In April, the Board of Trustees approved undertaking significant changes in the way judges are to be evaluated by lawyers for the King County Bar Association. The recommendations were from the KCBA Judicial Evaluation Committee and Professor David Brody of Washington State University to conduct the next survey of the performance of King County Superior Court judges using an Internet-based survey instrument.
For the past six years, Prof. Brody has been studying evaluation tools and advising the American Bar Association, other bar associations, and a committee of the Washington chapter of the American Judicature Society on how to obtain greatest objectivity in reviewing performance. We are indebted to a number of Superior Court judges who gave valuable input to the Committee and Prof. Brody and suggested improvements to the survey instrument.
The electronic survey will be emailed or, if the lawyer has no email address, sent to each lawyer who appears in Superior Court from April to the end of September, and will regard the judges before whom he or she appeared. The survey will also be emailed or mailed retrospectively to a list of attorneys of record in each judge's cases, drawn from court records over the past two years.
The survey results will go to the Committee, this year chaired by Jay Krulewitch, for recommendations to the Board about what results are to be published. The results typically are published in the January Bar Bulletin and also will appear in more detail on the KCBA Web site, www.kcba.org.
Criteria for this survey are in four categories, with four sub-categories, as follows:
Legal decision making
- Capably identified and analyzed legal and factual issues
- Capably applied rules of evidence and procedure
- Articulated rulings and grounds for rulings in a clear and concise manner
- Was prepared for court Demeanor, temperament, and communication
- Treated people with courtesy and respect
- Was attentive to proceedings
- Acted with patience and self-control
- Used clear oral communication while in court
Administrative skills
- Maintained control over the courtroom
- Appropriately enforced court rules and deadlines
- Made decisions and rulings in a prompt, timely manner
- Used the court's time efficiently
Integrity and impartiality
- Avoided impropriety and the appearance of impropriety
- Displayed a neutral presence on the bench
- Based rulings on the facts and the law
- Treated all individuals equally and without bias based on race, gender, economic status or any other extralegal personal characteristic
Those attorneys who appear in King County Superior Court should watch for the survey(s) and reply promptly. Prof. Brody's staff will send a reminder if they do not hear back within two weeks. A good response rate is very important to the validity of the results.
The Judicial Evaluation Survey has become a regular feature of the KCBA landscape over the years, but it was not always so. Historically, the local bar limited its efforts to encouraging qualified attorneys to seek judicial office and evaluating candidates for appointments to vacant positions. When contested judicial races occurred, a simple preference poll was distributed to the membership, the results of which were made public. But that was a long time ago.
As usual, it was the young lawyers who took the lead. A young Barbara Rothstein, in 1972, chaired a "Court Reform Committee," which came up with a proposal for a "Court Reform Judicial Evaluation Plan" that became so controversial (it included LAY members!) that it was finally set aside for cooler heads to study the issue further.
When Bill Dwyer was president of the then-SKCBA, in 1979, he established a special committee to review the methods by which the bar screened candidates, resulting in our current Judicial Screening Committee process. That special committee also considered the merits of another proposal from a committee of the Young Lawyers Section, this one chaired by Lish Whitson, to conduct a multiple attribute poll for King County.
KCBA has been conducting multiple attribute polls since then, originally every two years, more recently every four years. The primary purpose is to inform the public, but it also is intended to allow for a judge's self-improvement and also to inform lawyers considering running for a judicial position about which judges they might challenge.
The KCBA Judicial Evaluation Committee has modified the survey instrument many times and in many ways - the number of attributes, rating scales, wording clarifications - always aiming for more and more objective standards by which to judge judicial performance.
