National Association for Presiding Judges and Court Executive Officers

Why Pointing Fingers is Unhelpful

Casting blame is natural: it is tempting to fault someone else for a snafu rather than taking responsibility yourself. But blame is also corrosive. Pointing fingers saps team cohesion. It makes it less likely that people will own up to mistakes, and thus less likely that organizations can learn from them. Research published in 2015 suggests that a shaggy culture (“It wasn’t me”) shows up in organization performance. Organizations whose managers pointed to external factors to explain their failings underperformed organizations that blamed themselves.

Law is the most stressful profession, newspaper’s analysis finds

By Debra Cassens WeissSource: ABA Journal e-EditionJanuary 24, 2023 The most stressful occupation in the United States is being a lawyer, according to an analysis by the Washington Post of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Washington Post looked at a subset of well-being data collected in four American Time Use Surveys…

WEBINAR: Ways to Improve Inclusiveness and Representativeness in Juror Summonsing

On January 19, 2023, NAPCO facilitated a webinar called “Eliminating Shadows and Ghosts: Ways to Improve Inclusiveness and Representativeness in Juror Summonsing”. State and local trial courts have expressed heightened interest in assessing and improving the demographic representation of jury pools over the past several years. This concern became more urgent in 2020 in light of events causing the American public to question fairness and equality in the criminal justice system. Underrepresentation of people of color may result from multiple factors in the jury summonsing process, including nonresponse, undeliverable mailings, disqualification, and excusal rates.

Judges, magistrates and chief executive officers among the nation’s top high-stress jobs

An online database of occupations developed with worker input by the Occupational Information Network known as ONET recently ranked 873 jobs based on the importance of stress tolerance, defined as the ability to accept criticism and deal calmly and effectively with high-stress situations. Topping the list were urologists, with a score of 100 for the importance of tolerating stress, USA Today reports. Second on the list were film and video editors, with a score of 99.

Can you afford to retire?

Can you afford to retire? The answer is much more likely to be no today than it was a year ago—especially for those old enough to ask themselves the question. The resurgence of inflation is eroding the real value of savings. Higher interest rates have caused a repricing of bonds and stocks. The result is that the pot of assets many future pensioners are hoping to live off has shrunk fast. Pundits have long predicted that, as populations age and the number of workers for every dependent falls, those retirement savings would come under pressure—a problem they have dubbed the “pension time-bomb.” The fuse now looks much shorter.

A Trauma-Informed Court Starts with Procedural Fairness

The core of being an effective trial court judge is to be a judge who has insight and can effectively manage her or his own emotions as well as the emotions of the others in the courtroom. If the judge presides in a family court or treatment court, there are skills you can learn that can enhance your effectiveness but even if you are a part-time limited jurisdiction court judge there are similar skills that are essential. Beyond insight into emotions in a courtroom a judge needs to be an effective communicator and an even better listener, and a judge needs to be a trauma-informed jurist.

Georgetown Law launches fellowship program to improve public access to courts through technology

The Georgetown University Law Center plans to embed technology experts in state, local and tribal courts in September 2023 through a fellowship program intended to help improve court processes and public access to justice. The Judicial Innovation Fellowship program has two goals: to create replicable software and to “seed culture change” within judiciaries, so that they will become more responsive to needs of court patrons, according to a Georgetown Law press release and backgrounder.

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