Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office

The Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office (LACPD) is the finest client-centered criminal defense firm in the nation, providing a beacon for evolutionary and revolutionary changes in the justice system. LACPD is the largest Public Defender office in the nation. With over 700 attorneys representing over 100,000 clients annually, PD receives case-related documents from 99 law enforcement agencies including LA Police Department, Long Beach Police Department, and LA County Sheriff Department. On a monthly basis, the Office of the Public Defender processes thousands of documents (typed and handwritten) to extract information related to defendants, charges, allegations, witnesses, and law enforcement personnel. Efficient and accurate extraction of such information is extremely important to initiate client representation. To enable quick searching and cross-departmental file processing, the information from the forms is transferred to an electronic Client Case Management System (CCMS).

After conducting an internal analysis, the LA County Office of the Public Defender estimates, on average, it takes 15 mins per document for manual extraction. LA County automated this process using machine learning (ML) to accelerate the data intake to CCMS. Since the documents contain highly sensitive information, data extraction needs to be accurate and followed by a human-in-the-loop verification step prior to storing in CCMS to support downstream activities. Through an engagement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), LA County Office of the Public Defender implemented efficient automation using artifical intelligence (AI) and ML to create an automated and accelerated information extraction workflow from thousands of scanned documents. This innovative implementation of AI and ML document processing is streamlining and automating data entry, saving significant staff time and expediting critical case information to be available for attorneys and legal support staff.