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Caseflow
Management
Curriculum
Guidelines Summary
What
Court Leaders Need to Know and Be Able to Do
Working
as a court executive leadership team, professional court managers and the
judge(s) who head court systems and appellate and trial courts facilitate
caseflow management. The six
areas of needed personal and technical knowledge, skills, and abilities
(KSAs) are:
 Curriculum
Guidelines
Court
Purposes and Vision
Fundamentals Leadership
Teams and System-wide Effectiveness Change
and Project Management Technology
Personal
Intervention
Caseflow
management is a justice not an efficiency driven activity.
Caseflow management makes possible equal access, individual justice
in individual cases, equal protection, and due process-- the appearance of
individual justice in individual justice--predictability and regularity in
case processing. Justice
delayed is justice denied because unnecessary delay destroys the purposes
of courts. The reasons are straightforward.
Excessive,
unregulated time from filing to disposition and from court event to court
event does not impact the parties equally.
Consequently, once cases are filed, impartial and independent
courts and judges must take and maintain control over case progress by
managing the time from filing to disposition and from event to event.
Related, in a witness dependant adversarial system, undue delay
inevitably leads to the loss of memory.
When memory is lost, litigants and their advocates can neither
remember nor find the facts. When
the facts are lost or forgotten, justice is impossible.
The objective of caseflow management is not faster and faster and
more and more, it is justice.
And
moving cases from filing to disposition is the most basic thing courts do.
This is what every other court work process supports.
Consequently, court leaders must conceive, communicate, and
implement vision concerning effective and efficient case processing.
Effective court and justice system leadership means organizing and
managing the court, its resources, and workflows around caseflow
management. Justice and the
courts’ enduring purposes and responsibilities are served by vision and
action concerning caseflow management.
Fundamentals
Understanding
the relationship between the purposes of courts and effective caseflow and
trial management is a fundamental as are time standards, alternative case
scheduling and assignment systems, and case management techniques,
including differentiated case management (DCM)
and alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
While there are underlying caseflow principles, differing case
types have differing case processing steps and dynamics. Competent court
leaders, both judges and court managers, understand the general
principles, all case types, and how the principles apply to each case
type. They keep current with
the successes and failures of other courts and know how to leverage
external resources, current research, and others’ experience to case and
trial management in their own court.
Leadership
Teams and System-Wide Effectiveness
Caseflow
management is a team sport that requires an effective court executive
leadership team that includes the judge(s) in charge and court managers.
Effective case processing is a cooperative effort of judges and
court staff and public and private litigants and lawyers, as well as law
enforcement, social services, health, detention, and correctional
organizations. As court
managers and judges in charge work together to improve case processing and
jointly lead their court and justice system, they must understand that
while caseflow management requires early and continuous court control of
individual cases, the courts are dependent on others who have independent
and distinct responsibilities in an interdependent justice system.
Competent caseflow management leadership requires recognition of
the need for both interdependence and independence throughout the court
and the justice system.
Change
and Project Management
Effective
caseflow is a moving target. While
the underlying purposes and case processing principles are constants, so
are change and projects to bring about improvements.
Techniques and programs that once were innovative and effective do
not work forever and require constant monitoring.
Caseflow management competency means skillful and continuous
evaluation and problem identification.
Court leaders must oversee the evaluation of caseflow management
problems through qualitative information and quantitative data and
statistical analysis. Once
problems are identified and solutions are crafted and communicated, court
leaders must successfully initiate and manage change.
Technology
Application
of technology to caseflow is critical.
Tying information technology to caseflow management involves
creating and maintaining records; supporting court management of
pre-trial, trial and post-dispositional events, conferences and hearings;
monitoring case progress; flagging cases for staff and judge attention;
tracking trends; and providing needed management information and
statistics. To oversee the
application of technology to caseflow, court leaders must understand both
technology’s potential to improve case processing and its limitations.
Leading and managing what one does not understand at all is
problematic at best.
Personal
Intervention
Effective
leadership of caseflow cannot be passive.
Neither day-to-day routines nor required change are self-executing. Complex and interdependent processes carried out by people,
departments, and organizations with independent responsibilities demand
skilled and credible leadership. To
effectively lead the court, court leaders, especially the judge(s) in
charge, must take responsibility for caseflow management and skillfully
communicate with and manage others.
To do this, personal intervention is mandatory.
Click
on each of the six Curriculum Guidelines to see the associated
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Curriculum
Guidelines
Court
Purposes and Vision
Fundamentals Leadership
Teams and System-wide Effectiveness Change
and Project Management Technology
Personal
Intervention
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