“I have seen the future, and it’s much like the present only longer.”–Kansas City Royals closer Dan Quisenberry in 1983. When I got started as an attorney, you would report for trial in Department One in downtown L.A. and wait for a courtroom, and wait, and wait and wait. Some counsel (mainly defense because they went second) would not even start prepping until they got to court, for what was often a multi-day delay.
Then beepers came along and liberated lawyers could report to their offices, provided that they would be literally on-call.
The legislature passed legislation often requiring cases assigned to all-purpose judges and “trial reduction,” meaning status conferences, subtle and not so entreaties to settle, mandatory assignment out to rented mediators and trials that were “put on the clock” requiring no lawyer questioning of prospective jurors and timed presentations.
Now we have something approaching perpetual budget crisis and the question of funding for the courts. As my wife is a teacher, it is a tough balance and an unfair one between funding schools and courtrooms, but I will tell you that 99% of the people and companies that I have represented expect a fair shot when they go to court and are not pleased by either logjam or playing “beat the clock.”
They harbor a retro hunger for equal justice under law. Which is why I love baseball. It proceeds at its own organic speed and not at unnecessary rush. Here is hoping that when the present economic malaise is over, society takes another look at court funding so that the future looks more like the past in dispensing justice.