I am not really sure if assigning JIRA issues to the project lead is a good policy. I creates the impression to end users that there is actually somebody assigned to the issue and maybe even working on it. IMHO it would be better to leave them to unassigned, because that's what they are really are.
I discussed that with Robin a while ago. He was in favor of the current policy. If I remeber his argument was that the project lead has an overview of the current open issues. But that could also be achieved with a simply JIRA query, and remeber those can be saved for later re-use.
I also think that new developers which want to contribute would be more attracted to "unassigned" issues instead of a issue that belongs to someone. That would also match my workflow to assign myself only to issues I intend to fix in the near feature.
What do you think?