A public defender is a licensed attorney, assigned to represent people who are charged with a crime and who desire legal representation but who cannot afford to hire a privately retained attorney. (The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way of translating a common Spanish-language term for ombudsman, defensor del pueblo.)Different jurisdictions use different approaches in providing legal counsel for criminal defendants who don't have financial access to a private attorney. Under the federal system and most common among the states is through a publicly funded public defender office. Typically, these offices function as an agency of the federal, state or local government and as such, these attorneys are compensated as salaried government employees. This approach provides a substantial majority of the indigent criminal defense representation in the United States.In addition to government-based offices, there are also a smaller but significant number of not-for-profit agencies, often referred to as a "Defender Service", or Legal Aid Societies that provide indigent criminal defense services. These entities tend to rely heavily on indirect sources public funding and charitable contributions to meet their operating costs.Yet another, although increasingly less common method to appoint counsel for indigent criminal defendants is by way of a so-called "panel" of private attorneys who enter agreements with the government to handle such cases. Under this system attorneys generally operate as independent contractors and are compensated at a fixed rate for the case or sometimes by the hour.
