Public defenders relaunch motions bank to ease workload pressures

The California Public Defenders Association has relaunched a digital tool designed to help defense attorneys draft and file motions in the wake of statewide concerns about workloads and funding.

Working with the Berkeley Technology and Justice Lab, the association, known as CPDA, has developed what it calls a "motions bank" -- a centralized, searchable library of legal filings that association attorneys can use to generate and adapt motions across a range of criminal cases.

Kate Chatfield, the group's executive director, said in a phone interview Monday there have been more than 10,000 documents available to view since it launched a month ago.

"It's a way for public defender attorneys to give. It's a very giving community," Chatfield said.

"Public defenders are no different from any other lawyers. We use work from one another. If you read a good brief or a good motion and it's from a good attorney, you're going to be taking that work, and you're going to be recycling your own work, too. That's part and parcel of being an attorney."

The workloads of public defender offices statewide have been highlighted as several came out in support of San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju, who was recently found in contempt of court and sanctioned $26,000 for refusing to take on new clients despite a judge ordering him to do so.

The motions bank tool aims to address the limited time and resources many public defenders across the state say they are facing; though it is not a new issue and it is also not a new tool, according to Chatfield.

The motions bank has existed since the mid-1990s but was difficult to use, she said. The Berkeley Technology and Justice Lab helped revamp the user experience and included new options such as a redaction tool to protect clients' privacy.

"Our old CPDA newsletters talk about a lack of funding for public defenders' offices back in 1979," Chatfield said. "Public defenders in California have never been funded adequately, but this is a way that in the midst of a continuing workload crisis that public defenders and indigent defense counsel help one another to get through it."

According to a video about the motions bank provided by the CPDA, the platform allows attorneys to search by subject -- such as suppression motions, discovery requests or sentencing arguments -- and pull from a growing library of filings developed by practitioners across California. The system is designed to be collaborative, with defenders able to upload and refine motions over time.

Avneet Chattha, a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County, said the motions bank has saved him three to four hours every time he has used it.

"It's like Google; it just pulls up the results, and you can go through and pick whatever helps you to start your research," Chattha said in a phone interview Monday. "Once you have that jumping-off point for your legal research, everything else becomes so much easier.

"It gives you a case, it gives you reference points either to give you someone's motion that they've drafted as a template, or it points you in the right direction where quickly you can then find the answer. That's something that just can't happen otherwise."

The developers say the tool is not meant to replace legal judgment but to augment it. Attorneys are expected to tailor materials to the facts of their cases, with the motions bank serving as a starting point rather than a finished product.

The association did not say how widely the tool has been adopted so far, but indicated it plans to continue expanding the database and encouraging contributions from attorneys across California.

Separately, Chattha said he has also been working on an artificial intelligence tool to help public defenders in real time with queries in court and prevent hallucinations in court filings by only allowing the tool to draw from a limited number of sources, such as the Penal Code or public case databases.

"Public defenders are in the courtroom a lot and when they run into a problem, they oftentimes text their friends or their colleagues and have to wait on that reply," said Chattha. "What if we had curated resources? Then they can ask it and get reliable answers. ... Every second does matter for public defenders, and so that's why the faster the tool, the better the tool."