A mail survey of all 523 of the organized defender agencies in the country yielded responses from 825 individual attorneys representing 399 of the agencies. Field studies involving interviews, observations, and court docket studies were conducted in eight jurisdictions. In this study, defender agencies are defined as structures providing nonfee legal defense services through an attorney or group of attorneys, pursuant to a contractual agreement or public employment, on a regular basis to indigent defendants. For analysis, the responding defender systems are classified according to the size of the population they serve and the percentage of the jurisdiction's total felony criminal caseload in which the defender system provides representation. The functional description of the agencies covers (1) the number of attorneys and the size of the population served, (2) staff composition, (3) the selection and tenure of the chief defender, (4) type of cases represented, (5) proportionate caseloads, (6) stages of representation, (7) method of case assignment, (8) support staff availability, (9) eligibility for free legal services, (10) average attorney caseloads, (11) the impact of classification of defender and caseload size, and (12) the point of first client contact. By combining data obtained in the field research, a cost per case figure for defenders and assigned counsel systems in each of the sites was obtained. Tabular data, 12 notes, and 13 references are provided.