A fundamental assumption of court administration since its creation as a
profession has been the inevitability of growth. There will always be more
cases. This will require ever larger courthouses, more judges, more staff, newer
technology, and larger budgets. But what does recent history tell us about civil
filings?
What Is Happening to State Trial Court Civil Filings?: The
Unsolved Riddles reviews the experience of five states over the
last 16-41 years. The findings are confounding and perplexing. Civil filings are
not inexorably rising. There was a surge around the Great Recession, but civil
case filing levels in state trial courts are at or below levels 20 years ago.
Per capita filings have dropped more steeply. Per capita civil case filing
levels vary widely, both within states and across states, and cannot be
predicted from population levels. Legislative changes affecting court
jurisdiction and procedures, such as increasing the limit of the amount in
controversy in small claims court, seldom have the expected effect. Case
management programs have unintended consequences. Efforts to assist
unrepresented litigants have not reversed the decline in small claims filings.
State trial courts need to identify more relevant case type categories, track
filings levels in greater detail, and pay attention to the impact of legal and
procedural changes on filing levels. Finally, courts should realize that filings
are a valuable performance measure of public trust and confidence in the
judiciary.
Author Biography:
Alan Carlson has worked as a court executive and management
consultant in state trial courts for 47 years. He served as Court Executive
Officer (court administrator, clerk of court, and jury commissioner) in both
the Orange County and San Francisco Superior Courts, as Executive Officer of
the Monterey County Superior Court, and Assistant Executive Officer of the
Alameda County Superior Court. He has also served as President of Justice
Management Institute (court management consultants), Director of Court Services
at the Judicial Council of California, and as a Staff Attorney at the National
Center for State Courts. He has a JD from the University of California, College
of Law, San Francisco, and a BS in industrial engineering and operations
research from the University of California at Berkeley.
Alan has worked in four California Superior Courts for a
total of 26 years. For 23 years he was the court administrator reporting
directly to the judges of the court, and for 15 of these years he also served
as the clerk of the court. He has served under 30 Presiding Judges and Chief
Justices during his career. Among his accomplishments in these courts are the
merger of two levels of trial courts into a unified trial court, implementation
of e-filing, the shift to an all-electronic record, business process re-engineering
of all trial court operations, and development of portals to assist
self-represented litigants in small claims and divorce cases.
As a court management consultant, Alan has worked on
projects in 43 state trial courts at the county or city level and 19 state
Supreme Courts in 33 states and one foreign country. Areas of particular
expertise include criminal case flow management, trial court funding, trial
court governance, the development and implementation of policies for public
access to court records, and drafting privacy and civil liberties policies for
criminal justice systems.
Recently, Alan has written and spoken about what has
happened to civil case filings over the last 16 to 41 plus years in five states
and the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence applications in the
justice system.
John Greacen has worked in multiple roles in the justice system for 55 years. He has served in volunteer leadership roles in the American Bar Association
(chair of the Criminal Justice Section and of the Lawyers Conference of the Judicial
Division), Conference of State Court Administrators, the Federal Court Clerks Association, Global Justice Information Network Advisory Committee Infrastructure Standards
Working Group, Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, Legal
Internet Working Group, National Association of Appellate Court Clerks, National
Association for Court Management, National Commission on Correctional Health Care,
National Conference of Bankruptcy Clerks, National Institute of Corrections, National
Judicial College, New Mexico State Bar, New Mexico Access to Justice Commission,
Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, the President's
Commission on Mental Health, Self-Represented Litigation Network, and the Lindrith/
Llaves Volunteer Fire Department.