California Courts in Crisis: San Francisco Task Force Needs a “Plan B”

Ever get the feeling there’s nothing you can do? That’s the feeling that I and perhaps many other attorneys had when we departed a meeting last week at the San Francisco Bar Association to address the fiscal crisis that is shutting trial courts statewide and hitting San Francisco particularly hard, creating an unfathomable backlog to civil litigation.

I attended the July 30 meeting looking forward to a robust discussion about creative ways that attorneys can get together to help in the court crisis situation. As detailed my earlier blog post, “5 Ideas on What Attorneys Can Do About the California Courts in Crisis,” I believe the legal community needs to face the real possibility of no additional funding and come up with a “Plan B” to cope with the reality of a decimated Superior Court. With nowhere near the number of judges and court staff needed to handle cases, we need to figure out how to keep cases moving forward until significant funding is restored—if it’s restored. (more…)