National Association for Presiding Judges and Court Executive Officers

Jury Trial Innovations 1990 to Present: A Call to Action

We all know the original architecture of jury trials had its flaws. But thanks to jury trial caretakers, trial customs and practices inherited from the British have evolved, especially recently, to meet modern circumstances. This progression of reforms stems from litigation doctrines, empirical studies from the legal academy and social sciences, courageous members of bench and bar who undertake innovative pilot projects, and policymakers who introduce and enact enlightened proposals.

Judge and staﬀ shortages are leaving Americans in limbo: Many are not getting their day in court

A lack of judges, and, in many states, a shortage of other staﬀ needed to keep courts going, are clogging the system. Tim McGoughran, head of New Jersey’s bar association, says that pre-pandemic, most divorce cases going to trial did so within a year. Now some are entering their third or fourth year. For the past three years, the court system has operated with an average of more than 60 judicial vacancies.

When It Comes to Civility in Court, It’s Do or Die

I’ve yet to ﬁnd a judge or anyone else who disagrees with my opinion that our country is more divided now than at any time since the Civil War. Disagreement is to be expected in a democracy. The problem is how we disagree. Simple disputes turn into screaming matches. Protests turn into violence. We no longer see someone with a diﬀerent perspective—we see some thing that must be shouted down and defeated. It was an 18th-century English aristocrat, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who said, “Civility costs nothing and buys everything.” But that accounting seems lost on modern society.

Arizona, Utah Okay Nonlawyer Program for Housing Advice

The Innovation for Justice program, also known as I4J, announced a new Housing Stability Legal Advocate (HSLA) initiative on May 30 to train and empower licensed advocates who are employed by or volunteer at community-based organizations to provide limited-scope legal advice and services to tenants who are facing eviction. In most states, only lawyers can provide these types of legal services, due to restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law.

WEBINAR: Mental Health Cases II: Crisis and Opportunity for State and Local Trial Courts

On June 15, 2023, NAPCO held a webinar titled “Mental Health Cases II: Crisis and Opportunity for State and Local Courts”. This webinar is the second in a three-part series exploring the problems, challenges, and strategies trial court leaders need to know to improve the justice system’s response to cases involving mental health disorders.

Why is legalese so bewildering?

Over the years, many have wondered why legal writing is so tangled and complicated. Though some judges are sophisticated stylists, most legal language is a maze of over-intricate phrases far from easy or pithy to grasp. But do lawyers write that way to impress, to bewilder—or perhaps because they must?

Leading in today’s organizations requires keener social aptitude abilities

Soft skills matter in leading. Writing in the Harvard Business Review last year, Raﬀaella Sadun of Harvard Business School and her co-authors analyzed almost 5,000 job descriptions that Russell Reynolds, a headhunter, had developed for a variety of c-suite roles between 2000 and 2017. Their work showed that companies have shifted away from emphasizing ﬁnancial and operational skills towards social skills—an ability to listen, reﬂect, communicate and empathize. Other research has reached similar conclusions about jobs lower down the pay scale: being able to work well with people is seen not as some ﬂuﬀy bonus but as a vital attribute.

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NAPCO 2026