Chair Brooks-Powers asks how OCA changes judicial behavior on case processing
Brooks-Powers asks how OCA works to change judge behavior given judicial independence. Zayas describes strongly encouraging proactive case management, hiring law clerks for discovery dispute conferences, and devoting resources to resolve issues.
Given that judges are independent actors, how is OCA working to change behavior in case processing?
So, yeah, so we are strongly encouraging our judges to be more proactive in resolving discovery disputes.
So what was happening early on was, you know, we had these old cases, and then we had this whole sort of middle
area of cases, bucket of cases, that were getting bottled up with discovery disputes, and motions were being filed, and it took, you know, many, many, many months.
It was causing all sorts of delay.
So that was the reason that we began the scheduling order initiative, was to deal with that big bucket of cases, which we were trying to prevent.
From those cases becoming the really old cases.
And so we hired additional law clerks in each of the counties to meet off calendar with the lawyers on resolving these discovery disputes.
And there's a discovery dispute in almost every case.
So the lawyers have an independent obligation to meet together.
And try to resolve the dispute among themselves.
And sometimes that happens, but sometimes we need to.
So we've devoted a lot of resources.
to get those issues resolved.
Thank you for that, Judge.