“Case Weights” Help Federal Courts Assess Demands on Judges’ Time

      When it comes to the demands on a federal trial judge’s time, not all cases are created equally. That is why the federal judiciary since 1993 has used a case weights system to estimate the workload of the district courts.

     Case weights are a yardstick – a relative measure of the judicial work required by cases of different types. They indicate how much more or less time-consuming one type of case is compared to other cases.

     Case types that on average consume a lot of judge time have large weights, and case types that on average consume little time have small weights. Weighted filings predict caseload burden more accurately than the raw number of filings. For example, a patent or death penalty case may consume a lot of judge time, but a student loan case might not.

     Getting an accurate picture of caseload burdens helps the judiciary determine which courts may need new judgeships. The weights assigned to the various types of cases were adjusted earlier this year “to ensure that ... judgeship recommendations were based on the most up-to-date representation of the case processing requirements of each type case,” said Judge Dennis Jacobs, who at the time chaired the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Resources.

     The new weights indicate that death penalty cases far and away are the most time-consuming for judges. Such cases receive a weight of 12.89. The next highest weight (4.79) is assigned to lawsuits involving environmental matters.

     Other case weights include these: Admiralty, .88; Banking and Finance, 1.17; Employment Civil Rights, 1.67; Copyright and Trademark, 2.12; Freedom of Information Act 3.06; Continuing Criminal Enterprise, 4.36.