Panel: More judge advocates needed - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Panel: More judge advocates needed

A recent review of the Marine Corps’ and Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps revealed a community strained by heavy workloads and in need of more personnel.

Even with fewer military forces in Iraq and an eventual planned drawdown in Afghanistan, more lawyers are needed at the frontlines to navigate the legal complexities of counterinsurgency and maritime missions, according to a draft staff report by the Independent Panel to Review the Judge Advocate Requirements of the Department of the Navy.

Better management, more specialized training and education, and more assignments that provide joint experience, were all on the shortlist of recommendations

“It is essential that the services increase their level of investment in judge advocates, both in quantity and quality,” the panel wrote.

The five-member panel, mostly made up of retired Marine and Navy leaders well-versed in military justice, is looking at judge advocate requirements within the Department of the Navy.

The panel, directed by Congress in the Fiscal 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, was to issue its report to Congress by Dec. 29. But the panel asked for an extension until Feb. 15 to review and incorporate the findings of a separate Defense Department Inspector General report, released last month, detailing the Navy Department’s problems with post-trial processing.

More demands

The panel found the Marine Corps and Navy require more judge advocates schooled in operational law, as the need will double in the next 10 years.

Operational law includes legal advice to commanders — rules of engagement, for example — but also covers military commissions, international laws, foreign training and civil-military affairs.

The Marine Corps had three active-duty judge advocates deployed when Marines entered Afghanistan in late 2001. It has deployed 391 active-duty judge advocates since, plus another 80 in individual augmentee tours to Iraq or Afghanistan. The Marine Corps since has nearly doubled its operational law assignment billets, from 20 to 38, the panel found, and battlefield commanders “have and currently employ judge advocates at all levels of command,” with operational law “a significant portion of their duties.”

The panel also weighed the effects on the community of the Office of Military Commissions, a trial judiciary established to handle legal cases against suspected terrorists. More than 200 full-time uniformed members, including 112 judge advocates, support the commissions with 24 Navy legalmen, eight Marine Corps legal services specialists and two Navy criminal investigators, the report noted.

These assignments include some of the services’ star litigators, said retired Navy Vice Adm. Bruce MacDonald, a former surface warfare officer who heads the commissions. “This is the time for our JAG Corps to shine, and to do that, you have to go, I think, with the best and brightest and most experienced in the courtroom,” MacDonald told the panel.

But the panel warned about “balancing the need” across the entire Marine Corps and Navy. “It is essential that the Department of the Navy have a sufficient number of experienced trial litigators and judges to simultaneously support military commissions and the traditional military justice system at the highest possible levels of professionalism,” the panel wrote.

More judge advocates also must handle growing demands from wounded combat veterans seeking disability claims and evaluations for benefits. The complicated process includes a series of boards and reviews before a disability rating is given, so Congress in 2008 required that military attorneys be available for service members facing an Informal Physical Evaluation Board.

The Marine Corps activated four reserve judge advocates, placing two each at Camp Lejeune, N.C., and Camp Pendleton, Calif., and plans to add 13 activated reserve judge advocates. But another half-dozen civilian attorneys would be needed to get disability cases moving faster and sooner to keep the attorneys’ workload manageable, the report said.

The draft report did not include recommendations on military justice, the traditional courtroom work of investigating and litigating alleged violations of military law.

The panel’s work has largely centered on the inner workings of the services’ legal organization, but it should take a serious look at improving and making the Marine Corps’ defense services more autonomous, said Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

“If that board issues a report without getting very serious about the organizing of defense services in the Marine Corps, it will not have done its job,” Fidell said.

Better benefits

Their college debts average $108,000, but the report found Marine Corps and Navy lawyers don’t receive the financial help their counterparts in the Army and Air Force do — $185,000 and $125,000, respectively — in continuation pay and the Student Loan Repayment Program. The Navy gives $60,000 to judge advocates while the Marine Corps provides $30,000 in continuation pay to help with retention.

Marine Corps officials want to increase the benefit, called the Law School Education Debt Subsidy, from $30,000 to $45,000 starting in 2011. But Maj. Gen. Vaughn Ary, the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant, said the service doesn’t want further excessive hikes for its judge advocates “to make sure that we’re ... not viewed as a special corps within the Corps.”

The panel has noted other ways to shore up retention:

• Continued support for strong postgraduate schooling, which is seen as a key retention tool.

• More lawyers to receive joint professional military education.

• Improved recruiting. The Marine Corps already has in place a staff judge advocate billet within its recruiting command and established mentoring and clerk programs for law students after their commissioning.

• Ensure promotion. Judge advocates enjoy comparable promotion rates as unrestricted line officers, Ary told the panel. But promotion rates to colonel have lagged since 2007, forcing the Marine Corps to include “precepts” in the fiscal 2010 selection board and again for the fiscal 2012 O-6 board, the report noted.