ZLS.app is excited to join Hunter Parnell on the Public Defenseless podcast for a wide-ranging conversation on how public defense leaders can better use data to tell their own stories and drive change in their jurisdictions. The episode focuses on a question that comes up repeatedly in our work with defender offices: “What story could I tell if I had the data?”
Why Data Matters for Indigent Defense
In the conversation, Mohammed and Ryan talk about why indigent defense is uniquely positioned to hold everyone in the courtroom accountable. Public defenders are often the only actors systematically tracking what clients are actually facing, what they are offered, and what ultimately happens in their cases. When that information is surfaced clearly, it can reshape how county and state leaders think about funding, policy, and the role of public defense in the broader justice ecosystem.
The episode walks through concrete examples that many offices are already living every day:
- Comparing maximum exposure to actual outcomes in resolved cases.
- Documenting diversion to programs instead of incarceration.
- Highlighting racial disparities in charging, plea offers, or sentencing patterns.
These are stories that defender leaders are often telling anecdotally. The difference comes when those stories are backed by qualitative narratives and quantitative evidence from their own caseloads.
From Burden to Byproduct: Rethinking Data Collection
A central theme of the discussion is the need to “unleash the data” that defender offices are already generating in the course of everyday advocacy. Historically, that data has been trapped in PDFs, static reports, or legacy systems that make it hard to answer new questions without starting from scratch each time.
ZLS.app is built by public defenders for public defenders, which means the starting point is the advocate’s workflow, not a separate layer of data-entry work. Case information that defenders already track to represent clients—charges, exposure, outcomes, conditions, program referrals, court events—gets captured in structured ways that can later be analyzed without requiring attorneys or staff to become part-time data clerks.
From there, ZLS makes that information accessible through flexible, office-driven reporting so leaders can:
- Respond quickly to new questions from funders, courts, or legislators.
- Support litigation strategies with aggregated case data.
- Demonstrate missed opportunities when alternatives to incarceration are underused.
- Show the fiscal and human impact of investing in public defense capacity.
Empowering Leaders to Tell Their Own Stories
One of the examples discussed in the episode is a Texas office that used unlocked case data to examine racial bias in its local system. No centralized vendor could have predicted in advance exactly how that office would want to frame the question or structure the analysis. By making underlying data available, ZLS.app allowed local leaders to design the story they needed to tell in their own jurisdiction.
That is the core vision: not a handful of rigid, one-size-fits-all reports, but a platform that lets public defense leaders test hypotheses, validate what they are seeing in court hallways, and bring evidence into budget and policy conversations that historically have overlooked the defender perspective.
Listen to the Conversation
Thank you to Hunter Parnell and the Public Defenseless team for highlighting the critical role of data, case management systems, and AI in strengthening public defense. We invite you to listen to the full episode and consider what stories your office could tell if your data were fully unlocked.
If your office is interested in exploring how ZLS.app can help you capture and unleash your data as a natural part of client-centered advocacy, we would be glad to connect.
