Vicky Ourfalian

Vicky Ourfalian is a Grade IV Deputy Alternate Public Defender and Team Leader at the Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender’s Office.   In her current role, Vicky represents indigent individuals in criminal court, handling arraignments, bail hearings, preliminary hearings, pre-trial proceedings, and jury trials.   She is currently assigned to Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles, where she handles complex serious and violent felony cases, including capital cases.   In her role as a Team Leader, Vicky’s duties are to manage felony attorneys assigned to her team, assist in case coverage, as well as case assignments.

Vicky is a first-generation Armenian immigrant and is the first in her family to attend college and law school.  Her parents escaped the Lebanese Civil War in 1982, and moved to East Hollywood, CA, to give their children an opportunity for higher education, individual rights and liberties, and quality of life. Her experience assimilating while maintaining her cultural identity, in addition to socioeconomic hardships growing up, compelled her to dedicate her career to public service.

  Vicky attended college at the University of California, Irvine, and obtained her Juris Doctorate degree at California Western School of Law.  Upon obtaining her license to practice law, she worked as a Dependency Lawyer with Los Angeles Dependency Lawyers, Inc., representing indigent parents at Children’s Court to retain or regain custody of their child(ren).   In that capacity, Vicky handled arraignments, adjudications and contested dispositions, placement, custody, reunification, and parental rights termination hearings.  After two years of representing parents and conducting bench trials at the Children’s Court, she sought to gain experience in conducting criminal jury trials as a public defender.  As a result, she accepted a position with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office in 2008, and thereafter, the Alternate Public Defender’s Office in 2011 through the present.

Vicky has dedicated the last sixteen years of her career to helping the less fortunate members of our community, representing the indigent population in the criminal justice system.  As an Alternate Public Defender, she strives to protect and defend constitutional rights, ensure due process, advocate for just dispositions, and conduct jury trials.  She has conducted numerous trials as a Misdemeanor, Juvenile, and Felony attorney, ranging from theft cases to murders.   Vicky strongly believes in a holistic approach to legal advocacy, the inherent goodness in people and capacity for rehabilitation, while fiercely advocating for her clients’ due process rights.

Vicky is currently serving on the Armenian Bar Association’s pro bono committee, providing legal guidance to indigent members of the Armenian community, and participation in expungement clinics to assist individuals in clearing their criminal records.  Vicky is an active and longstanding member of the Los Angeles Criminal Justice American Inn of Court.  Vicky also serves on the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles’ (WLALA) Executive Committee as Communications Chair, Board of Directors, and Board of Governors for the 2024-2025 Board Year.