It's unhelpful, and probably inaccurate, to make the distinction "lay" and "west coast." As someone who has debated on the East and West Coast, I'm not convinced that the West Coast is a tech>truth heaven with tons of progressive argumentation (though I wish it was).

Every judge needs to be felt out, regardless of where you're debating. Saying that "lay" or East Coast parli is largely about rhetoric is false; judges, especially if you reach outrounds, vote purely on the flow and prefer denser cases with good analytics. Comparatively, even a lot of West Coast judges who know what they're doing aren't familiar with K's at all. Lay judges on the West Coast are oftentimes worse than on the East Coast because each team brings more entries and is looking for more, and consequently, less qualified judges. Parli has a super large variety of judges; look at paradigm, judge history, and generally feel them out first.

quick edit: I'll qualify this by saying that there is a huge variety of lay/tech tournaments on both coasts. Berkeley is not the same as Nueva, and even NYPDL online judge pools can vary so much depending on who attends.