Data Brings Clarity to Public Defense in Snohomish County

The Snohomish County Office of Public Defense, which serves indigent people in Washington State, recently went live with LegalServer. We sat down with Director Jason Schwarz (who’s also the chair of the Council on Public Defense in Washington) to talk about the transformation.

With LegalServer, we’re able to move forward as an organization in a cost-effective way, and are able to provide a better service.

A better way to manage caseloads

Last year, the Washington State Bar Association’s (WSBA) Board of Governors adopted new Standards for Indigent Defense Services that updated public defense guidelines, including caseload limits. With LegalServer, Jason’s office can now accurately capture, measure, and report on these important metrics to maintain compliance.

“With LegalServer in full use throughout the office, lawyers and supervisors have views into the data, putting everyone on the same page relative to the weight of the cases assigned,” Jason says. “The numerical data now makes it very clear to see how much more time a murder case is going to take compared to a drug case, for example.”

“LegalServer will help us manage caseloads both at the lawyer level and as an organization over time,” Jason continues. “I now know exactly what kind of workload I am imposing on the team. With the data we’re collecting in LegalServer, we’re able to see long term trends not just in the number of case filings by month, but how many lawyers we need to cover those cases.”

LegalServer is going to really help us understand when we are going to be crunched for time.

LegalServer is also helping the office to be more proactive about staffing. “We are going to be able to assess how the office is doing at any given moment, such that when a new case comes in we can better predict caseload constraints on the front end,” Jason says. “LegalServer is going to help us forecast our staffing needs.”

Comparing the county’s data vs. national numbers

A landmark national study published in March 2023 suggests public defenders are working far too many cases that are increasingly growing more complex. “LegalServer provides us the ability to learn whether the national workload study hours associated with certain case types are accurate in Washington,” Jason notes. “Utilizing our own data and reporting within LegalServer, we know how much it really takes a lawyer in Snohomish County to resolve a murder. Prior to LegalServer we had no way of really knowing.”

Avoiding case conflicts

Prior to using LegalServer, it was common for a client to be shuffled through multiple attorneys in an expensive and time-consuming conflict determination process. Now, the process is fast and painless.

“LegalServer keeping track of conflicts is huge and a really important thing we were not able to do before,” Jason explains. “Now we can see and be alerted based on every client served, every case, every witness, whether the person has had some involvement with the office. We can now simply reassign the case to a lawyer that does not have a conflict.”

The conflict check process is just one of many places Snohomish County is now able to leverage data and see where a costly process can be managed in a different way.

Leveraging data for better funding

With new insights at their disposal, Snohomish County can now justify funding requests with data, according to Jason.

“I can now see in aggregate what the lawyers do on a day-to-day basis that I can’t see from anecdotal stories,” he says. “That’s going to help me financially ask for more money I need while showing efficiency improvements.”

“Problems we had before are very recognizable now that we can see them with data. It’s great to be able to have a more meaningful conversation with our county council and our county executive that I just simply could not have had prior to LegalServer. Thanks to the data we have in LegalServer we’re talking about building a second public offender agency, which is awesome,” Jason concludes.

From managing caseloads more effectively, to avoiding conflicts and making funding requests more compelling, the Snohomish County Office of Public Defense is doing it all with LegalServer.

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