The High Performance Court Framework suggests a series of flexible steps courts can take to integrate performance improvement into its ongoing operations.
The steps include:
Taken together the steps form a functional system or quality cycle that courts can follow in enhancing the quality of the administration of justice.
Read about the Framework >
Framework Summary (pdf) from NCSC Working Paper Series
The suite of NCSC tools available for courts striving to improve their performance and build capacity includes:
CourTools is a set of ten trial court performance measures that offers court managers a balanced perspective on court operations. Published in a visual and accessible how-to format, the ten CourTools measures:
View CourTools >
The concept of "local legal culture" is often used but rarely explained. Brian Ostrom and colleagues have succeeded in specifying what court organizational culture is, developed a method to assess it, a typology to classify it, and a method for using it to help manage organizational change in the state courts.
More on organizational management >
The NCSC is the leader in workload assessment for courts and their justice system partners. The sophisticated, multimethod approach to translating caseload in to workload is a highly participatory process allowing for incorporation of effective practice that ensure efficiency and quality of justice.
More on workload assessment >
This database compiles state-by-state information about case processing time standards and how states monitor them.
View the standards >