Court Leader's Advantage

 Is It Time to Reopen? It has been nearly two months since the President declared a national health emergency. Twenty-two states have reopened or partially reopened; another six have plans to reopen in the near future. This while the other twenty-two states have extended their orders to remain closed or have no reopening date set. Even though nationwide, deaths from the Coronavirus have not s...

Many jails and prisons across the country have now become coronavirus hotspots. For example, news reports about the infamous Rikers Island jail in New York estimate that 12 hundred inmates are infected and 10 have died. An estimated 800 correctional officers have been infected and of those 8 have passed. There are estimates that over 560 prisoners in federal custody have tested positive and 24 hav...

The Nation now moves to the end of its second month battling the pandemic. The infection rate has climbed into the hundreds of thousands; the death toll has reached well beyond 45,000. This week we continue our weekly podcast series, “Coronavirus: How are Courts Coping with the Crisis,” in a conversation with our panelists. Numerous courts have been closed for over a month because of the virus. As...

The Nation continues to face the desolation caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. The profound impact of this health calamity continues to bear down on the courts, court staff, our collaborative partners and court users. As part of our continuing weekly podcast series focusing on how courts are coping with the Coronavirus crisis, we look at how courts are turning to technology to help maintain opera...

The Coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate and confound the country.  It has been a mere ten weeks since the first case appeared in the United States. This week our panelists talk about communicating in the crisis. How does your court communicate with employees and with justice system partners? How does your court communicate to make major decisions like suspending jury trials and closin...

The scourge of the Coronavirus is a national emergency unlike anything we have seen in modern times. It is affecting all aspects of our lives and work. The virus is having a profound impact on how American courts are coping. Throughout the crisis, we will have weekly podcast episodes with a “rotating panel” of guests that will answer the question, “How are courts and court administrators dealing w...

Over 10 million Americans misused opioids in 2018, which includes over 800,000 heroin users. In 2016, there were more than 64,000 overdose deaths in the United States; in 2017 overdose deaths jumped to over 70,000. This is a number that continues to grow in at least 23 states. Opioid addiction is a crisis that defies age and sex differences; it defies county and state lines; up to now it has defie...

For better or worse we can no longer live without our Smartphones. We use them to talk and text our friends; they keep our appointments, pictures, and business notes; they help us with research; they track of our children; they allow us to call 911 in an emergency. It’s a wonder how we ever lived without them, yet they have been here a mere 13 years, arriving in 2007. Smartphones have become a par...

It has been estimated that nationally, more than 60 percent of people in jail have not been convicted of a crime, they are awaiting trial. Almost 500,000 defendants are in jail pretrial because they cannot afford to post bail. Three-quarters of pretrial detainees have been charged with a drug or property crime. They could remain incarcerated for days, months, and sometimes even years. They could l...

Managing the multigenerational workplace is more demanding today than ever before. Why is it now such a challenge? One reason: we are living and working longer. If you were born today, you could expect to live 79 years, that is 18 years longer than if you were born in 1935. Another reason: technology is changing our lives and the rate of that change is increasing. Once, just being a 30-year vetera...

Blogs and podcasts are a growing fixture on our social landscape. There are now more than 750,000 podcasts produced and over 48 million people a week listen to a podcast. Estimates are that billions of people worldwide read one or more blogs on the internet. This is a fact that courts face along with all government institutions. When grappling with the media, courts can no longer deal simply with...

The Pew Research Center estimates that right now there are more Millennials than Baby Boomers in America. By 2030 Millennials and Gen Zs will make up 75% of the workforce. A Gallup Poll found that 21% of Millennials had changed jobs within the last year, that’s three times more than other generations.  On top of this demographic shift, technological innovation is increasing exponentially. The...

Shooting incidents are becoming a scourge on the American landscape and courthouses are certainly not immune. An incident can last only seconds but the trauma to court staff and the unsuspecting public can live on and on. If a calamity occurs, we face the triple challenge: emergency decisions and communications, dealing with law enforcement and a crime scene, and maintaining or reestablishing ongo...

From O.J. Simpson, to Trayvon Martin and Casey Anthony, we have become used to the media targeting trials and turning them into spectacles. Many in the public see them as entertainment; often they become a lightning rod for political controversy. All the while jurors must be protected and citizens must be able to conduct their regular business with the court. These challenges can prove an enormous...

Ransomware attacks are running rampant throughout the nation. Atlanta, Georgia; Lake City, Florida; Albany, New York; and Del Rio, Texas have all been victims. Most recently the Georgia Administrative Office of the Courts was attacked. Local agencies can be crippled for weeks with no data, no internet, no email, and no way to conduct business.  Is your court prepared? Can you stop it? How wou...

You may not be aware, but artificial intelligence (AI) has already established itself in our daily lives. From Amazon to Alexa, sophisticated algorithms affect much of what we do. The next ten years will see advancements in electronic decision-making, facial recognition, language translation, and voice-to-text. Are you willing to accept the cost in loss of privacy due to AI’s insatiable thirst for...

“. . . we’ve been thinking a lot about the explosion of digital evidence. . . terabytes of audio-video footage from body-worn cameras, web cameras at every corner, video recordings from everyone’s smartphone devices . . . Blockchain holds a lot of promise for managing all that.” Blockchain is a tool that could change the way organizations handle money. Its built-in safeguards prevent electronic ha...

“. . . [Blockchain records] could soon be used in a variety of innovative ways to resolve court record keeping challenges. At the same time, Blockchain presents new legal issues that courts must be prepared to address.” This is an audio recitation of a paper written by Di Graski and Paul Embley titled “When Might Blockchain Appear in Your Court?” The paper appeared in the 2018 edition of Trends in...

   Show Notes On November 30, 2018, Anchorage, Alaska, suffered a magnitude 7.1 earthquake followed by thousands of aftershocks.  The quake was larger than the infamous 1989 Loma Prieta, California event.  How did the Alaska Court System’s emergency response plans hold up? What can we learn from Alaska’s experience and its preparations?  Christine Johnson and Alyce Roberts...

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has already brought us general business tools that courts can use to assist in automating work, analyzing documents, and conducting legal analysis. As a start, courts will need to put their information into an electronic format that can be used by A.I. tools. They will also need to re-engineer their business practices. Small courts will have to be assertive in making...

Last September, Hurricane Florence devastated North Carolina's families, communities, and its trial courts.  Court administrators Ellen Hancox and Caitlin Emmons tell how they made it through the storm, cared for their families, and managed to keep their courts afloat.  What lessons can we take away from their experience? To cope, people had to come up with “contingency plans for their c...