Federal judges who take on the task of managing multidistrict litigation don’t get any special breaks. They don’t get to shuffle off the criminal and civil cases already on their busy dockets. Taking on an MDL doesn’t get you any additional clerk help to manage the surge of matters from far-flung districts.

But U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell of the Eastern District of Kentucky, the chair of the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, says she and her colleagues on the district court bench tend to embrace MDL work because “by nature, we’re problem solvers.”