawsuit and social media laws), Brown said there are currently only four attorneys managing multiple cases. His solution to this problem is to add three new solicitor-attorney generals.
While attaining top talent is a significant struggle for the AG’s office, Brown emphasized that many attorneys continue to stay — despite lower pay and increased workload — because they find purpose in their work.
Brown said he’s met with attorneys under his office “who truly could increase their salaries dramatically overnight by leaving and they stay because the kinds of cases that they work on are meaningful and it makes a difference. ... We have a lot of lawyers that do that, but we also have to maintain a benchmark when it comes to salaries, and that’s my hope, is that we can keep up with that because there’s a lot of reasons people come to our office.”
Brown’s AG office: Under reconstruction
Last week, The Office of the Legislative Auditor General released its two-part audit report of former AG Sean Reyes’ office, where he held the title of attorney general from 2013 to 2023.
Brown clarified some general housekeeping his office has undergone since assuming the jobp to show that the office is aware of the critiques made by the audit report — especially in terms of transparency and trust.
“We’re trying to do everything we can to be transparent,” Brown said, adding that one way he is doing so is by making his weekly calendar public.
The audit report also questioned Reyes’ relationship with certain nonprofits, specifically Operation Underground Railroad, because one of the AG’s roles is overseeing the state’s nonprofit organizations.
Brown said that before he was sworn into office, he removed himself from every nonprofit board he was on “because I think that as an office that has oversight over nonprofits, that’s probably a really smart guardrail that we can put in place on our own” without legislative intervention.
Since he began his legislative service in 2019, Sen. Brady Brammer, R-Pleasant Grove, said Brown showing up for the committee meeting Thursday was the first time an attorney general has been present in any committee meetings he’s been on. He said that the previous “disconnect from the legislature and (not) having that relationship and that back and forth was something that I think did not serve the office well over the years. ... But I do think that interaction is necessary, and I appreciate you coming.”
Brammer added that the legislature is taking seriously the frustrations expressed in the audit by lawmakers and the public, but he believes Brown will continue to restructure the office by confronting those concerns head-on.
“I would say that they are valid and needed suggestions, and they point out some real problems that were going on in the office that have a budgetary component. So it’s appropriate for this committee to hear it.”