The sad truth is that these are hard times for would-be Atticus Finches. The trend has left practitioners pondering where the next great generation of trial attorneys will be forged if not in the courtroom. Arbitration and mediation hearings?
Alternative dispute resolution is just one epitaph that may end up on the American trial's tombstone. Long criminal sentences, skyrocketing costs and even technology can share in its demise, according to trial attorneys.
An updated study due soon by legal scholar Marc Galanter, who has been charting trial declines for years, finds the trend unremitting. He noted only about 1 percent of federal cases go to trial now, and the number of state court trials also have fallen off the cliff.
"There is not much lower for it to go," said Galanter, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin School of Law. "Whether we are coming to the end of the trial as an institution, that remains to be seen."
Galanter's newest article on the decreasing number of trials will appear in the magazine Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in the summer issue devoted to the topic of courts.
The most reliable data available comes from federal courts, he said.
In 2012, 3,211 civil cases went to trial nationally compared to 5,802 in 1962, a drop of 44 percent, despite increases in case filings."In other words, the ratio of trials to filings in 2012 is only about one-12th what it was 50 years earlier," Galanter wrote.The Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. Federal Courthouse in Miami is hardly bustling these days. U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno said it's all relative, noting he was in trial at the time.Arbitration has indeed cut down on federal civil trials, and sentencing discretion has contributed to a similar decline on the criminal side, he said."The numbers have gone down since I started," said Moreno, who took the bench in 1990. "We probably had too many trials. The first year I had like 50 jury trials."
Maybe Rumpole should start saying: See you at mediation.
11 comments:
It is all about the bureaucratization of life everywhere. To look at the lighter side, you will probably find a inverse ratio between the number of personal injury filings and duels circa 1850.
Too many trials....boo hoo.
You want a trial lawyer, hire a CJA attorney or FPD
I'd like to see more meaningful stats that eliminate diversion programs and NAs/NPs. Sure some lawyers will plea guy to 90 days when losing at trial won't result in more than 180 days regardless, but there's still us warriors out there wiling to make the government prove their case to a jury.
180 days? You realize this is the fed ct blog. For county court hack law, please see the justice building blog.
If you're scared get a dog.
If you actually want to be a real trial lawyer, you should spend time, often, in state court.
The advance of Western Civilization can be described as the progressive avoidance of risk. Trials are no different.
state court buddy. grab ur balls federal hacks.
How did this turn into state vs federal. Keep Calm and Announce Eeady.
I think you need to see the metrics from a different way. the 99.7% stat is misleading and Judge Moreno has a valid perspective.
To make a proper analysis, I would like to know the number of trial days a federal judge presides over. Put another way, most Judges are available for trial MON-THUR or 20 days a month on average, 240 days a year. I would venture that most District Judges are in trial 200-220 of those 240 days, meaning that trial judges are trying cases at a 90%+ rate of all available trial days. Meaning the cases that should be tried are being tried. So long as that number remains high, this is not as big a problem as the initial number seems to suggest.
As to state vs federal: I've yet to see an AUSA with half the trial skills as the average ASA. And ask them to do more than introduce themselves in voir dire and they stutter and fall apart. The training in state court is more intense and better. It's the difference between a surgeon trained at an inner city ER room, and one trained at a small hospital in a small town where the most they see is an emergency appendectomy every few days.
No AUSA has half the skill as the average ASA? Is there a bigger blowhard than Rumpole?
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