Court Management Executive Summary
Learning Team HERE
Contemporary Issues and Futures in Criminal Justice/CJA 394
May 28, 2013
Amanda Behl

Overview
The American court system is quite daunting and complicated. Consequently, the assistance previous available is no longer accessible resulting from budgetary issues. Therefore, strategic planning goals and management skills are essential to providing an efficient and smooth operating judicial system. Moreover, public education, access to the legal system, access to public court documents, effective management, and retention of court records are essential to successful court management. Furthermore, court managements resorted to consolidation and restructuring options to improve the …show more content…

• Courts nationwide experimented on reengineering, consolidation, restructuring, and streamlining to improve operational efficiencies. • The resulting effects of court consolidation and restructuring differ from court to court and significant flexibility is necessary to implement changes. • Court consolidation and restructuring increased the size and volume of staffs, workloads, and case files. • The increased of case files required staff cross training, redistribution of work, and a centralized location for case files. • Court restructuring and consolidation required the various levels of court management and staffs to emphasize teamwork to accomplish an efficient and functioning court. • The increased in pro se defendants necessitates additional time required to help defendants navigate within the judicial system, which will continue to create further challenges for the courts. • However, court management efforts aimed to centralize select functions, increased video conference use, improve court-processing efficiency, implement structural changes, and increase use of technology to improve access efficiency as a method of minimizing staffs. The primary projection goal is to create a virtual 24-hour courthouse with interactive websites. • Additionally, the distribution of equal workload throughout the court system will help