Some time ago, over lunch, I spoke with a justice who leads a team at a supreme court. Our conversation began with UNODC’s work to support women judges, but soon turned to a deceptively simple question: how should courts use performance data?
This question brought back a vivid memory from my own time as a judge. As an experiment, our team received a printout showing how many judgments each judge had produced over a given period. One colleague appeared to be performing exceptionally poorly. Yet the figures did not lead to a constructive conversation. My team leader felt he could hardly send this distinguished former lawyer to a judgment-writing course without embarrassing him. The printouts disappeared—and we never saw them again.
From embarrassment to improvement
The problem was not the data itself. It was the culture surrounding it. The figures were treated as a ranking—as evidence of winners and losers—rather than as a starting point for learning. So, I asked my colleague how she used the information generated by her court’s case-management system. Did it help her identify difficulties? Did she discuss it regularly with team members? Could judges see their own results, or those of the team as a whole?
She told me that she used the data primarily to spot problems. That is valuable—but it is only the beginning. I believe the entire team should have access to the team’s performance data, provided the figures are interpreted carefully and used fairly. Transparency allows judges to understand the average, see patterns, identify colleagues who may be able to offer advice, and recognize where they themselves can help. Used well, shared data can strengthen a culture of cooperation rather than competition.
What court data can reveal
Three of the most common, useful measures concern timeliness: clearance rate, time to disposition, and the age of the active pending caseload. Together, they show whether a court is keeping pace with incoming work, resolving cases within expected time frames, and allowing unresolved matters to grow old.
These measures are useful precisely because they can expose problems that are not obvious from individual output alone. While helping to design a digital procedure for appellate courts, for example, I discovered that the courts’ biggest constraint was a shortage of hearing rooms. If a case must wait nine months for a room, improvements elsewhere in case management will have only a limited effect.
Court data can reveal much more. Changes in the volume or type of filings may show whether diversion programs, alternative dispute resolution, or procedural reforms are working. Backlogs—cases that should already have been resolved—may point to bottlenecks, staffing shortages, or mismatched funding. Those pressures can also fall disproportionately on particular groups of court users. Data should therefore prompt questions, not merely produce rankings.
When measurement becomes a target
Performance measures also create risks. When funding or prestige is tied too closely to a metric, people may be tempted to manipulate the metric rather than improve the underlying work. In one recent case, a former colleague faced criminal charges for allegedly falsifying the signatures of two other judges on decisions he had made alone. The court received more funding for cases decided by a three-judge chamber than for cases decided by a single judge. His defense was that he had acted in the court’s interest.
That example captures the paradox of performance data. Hide the figures, and courts lose opportunities to learn. Turn them into crude targets, and the figures can distort behavior. The better approach is transparent, contextual, and developmental: share the data, discuss what lies behind them, and use them to improve systems as well as individual practice. Court data should be a mirror, not a scoreboard—and never a reward for making the numbers look good.
