Countywide

The directors of Defenders Inc., the county’s largest indigent defense law office, agreed in principle Wednesday to a friendly takeover by the new community defender organization, which will assume all public defense duties sometime next year.

Tom Ryan, president of Defenders Inc., said the nonprofit organization’s board had agreed “to start the process of an eventual merger.”

The board of the community defender organization, which first broached the concept last month of taking over Defenders Inc., is to take a formal vote today on whether to pursue a merger.

County supervisors agreed this fall to establish a community defender office to replace the mix of county staff lawyers and contract law firms that currently represent 30,000 indigents yearly in criminal cases. The contract system had been criticized by numerous investigators for failing to provide consistently adequate representation to defendants unable to afford private defense lawyers.