What This Core Competency Is and Why It Is Important

Caseflow management is the process by which courts move cases from filing to closure.  This includes all pre-trial phases, trials, and increasingly, events that follow disposition to ensure the integrity of court orders and timely completion of post-disposition case activity.

Effective caseflow management makes justice possible not only in individual cases but also across judicial systems and courts, both trial and appellate.  Effective caseflow helps ensure that every litigant receives procedural due process and equal protection.  The quality of justice is enhanced when judicial administration is organized around the requirements of effective caseflow and trial management.

Crucial issues that impact the effective movement of cases from filing to closure include: 

• Court system and trial court organization and authority relationships, including the management of judges by judges;
• The identification, development, selection, and succession of chief judges and court managers, chief judge/court manager executive leadership teams, and the best use of these and other multi-disciplinary executive teams
• Allocation of court resources: judges, managerial, technical and administrative staff; budgets; technology; and courthouses, courtrooms, and other facilities across courts, court divisions, case types, and particular types of hearings;
• Application of court technology and the court’s research, data, and analytic capability; and
• Coordination with the judiciary’s justice system partners.

Caseflow management is the process by which courts convert their “inputs” (cases) into “outputs” (dispositions).  This conversion process, caseflow management, determines how well courts achieve their most fundamental and substantive objectives and purposes.  Properly understood, caseflow management is the absolute heart of court management.

View the Summary of Caseflow Management Curriculum Guidelines or click on each of the six Curriculum Guidelines to see the associated Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Court Purposes and Vision
• Fundamentals
• Leadership Teams and System-wide Effectiveness
• Change and Project Management
• Technology
• Personal Intervention

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