Note: Previous Staffing Level Tables are in PDF Format Only.

Description of Courts of Limited Jurisdiction Judicial Needs Estimation

In August 2002, a new methodology for estimating judicial needs of the courts of limited jurisdiction was adopted by the Administrative Office of the Courts in conjunction with the District and Municipal Court Judges' Association. Beginning with the 2002 Annual Report, a yearly table is published displaying court-level judicial needs estimates using this methodology, along with a brief description of the process.

The district and municipal court model for estimating judicial needs is workload based. The estimates are derived from a statistical model with two primary data components: (1) the observed caseload processed, and (2) the number of available judicial officers. The caseload measure is represented by case resolutions, and the judicial officer measure is represented by judge and commissioner FTEs. In order to ensure that a good representative sample underlies the estimation, the data are drawn from courts across the state and from the past several years. Estimates are presented only for municipal courts with current judicial staffing levels of 15 hours per week or above.

This type of approach has wide usage in a number of diverse applications and so provides a well-established base model. An inherent advantage of this methodology is the facility to capture changes in practice over time.

Please note, there are differences across courts (e.g., case mix, prosecution practices, therapeutic courts, jury trials, state agency filings, etc.) that will impact judicial need. Additionally, there are limitations within the Objective Workload method in that it does not reflect best practices unless they are already in place and it does not take account of other local differences in court operations. Local operations and other circumstances that create differences between predicted judicial need from the Objective Workload model and actual need can be well-described only by the particular affected court. Statements of local conditions may be necessary for courts in their requests for additional judges to their local and state funding bodies. The JNE results are one indicator of judicial need, but they are not the only valid evidence of judicial needs. For additional information, please contact Dr. Carl McCurley at the Washington State Center for Court Research, Administrative Office of the Courts, at carl.mccurley@courts.wa.gov or 360-705-5312.