Stephen Hanlon spent almost fifty years as a lawyer, with decades of experience running the largest pro-bono civil rights practice in the US. He will tell you that, in his opinion, our entire legal profession/system in the US is one of the main facilitators for mass incarceration in America.
William Hocking sits down with Stephen Hanlon, the lawyer who led a national movement to ‘fix’ the public defender ‘crisis’, for a conversation. For Stephen, going to all of this effort was, among other reasons, about doing the right thing- because it was and always is the right thing to do.
Steve learned law at his father's side in St. Louis, a man other lawyers called "a lawyer's lawyer." He ran the largest pro bono department in the country at Holland and Knight, then spent his seventies proving, state by state, how many cases is too many for one public defender to handle.
In 2012 he won a watershed case in the Missouri Supreme Court. By 2023 that work became the new national workload standards. Washington adopted them in 2025, and a new generation of public defenders is standing up and refusing to take it anymore.
Tune in to hear why Steve says a court without a real defender is not a court at all, and why, in his 80s, he is happy to sit back and watch the kids carry the fight.
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00:34 Meet Stephen Hanlon and the line that frames his whole career
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05:38 Learning law at his father's side from a lawyer's lawyer in St. Louis
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13:37 From Tampa litigation to the largest pro bono department in the country
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19:00 How George Kendall pointed him toward public defense
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22:41 The watershed 2012 Missouri case won four to three
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24:13 Six guys at a bar in 1973 and the caseload numbers nobody could back up
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27:00 Working with RAND to build the 2023 national workload standards
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33:38 Why 39 percent of the system does not belong behind bars
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47:32 What he tells young public defenders just entering the fight
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52:16 The three legged stool: why a court without a real defender is not legitimate
Episode 5