https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/31/us/public-defender-case-loads.html
On April 27, 2017, Jack Talaska, a lawyer for the poor in Lafayette, La., had 194 felony cases....It is even harder to make the argument that the sheer size of lawyers’ caseloads makes it impossible for them to provide what the Constitution requires: a reasonably effective defense. That is partly because there has never been a reliable standard for how much time is enough.
Now, reformers are using data in a novel attempt to create such a standard. The studies they have produced so far, in four states, say that public defenders have two to almost five times as many cases as they should.