Civil Services

Five of the divisions of City Attorney's Office have City clients and customers, to whom they provide civil legal advice and legal services.  In addition to the Mayor and City Council, these Departments include the City Clerk, the Airport, the Library, Human Resources, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, Planning and Zoning, the Boise Police Department, and the Boise Fire Department to name a few.

The services we provide to these departments encompass a wide range of legal issues.

All of our divisions rotate to provide an attorney to advise the City Council and the Mayor at the weekly City Council Meetings.  Two of the divisions have such a specific specialty that they only provide civil services:  Litigation Division and Land Use Division.

Criminal Prosecution

Three of our divisions also are responsible for handling the office's criminal prosecution duties.  Their attorneys spend a large amount of time in court prosecuting crimes that have been investigated by the Boise and Meridian Police Departments, and their support staff manage the thousands of documents that support this function.  All of our prosecutions are handled at the Ada County Courthouse on the second floor in the Magistrate Division.  Our criminal attorneys handle every stage of the prosecution, from arraignment through sentencing, and our secretaries prepare the supporting documents such as Motions for Discovery and Responses to Motions for Discovery.  Each attorney averages about five jury trials and 19 bench/court trails (using a judge only instead of a jury) a year.  The office also handles conflict felony cases from time to time.

Our office prides itself on our attorney mobility with the use of laptops and the newly purchased, state-of-the-art criminal case management system that manages our average criminal caseload of 30,000 cases a year.