2025, January 2025, Technology

By Scott Mitchell (AL)

In October, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) hosted its annual Data Specialists’ Roundtable at its headquarters in Williamsburg, Virginia. This two-day, invitation-only summit gathered 29 participants from 24 states and territories. Each year, the NCSC invites the National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks (NCACC) to send a representative, and this year, I had the privilege of attending the Roundtable as the NCACC’s representative for appellate courts.

As I prepared for the event, I expected a technical deep dive into the minutiae of data reporting for the Court Statistics Project—discussions about reporting matrices, units of counts, case characteristics, methods of dispositions, and the nuanced details of publishable vs. nonpublishable data – all the things that makes us say our Sunday School lessons backwards as we prepare our data for the CSP. However, the Roundtable was far more engaging and innovative than I had anticipated. Instead of focusing solely on reporting protocols, participants shared creative ways they were using court data to better inform judicial stakeholders and the public.

Here are a few standout examples from the summit:

  • Utah’s Weighted Caseload Study: When Utah initially compiled its weighted caseload study based on time estimates from trial judges, the results indicated an unrealistically large number of additional judges needed. To refine the study, Utah hired 15 law school-bound interns to listen to over 7,000 hearings from various case types and proceedings using the repository of For the Record, Utah’s A/V vendor. These interns documented the length of each hearing, producing a more accurate and realistic weighted caseload study.
  • Arizona’s Demographic Data Dashboard: The Arizona Judiciary uses a comprehensive dashboard to track the demographics of court officials and personnel. This data helps forecast staffing needs and personnel changes, enabling more strategic planning for workforce requirements.
  • Trial Court Data Dashboards: Several states have developed sophisticated dashboards to present trial court data. These dashboards help jurisdictions respond to legislative mandates, answer recurring inquiries from journalists and scholars, and fulfill intergovernmental data requests. Massachusetts, for example, uses Tableau to create its dashboards, while Arizona employs Power BI.

Participation in the Roundtable made me realize just how much we can learn from the trial courts’ innovative use of data dashboards. The way trial courts are using dashboards to visualize data and make it more accessible is inspiring. For years, I have been preparing the same reports at my court that were in place when I first became clerk 12 years ago. But after attending this summit, I am rethinking how we present appellate data.

Rather than just presenting raw data in a table format, I am exploring how we could create interactive dashboards with graphs that adjust based on the dataset. A fillable map overlaying county population with the number of appeals from each county could provide a more comprehensive understanding of where our cases originate.

I encourage fellow NCACC members to explore how other courts are using data dashboards to improve transparency and understanding. The technology is out there, and it can help us tell the story of our courts in a more dynamic and impactful way.

For those who may be interested, mark your calendars for the upcoming Data Specialist & IT Summit, scheduled for March 26-27, 2025, in Austin, Texas. It is an excellent opportunity to deepen your knowledge of court data and reporting. Plus, it provides a great chance to explore Austin, which will host the 2026 NCACC conference!