JusticeText Pricing and What Defenders Pay Per Year

JusticeText does not publish a price list; its site ends in a request-access form and a demo. The prices are public anyway, because counties buy it and county boards publish their contracts. A small office has paid 100 dollars per user a month (3,600 dollars a year for three users in McLean County, Illinois). Site-wide licenses run from 8,000 dollars a year in Blair County, Pennsylvania to 150,000 dollars a year in Riverside County, California. What you pay depends on headcount and on how many hours of video each person uploads.

If you run a public defender office, a conflict panel or a private defense firm and a JusticeText demo is on your calendar, you want a number before the call. Below is every JusticeText price we could find in a public record, what each contract covered, what moves the quote up or down, and what the cheaper routes cost if your office only needs part of what JusticeText does.

JusticeText pricing from public county contracts

The Riverside figures come from the county's own board document, which we read in full. The McLean, Blair and Cumberland figures come from the published agenda text for those meetings. None of these is a list price; each is what one public buyer agreed to for its own headcount and term.

How much does JusticeText cost per user?

The only per-user figure on the public record is 100 dollars per user a month, or 1,200 dollars per user a year, for a three-user office in McLean County. That is the price to anchor on if you are a small office or a private firm buying a handful of seats. Larger buyers move to site-wide licenses, which cover everyone in the office for one annual fee and usually carry an upload allowance per person rather than a seat count.

The site-wide numbers vary by a factor of almost twenty, and the spread tracks the size of the office. Blair County is a small Pennsylvania county; Riverside County runs one of the largest public defender offices in California. Riverside's board item explains the trade: the license gives all staff full access with up to 240 hours of uploads per person a year, and the county expects the cost to be partly offset by spending less on third-party transcription vendors.

What drives a JusticeText quote

• Headcount. Named users for a small office, or a site license that covers attorneys, investigators and support staff.
• Upload hours. Riverside's license caps uploads at 240 hours of audio and video per person a year. Ask what your cap is and what happens when an attorney with a homicide case blows through it.
• Term and renewals. Riverside's renewal price is 10 percent higher than year one (165,000 against 150,000 dollars). Get the renewal price written into the first contract.
• Funding source. Cumberland County paid from an indigent defense grant and Kane County, Illinois reported its renewal is funded by state allocations to public defender offices. Grant timing can decide when an office can sign.
• Procurement route. Riverside ratified its agreement without competitive bids because the product was judged specialized. If your county requires bids, budget time for that.

Large offices that compare several vendors before a renewal often run the quotes through procurement software that collects and compares vendor bids, so the per-user and per-hour terms sit side by side rather than in separate email threads.

What JusticeText includes

JusticeText is built for defense work on audio and video evidence. It produces time-stamped, searchable transcripts of body camera footage, interrogation video, jail calls and other recordings in more than 100 languages, builds case timelines, flags inconsistencies and key moments across the evidence with an AI assistant, and lets you clip, redact and sync video for exhibits. Its customers are mostly public defender offices, and its published case studies also include private defense firms.

What it does not do is legal research. It will find the moment an officer says he smelled marijuana; it will not tell you whether your state's courts still treat that smell as probable cause. That second job needs a case law tool, and it is where most defense offices are already paying for a Westlaw or Lexis contract.

Is JusticeText worth it?

For an office whose cases routinely arrive with hours of body camera footage, the math is simple to run. Take the per-user price of about 1,200 dollars a year and divide it by your attorneys' hourly cost. If the tool saves each attorney more than a day or two of watching video over a year, it has paid for itself. Test that on two or three closed cases before you sign, by timing how long review takes with and without it. For a private firm that handles a few video-heavy cases a year, the same money may buy more as pay-as-you-go transcription.

Cheaper alternatives to JusticeText by job

Prices read from each vendor's pricing page in October 2026. Reduct offers a 14 day trial with 5 hours of AI transcription. None of these is built specifically for criminal defense the way JusticeText is, so test them on a closed case with real footage before you switch. We compare the whole defense stack, from video review to research, in our guide to AI for criminal defense lawyers, and the same buy-by-task approach for support staff in paralegal AI tools.

Pairing JusticeText with case law research

Once the footage shows what happened, the motion needs the law. CaseSearch does that job alone: ask in plain English, for example whether courts in your circuit have suppressed statements where a suspect said "I think I need a lawyer" and questioning continued, and you get the on-point decisions with citations, a plain-language holding and a signal showing whether each case is still good law. It costs 49 dollars a month, or 24 billed yearly, with no sales call and no multi-year term, and one question runs without an account in the tool at the top of this page. Before anything is filed, run the brief through a legal citation checker so no case in it has been reversed. CaseSearch is a research tool, not legal advice.

Questions to ask on the JusticeText call

• Is the price per named user or site-wide, and who counts as a user (investigators, paralegals, interns)?
• What is the upload cap per person per year, and what does extra time cost?
• What is the renewal price for years two to four, in writing?
• Where is discovery stored, who at the vendor can access it, and is it used to train models?
• Can we export transcripts and clips if we leave, and in what format?

Questions defenders ask about JusticeText pricing

How much does JusticeText cost?

JusticeText quotes each buyer. Public county contracts show 100 dollars per user a month for a three-user office in McLean County, Illinois, a site-wide license of 8,000 dollars a year in Blair County, Pennsylvania, and 150,000 dollars a year for all staff in Riverside County, California, rising to 165,000 on renewal.

Can private defense attorneys buy JusticeText?

Yes. JusticeText's site invites any defense attorney to request access, and its published case studies include private defense firms as well as public defender offices. Expect a quote based on your number of users and upload hours rather than a self-serve checkout.

Does JusticeText offer a free trial?

JusticeText does not advertise a self-serve trial; access starts with a request form and a demo. Some counties began with a paid pilot year before renewing. Ask for a pilot on a few live cases with a written renewal price.

What is a cheaper alternative to JusticeText?

For transcripts alone, Reduct starts at 12 dollars per editor a month and Rev at 29.99, with human transcription at 1.99 dollars a minute. They are general tools, not built for defense discovery, so check accuracy on noisy footage and the vendor's data terms before uploading protected evidence.