My father was an engineer. My mother was trained as a scientist and always had a mind for numbers. My parents always taught me to be analytical in trying to solve a problem and be efficient when you have multiple problem sets. The advice they gave was finish the ones you can complete quickly and then spend more time on the ones that are more complex. I know many of you bring these skills to bear on your legal issues that you help your clients solve. I bring this up because our court continues to analyze our operations and case management to deal with efficiencies and marshal our resources when there is a surge of cases. Emerging out of COVID it was criminal cases. Today, it is the surge of unlawful detainers and civil protection petitions.
As I have discussed in previous columns, the rule of law and access to courts are fundamental principles that are at the heart of everything we do. One aspect of the rule of law that directly implicates the reputation of the court is how long it takes for a case to be heard. Many people feel frustrated when their case cannot be heard in a reasonable time and this ferments civil disorder. At times the judiciary is criticized for being slow and unresponsive, but we want to be accessible and provide timely relief. When we face these complaints about the rule of law, we suit up and put on our analytical hats and get to work. We have a long history of being a leader in addressing these issues through case management.
There was a time when we had 70,000 pending civil cases and the time to trial was 32 months for jury trials. Today we have about 16,000 civil cases pending. Back in the day, we had a master calendar where everyone appeared and then parties were sent to individual courtrooms. We had judges rotate through a general trial calendar, juvenile court for one month, summary judgment calendar for one month, and other short rotations. A task force came together and implemented case management principles and we created a civil and criminal department and then civil case schedules in every civil case. We also required joint status reports, mandatory arbitration, and lengthening the trial day to create more trial time. We created a pilot of individual calendar judges that handled exclusively civil cases and then distributed civil case management to all trial judges, including criminal judges. Through these efforts, we saw a dramatic reduction in the number of civil cases pending and have maintained those numbers with some adjustments over time.
Then, we saw more change by creating the Unified Family Court department and a shift of work to the Kent Courthouse. We determined that having a specialized department for family law better served the litigants and the bar, creating specialized commissioners, family law facilitators, case managers and a resource center. We also determined South King County was not able to efficiently access our court so we moved about 40% of our caseload and judges to Kent for better access. Throughout these changes, we had budget challenges, and some of our ideas and innovations were winnowed. For example, family law case managers, judicial assistants, and court reporters are no longer funded.
With the pandemic behind us we have another opportunity to refine our case management so that cases that are in high demand get the attention they deserve. I have previously mentioned an online calendaring tool for unlawful detainers and now we are creating new processes to triage these cases. By sorting the cases that are ready from the ones who need more time to access legal counsel and develop discovery, we are hopeful we can move cases more efficiently.
I have previously spoken about the changes in protection order statutes and our Civil Protection Order Court that has been piloted the last two years. The numbers are astounding with this calendar being so accessible that our anti-harassment petitions have increased 200%! We have asked for increased funding to meet this demand, including staff and judicial officers.
What I mean to emphasize is that the adjustments we make are part of the fabric of our court. We continually make changes in our process to ensure the rule of law is met and parties have access to our civil court system. Much of this access depends on proper resourcing and some of it depends on using tools to be more efficient with what we have. We experiment to handle the most complex problems that our court and society face. When there is a housing shortage, the day-to-day struggles by both landlords and tenants plays out in our courts with increased filings. When there is fear and apprehension in our society and folks need protection, they come to our court for relief. We will continue to emphasize access and orderly processing of cases so that the rule of law is upheld.
As always, we welcome feedback and conversation on how our court can serve the King County Bar and the members of our community. Please reach out to further that conversation.
