Rethinking Case Management and the Process of Civil Justice Reform
Summary and Papers Presented at a UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy Conference
Download eBook for Free
| Format | File Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| PDF file | 2.5 MB | Use Adobe Acrobat Reader version 10 or higher for the best experience. |
Despite the wide acknowledgment that the American civil justice system has room for improvement in both its fairness and its efficiency, there is not really a culture of experimentation and incremental reform. Yet the case for reform is strong.
Around 30 judges, scholars, and other observers of the civil justice system gathered in Santa Monica, California, in November 2021 for the UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy–sponsored "Rethinking Civil Case Management" conference to discuss how and whether the American civil justice system might develop a stronger culture of experimentation and reform. The focus was on case management — how judges can institute methods and procedures to shape and channel litigation — but more-general issues of civil justice reform regularly surfaced. This publication summarizes the discussions and presents four pieces of scholarship presented during the conference.
The participants brought diverse views to the conference, but there was a palpable consensus that a stronger culture of experimentation and reform was a worthwhile and attainable goal. The key to such efforts, it was generally agreed, is close collaboration between teams of judges and scholars to identify worthy innovations to study, to develop good data sources (that can, preferably, be widely shared), to use methodologies that are in some way experimental rather than just observational, and to "evangelize" results. Strong working relationships between judges and scholars make it more likely that judges will seriously pursue the goals of particular reforms and that scholars will correctly understand and interpret the data they are gathering.
Table of Contents
Part A
Conference Proceedings
Chapter One
Panel: Toward a Unified Theory of Case Management
Chapter Two
Panel: Experiments in Measuring the Effectiveness of Case Management Techniques
Chapter Three
Panel: Litigants Without Representation
Chapter Four
Panel: What Outcomes Can We Measure?
Chapter Five
Panel: Paths Forward
Part B
Conference Papers
Chapter Six
A Systematic Approach to Principled Civil Case Management
Chapter Seven
Methods for Assessing Civil Justice Reform: The Case of "Meet and Confer" Requirements for California Demurrers
Chapter Eight
Summary of More Talk Less Conflict: Evidence from Requiring Informal Discovery Conferences
Chapter Nine
Report on the Mandatory Initial Discovery Pilot: Results of Closed-Case Attorney Surveys Fall 2017–Spring 2019
Appendix A
Participant Information
Appendix B
Conference Agenda
Appendix C
Participant Bios
Research conducted by
The UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy conference was funded by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice within RAND Social and Economic Well-Being and the UCLA School of Law.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation Conference proceeding series. RAND conference proceedings present a collection of papers delivered at a conference or a summary of the conference.
This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited; linking directly to this product page is encouraged. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial purposes. For information on reprint and reuse permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.