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Hall County legal office seeks pay increases to recruit attorneys amid vacancies
Summary
At a March 11 meeting, a Hall County staff member described difficulty hiring and retaining attorneys, proposing higher starting salaries, a language differential and expanding budgeted positions to address caseloads and off-hours duties.
Speaker 5, a Hall County staff member, told the meeting on March 11, 2025, the county legal office is struggling to hire and retain attorneys and proposed raising starting salaries and adding positions to reduce an overburdened caseload.
The issue matters because the speaker said vacancies are forcing current staff to carry heavy workloads and manage time-consuming duties outside normal hours, including arranging autopsies and completing death certificates. “All this is to say we we have been struggling keeping or getting people into the office,” Speaker 5 said, describing ongoing cases with future court dates.
Speaker 5 outlined proposed pay steps and recruitment challenges. The proposal would start new attorneys at about $76,000 a year for step 1 and $78,000 for step 2, figures the speaker identified as the budget numbers. The speaker said comparable offers elsewhere are higher: “She’s got an offer for, I think she said, $86,000 in a … prosecuting attorney’s office,” the speaker said, describing competing private- and public-sector offers drawn from candidate interviews and career-placement contacts at the University of Nebraska College of Law.
The speaker also recommended a pay differential for duties outside the daily nine-to-five schedule and for language skills. “I can’t remember what the differential is—a dollar an hour for Spanish language speaking,” Speaker 5 said, and described the differential as intended to cover off-hours calls and extra tasks such as arranging autopsies or completing death certificates.
On staffing numbers, Speaker 5 said the office has historically worked with eight or nine budgeted positions but recommended expanding to 14 budgeted positions to distribute workload: “I think 14 is the number. I think 14 is the sweet spot, but we’ve worked so long with 8 or 9.” The speaker framed the request as meant to prevent the need to drop cases for lack of staffing.
Speaker 5 presented the proposal as a cost-consequence decision for the board, noting the office had considered alternatives to adding staff and asking the board to weigh budget trade-offs. The transcript shows no formal motion or vote recorded on the pay or staffing proposal during the provided excerpts.
The speaker also referenced prior county expenditures in the same discussion, saying an earlier $168,000 software expenditure had been made and noting the need to be “cost conscious,” but did not connect a specific budget source for the proposed salary increases in the recorded remarks.
Speaker 5 concluded by thanking the board and expressing appreciation for support: “Thank you. I appreciate the support.”
No formal action, motion text, mover/second, or vote tally on the salary or position-change proposal appears in the transcript excerpts provided.
