7. Implications for a Promising Case Management Package

Table 2 summarizes the estimated effects of those principles and techniques for which the data permitted evaluation. Those CJRA case management principles that we could not evaluate, because of the way in which the CJRA was implemented, may or may not affect cost and time.

Case management procedures have a substantial predicted effect on time to disposition. Case management variables accounted for fully half of the explained variance in our analysis of time to disposition.

Four case management procedures showed consistent statistically significant effects on time to disposition: (1) early judicial management; (2) setting the trial schedule early; (3) reducing time to discovery cutoff; and (4) having litigants at or available on the telephone for settlement conferences. For general civil cases with issue joined that do not close within the first nine months, we estimate that these procedures have the combined effect of reducing median time to disposition by about four to five months in our post-CJRA sample--about 30 percent of their median time to disposition.

In contrast, judicial case management policy appears to have a limited role to play in reducing litigation costs. Of all the policy and procedure variables we investigated as possible predictors of reduced lawyer work hours, only judicial management of discovery seemed to produce the desired effect. Cases from districts with shorter median discovery cutoff times tend to require fewer lawyer hours; in contrast, cases with early management tended to require more.

Several attorney and case characteristics--especially case stakes and case complexity--explain more of the variance in lawyer work hours than do the case management variables. It appears that lawyer work hours are driven predominantly by factors other than case management. When time to disposition is cut, lawyers seem to do much the same work, but do it in less time.

Principle or Technique	Time to Disposition	Cost (Lawyer Work Hours)	Lawyer Satisfaction	Lawyer Perception of Fairness
Early judicial management of any type	S -	S +	0	0
Effect of including trial schedule set early as part of early management	S -	0	0	0
Effect of including pretrial conference as part of early management	0	0	0	0
Effect of including joint discovery/ case management plan or status report as part of early management	0	0	0	0
Effect of including referral to mandatory arbitration as part of early management	0	0	0	0
Discovery: limiting interrogatories	0	0	0	0
Discovery: limiting depositions	NE	NE	NE	NE
Discovery: shortening time to cutoff	S -	S -	0	0
Mandatory early disclosure	0	0	S - district S + case	0
Voluntary early disclosure	0	0	0	0
Good-faith efforts before filing discovery motion	0	0	0	0
Litigants available at settlement conferences	S -	0	0	0
Increase use of magistrate judges to conduct civil pretrial case processing	0	0	S +	0
Track model of DCM	NE	NE	NE	NE
Complex case management	NE	NE	NE	NE
Party and lawyer sign continuance requests	NE	NE	NE	NE
Person with authority to bind at conferences	NE	NE	NE	NE

S + = significant increase; 0 = no significant effect; S - = significant decrease; NE = not evaluated (see the text for reasons).

Our analysis of the effects of specific procedures and techniques suggests a package of case management policies with the potential to reduce time to disposition while not changing costs, satisfaction, and views of fairness. The package includes discovery control, the only case management practice that seemed to be effective in reducing costs:

If early case management and early setting of a trial schedule are combined with shortened time to discovery cutoff, the increase in lawyer work hours predicted by early management can be offset by the decrease in lawyer work hours predicted by judicial control of discovery. We estimate that under these circumstances, litigants on general civil cases that do not close within the first nine months would pay no significant cost penalty for reduced time to disposition on the order of four to five months. None of these policies has any significant effect on lawyers' satisfaction or perceptions of fairness.

Our analysis suggests that the following approach to early management of general civil litigation cases should be considered by courts and judges not currently using this approach and reemphasized by courts and judges that are using it. The powers to use this approach already exist under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

• For cases that do not yet have issue joined, have a clerk monitor them to be sure deadlines for service and answer are met, and begin judicial action to dispose of the case if those deadlines are missed.

• For cases that have issue joined, wait a short time after the joinder date, perhaps a month, to see if the case terminates and then begin judicial case management.

• Include setting of a firm trial date as part of the early management package, and adhere to that date as much as possible.

• Include setting of a reasonably short discovery cutoff time tailored to the case as part of the early management package. For nearly all general civil cases, this policy should cause judicial case management to begin within six months or less after case filing.