JusticeText

JusticeText is a software platform built for criminal defense practitioners — primarily public defender agencies, but also private defense firms and legal aid nonprofits — that helps them process the audio, video and document evidence produced in criminal discovery. The system converts hours of body-worn camera footage, jail calls, interrogations and courtroom recordings into searchable transcripts time-synced to the original media, with transcription and translation support across more than 100 languages, including files in which multiple languages are spoken. It handles standard media formats as well as a range of proprietary law-enforcement and corrections formats such as GTL jail calls, For The Record courtroom proceedings, AV Viewer dashcam/bodycam files and Watchguard camera files, and ingests PDF discovery, automatically extracting text from documents, tables, images and handwritten notes without separate OCR steps.

The platform includes an AI assistant, MirandaAI, that attorneys use to build case timelines, surface inconsistencies, generate summaries and identify key moments across a case, and to cross-reference written discovery against video evidence. Trial preparation tools allow users to clip and redact video, add closed captioning, and synchronize multiple camera angles into a unified timeline aligned by capture date and time to produce court-ready exhibits. Security features described by the company include encrypted storage on U.S. servers, encryption in transit and at rest, customer control over access and deletion of uploaded content, a stated policy that evidence is never used to train third-party machine learning models, and multi-factor authentication and single sign-on.

The company frames its work around equity in criminal legal representation, citing the growth of digital discovery — body-worn camera adoption by 47% of law enforcement agencies per the Bureau of Justice Assistance and video evidence in more than 80% of criminal cases — as a driver of backlogs and workload pressure in under-resourced public defense systems.

Founding story

Co-founders Devshi Mehrotra and Leslie Jones-Dove met on their first day as undergraduate computer science students at the University of Chicago. Their outlook was shaped by the November 2015 release of dash cam video showing the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer and by the subsequent spread of facial recognition, gang databases and predictive policing tools in the city. Drawing on scholars including Michelle Alexander, Ruha Benjamin and Clint Smith III, they built an initial version as a class project, then validated the problem through conversations with local Chicago public defenders who described the growing burden of digital discovery. The founders describe themselves as technologists of color focused on strengthening public institutions so that criminal legal representation is available regardless of income.

Business model

JusticeText sells access to its evidence-review software to defense organizations, with a website flow oriented around scheduled demos and account provisioning ("Get access today"). The company states that it works directly with offices on rollout, training and long-term adoption rather than delivering software alone.

Sources describe paid access to the software platform by defense offices and firms but do not specify pricing or contract structure.

Traction

The company states it has been live in more than 50 public defender agencies since its 2021 launch and describes thousands of defense attorneys as users. Reported outcomes include an attorney estimate of up to 10 hours saved per week, a law firm's estimate that video review and trial preparation time fell by at least two-thirds, and a Tulsa legal aid nonprofit's use of the platform to obtain dismissal of a second-degree murder charge in a case involving over 20 hours of body-camera footage plus police interrogations and jail calls. Massachusetts' Committee for Public Counsel Services expanded from a handful of pilot users to roughly 100 attorneys and investigators.

Latest developments

Recent company posts describe a rollout of AI-powered bodycam transcription for Kentucky public defenders, adoption by Public Defender Services of Lane County for discovery review, and selection as a Justice Innovation Prize finalist by Dream.org. The product line now includes MirandaAI, an AI assistant for case review, along with PDF discovery analysis, multi-camera syncing, and clipping and redaction tools for courtroom exhibits.