Case Study: Kane County Public Defender’s Office achieves paperless operations, 5× faster case initiation, and unified justice collaboration with Tyler Technologies' Odyssey Attorney Manager

Public Defender Saves Countless Hours

Kane County’s Public Defender’s Office — a team of 36 attorneys and 10 support staff handling about 18,000 new cases a year — struggled with fragmented case data in Access databases, Excel spreadsheets and homegrown SQL tools. That patchwork required duplicate data entry, was time-consuming and error-prone, and slowed routine tasks such as new case initiation, which averaged 15 minutes.

In December 2016 the county deployed Odyssey Attorney Manager to create a unified case management system across the circuit clerk, court, state’s attorney and public defender. The platform became the single source for documents and digital evidence, cut new case initiation to about three minutes, enabled a full paperless transition (completed in 18 months), reclaimed file storage space for two investigator offices, saved staff hours each week, and achieved 100% staff utilization and an “All Electronic” e‑court maturity.

Kane County