The National Association for Presiding Judges and Court Executive Officers (NAPCO) has developed a monograph for use as a guide in structuring modern-day activities and functions for governing and leading state and local trial courts regardless of size or jurisdiction. It outlines the basic duties each of the court’s top court leaders – the presiding or chief judge, and the court executive officer or court administrator – are expected to perform, the competencies required to do a good job, and the relationships that they must nurture with each other and other justice system stakeholders to be successful. The premise for this effort flows from the reality that leading and managing a modern trial court is widely viewed as a two-person job.
Furthermore, the monograph provides the basis from which supreme courts, judicial councils, leadership judges, court administrators and judicial branch policymakers can work to strengthen the effectiveness of presiding judge / court executive teams in trial courts. Representatives from NAPCO, the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), the Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA), the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) and the National Association for Court Management (NACM) were instrumental in developing this useful guide.