In Manhattan Supreme Court's criminal division, judicial administrators have created Trial Assignment Parts where judges push to have felony cases resolved before trial.

In Brooklyn Supreme Court's civil division, where there has been a glut of foreclosure actions, administrators have mandated that lenders and homeowners try to settle their cases early on.

In the Bronx's criminal misdemeanor court, more judges have been brought in to tackle a large, sometimes unwieldy amount of cases.

These are a few of the measures taken in the last two years by New York State Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, Chief Administrative Judge Lawrence Marks and their team of high-ranking judges and administrators across the state who are leading DiFiore's signature “Excellence Initiative.” The initiative, launched in early 2016, aims to produce efficient, high-quality court operations.

“The way we approached this, it was not a one-size-fits-all solution,” Marks said in a recent interview of the localized approach to battling backlogs.

According to DiFiore and Marks, their varied solutions have been generating some dramatic results.

At a buoyant State of the Judiciary speech DiFiore gave last month, and in an accompanying report, the chief judge presented a raft of statistics that showed case backlogs had been chopped by one-third, or by half, or by even more, in some courts.

For example, in “The State of Our Judiciary 2018” report, DiFiore noted that in 2017 a central goal was reducing delays in adjudicating misdemeanor criminal cases in New York City. Since 2016, misdemeanor cases older than a year have been reduced by 80 percent in Manhattan, 71 percent in Bronx County and 61 percent citywide, she and Marks have said.

Outside of New York City, there's been a 28 percent reduction in misdemeanor criminal cases older than 90 days pending in city and district courts statewide, DiFiore and Marks have also said.

Meanwhile, felony case backlogs in New York City have been tough to eradicate, given “the sheer volume of cases,” but “encouraging inroads” have been made, DiFiore has said. Outside of New York City, the number of felony cases pending for more than 180 days has been slashed by 53 percent over two years, she said.

In the civil arena, there's been reductions in case backlogs of 36 percent and 30 percent, respectively, in Brooklyn and Queens, according to DiFiore's report, which gave certain examples of progress. Outside of New York City, older pending civil cases have been cut by 69 percent in Nassau County, by 57 percent in the 3rd Judicial District and by 49 percent in the 5th Judicial District, DiFiore also wrote.

The question is how she, Marks and their cohorts have produced reductions in case backlogs across divergent parts of a diverse state, and across various types of cases?

Some of their methods are outlined in the report. But in a recent interview, Marks also detailed several of the chief ways his team was able to strip away inefficiencies and delays throughout chunks of state's complex system.

It's a varied approach, Marks said, because the “strengths and weaknesses” in a given court's processes and efficiencies for handling cases can “vary greatly from court to court.”

Marks pointed out that a court's processes and efficiencies may be affected by local factors such as its urban or suburban setting, whether it's found in a large city or a small city, and whether it's affected by specific cultures, issues or problems.

Therefore, “we relied heavily on our local administrative judges and supervising judges and on the measures they had” in place or had tried previously, Marks said.

Still, over the last two years, there have been “three main points” framing judicial administrators' court-specific actions, according to Marks.

One has been “restructuring” how courts processed their cases and moved them to resolution. A second has been “a redeployment” and reorganization of some judges and court staff with the goal of having them more efficiently address cases. A third has been using technology to collect and analyze greater amounts of data on caseload volumes, and then sharing the data throughout the state.

Restructuring

When giving examples of the restructuring in certain courts, Marks began by citing the Manhattan Supreme Court's criminal division, where administrators created Trial Assignment Parts that previously didn't exist. Under the restructuring, cases go to one of two TAP parts, where judges attempt to have cases resolved through a plea agreement or other early resolution.

“This sort of specializes and concentrates the tension on trying to resolve these cases through a guilty plea,” Marks said, adding, “There's a real focus on those two court parts in trying to resolve the case before the trial.”

“It's an approach that's not unique or novel, it's used in other courts,” he also said.

As another restructuring example, Marks pointed to the “Trial Fridays” program launched in the Bronx's misdemeanor criminal court and later implemented in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. Under the program, Fridays have been set aside for judges to try misdemeanor cases throughout the day. Mondays through Thursdays remain for their other work.

The designated day across trial parts “creates more trial capacity in the court, because previously there were only a very few designated trial parts for misdemeanor” cases, Marks said.

He also noted that while the vast majority of low-level misdemeanor cases get resolved before trial, “it's the realistic threat of a trial that leads to dispositions.”

Lastly, Marks gave a restructuring example from Brooklyn Supreme Court's civil foreclosure cases. There have been “an avalanche of foreclosure filings” in recent years there, Marks said, and so the administration has assigned thousands of cases to a settlement process in which lenders and homeowners must participate.

Court attorney referees handle the settlement conferences, he said. If a case doesn't settle, it's then moved to specialized judges. There is now one judge who focuses only on foreclosure cases, and two or three others who partially specialize in it, Marks said.

Redeployment of judges and staff

As an example of redeployment and reorganization, Marks cited the Bronx's criminal misdemeanor court, where there has been a 71 percent reduction in case backlogs over two years after several more city judges were brought to the job. And upstate, Marks noted, the administration has moved and reassigned judges within judicial districts.

Collecting and sharing data on caseload volumes

“We develop and we collect and analyze much more data on caseloads than we ever have before” statewide, Marks said. “We've created some fairly sophisticated technology,” he added, “which we use to analyze the data.” He said the administration then looks at the data “week to week and month to month.”

“We can see where we may be sliding backwards or making progress,” he said, “and we share the data with administrative judges, supervising judges and trial judges themselves within the state.”

Marks also noted, speaking about the case backlogs and delay fight in general, that “we've had, over the past two years, regular, periodic meetings with individual administrative judges in the state, and the ideas we're using overwhelmingly came from the individual meetings with them.”

“This is ongoing. This undertaking is far from over,” he said.