LegalServer’s Positive Impact with the Delaware County Public Defender’s Office

The Delaware County Public Defender’s Office, located directly to the west of Philadelphia, recently experienced a significant transformation with LegalServer.

With LegalServer we now spend more time doing the important work with our clients.

Prior to LegalServer the Public Defender’s Office in Delaware County Pennsylvania was operating with a case management system that was so ineffective the work of the office was almost entirely paper based. “LegalServer has completely reshaped the workflow of the office,” says Christopher Welsh, the Chief Public Defender in Delaware County. “Our ability to manage the work among multiple units, increase communication among staff and collect data necessary to inform management decisions is significantly improved.”

Before transitioning to LegalServer data analytics were nonexistent. The Public Defender’s Office could not track caseloads for attorneys, investigators or social service advocates. Not having the data made it impossible to fairly distribute work among staff. With LegalServer in full use throughout the office, lawyers and supervisors have views into accurate data, putting everyone on the same page on the cases assigned. The data from LegalServer now makes it very clear to see how things are going across the office.

The process improvement and insights we now have with LegalServer have helped management review and adjust workload among staff.

Within LegalServer, non-technical public defender staff have the ability to create custom reports in house without the involvement of LegalServer staff. Besides ease of creating and editing reports internally, public defender staff can also internally change the system to adapt to business processes without consulting with or paying LegalServer to make the change. According to Christopher, “The office is seeing a lot of benefits by having an internal staff member within the department (non- IT) quickly make changes to our system at the request of management. This ability allows us to adapt as needs change without any additional cost.”

The ease of site administration sets LegalServer apart from other case management systems and makes it a superior product.

Integrating with external systems is a core feature with LegalServer’s open API architecture. In Pennsylvania there is one system for public defender offices to receive court information, managed by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC). Prior to LegalServer, manually entering defendant information from AOPC was incredibly time consuming. To open a case, Public Defender Case Aides would have to manually enter the client’s biographical information, court dates, and charges associated with the case, including gradation and date of offense.

With LegalServer’s AOPC integration, the Public Defender’s Office is now receiving a real time feed of case initiation and changes from the court. LegalServer is automatically updating existing cases and creating new cases for proper assignment. The data received includes matters, charges, and events. “The integration with AOPC has improved our intake process substantially,” says Christopher. “The integration has substantially cut down on the manual data entry, reduced errors associated with manual entry and allows our staff to do other, more important things. Instead of taking 5 to 10 minutes to open a file, it now takes the click of a button.”

Averaging 80 hours saved per month provides a lot of meaningful time the Public Defender’s Office can reallocate to serving those in desperate need of legal defense services.

To see how bold technology can empower your public defender’s office book a demo today.