Audrius Cininas, The judge of Vilnius district court (Lithuania) @ TOCICO International Public Sector Effectiveness Conference 2013 Vilnius - Orthodoxical legislation is a constraint. - Buffer issue. How much time the new case should be "matured" before pretrial and trial proceedings begin. - Reducing of the waste time of the judges. Hearings versus paperwork. - Are judges really a constraint of the judicial system? - Criteria of efficiency and quality of judicial proceedings and rulings. More information - http://pse.lt

1. Uncertainty in the judicial process
Overcoming superstitions
Audrius Cininas
Judge
Vilnius district court
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2. Theory of constraints
• system performance is limited by one weakest
link in the chain;
• by finding and improving the weakest chain in
the system we can improve the performance
of the whole system;
• the judge himself is a weakest link in the court
system?
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3. TOC categories
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Inventory;
Work-in-process (WIP);
Throughput;
Drum-buffer-rope (DBR);
Demand.
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4. Content
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Challenges;
Lithuanian law court system;
Court system quality indicators;
Starting point of case flow management;
Maintaining of “inventory”- to - WIP case stream;
Maintaining a wasted time of running WIP cases;
Conclusions.
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5. 1. The challenges
• 1.1. Low flexibility of judicial procedures;
• 1.2. Autonomy of the judges and lack of
managerial culture;
• 1.3. Variety and complexity of judicial
procedures;
• 1.4. Conflicting interests;
• 1.5. Dissatisfaction of the public.
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6. 1.1. Low flexibility of judicial
procedures
• Judicial procedures are dictated by law. Judges
or court administration must stick with
complexity of different procedures dictated by
the codes. They have a little space to improve
efficiency of case flow.
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7. 1.2. Autonomy of the judges and lack
of managerial culture
• Judges are independent. Mentality of the
judges is not managerial and collaborative
one.
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8. 1.2. Compulsory training for
management functions of the court
by The EU Justice Scoreboard
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9. 1.3. Variety and complexity of judicial
procedures
• Insert a table
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10. 1.4. Conflicting interests
• 50% of participants are against the system;
• Difficulties with synchronizing of the shedules
of disputing parts, which looks forward to the
months ahead;
• Unexpected requests, claims, appeals, absent
witnesses.
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11. 1.4.1 Dissatisfaction of the public
„The Commission plans to launch
a wider debate on the role of
Justice in the EU and will
organise, on 21 and 22 November
2013, the Assises de la justice, a
high level conference, which will
bring together senior policy makers
at European and national level,
judges from supreme courts and
other courts, judicial authorities,
legal professions and all
stakeholders <...>.“
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12. 1.4.2 Surveys.
Are they telling as the truth?
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There is no direct connection between the performance of the courts and public
perception of the courts performance.
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13. 1.4.2. Survey respondents
Poor public relations in courts?
Offensive rhetoric of the populist
policymakers?
- only 10 % of surveyed Lithuanian
population have their own personal
experience in court;
- among them more than 75 % have
positive perception of courts;
- the opinion of remaining 90 % is
based on gossips or influenced by
different kinds of media;
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14. 2.1. Lithuanian court system
Courts of general
jurisdiction
Administrative courts
- Regional courts. Situated in 5 biggest
cities of Lithuania;
- Administrative court system established
in 2001. Completely separated from GJ
court system;
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15. 2.2. Judges by courts
- 760 judges in Lithuania; average
number for 100000 of population
in EU;
- 474 – more than 60 % work in
District courts;
- only 64 or 7 % are employed in
administrative courts;
- 107 judges work in Vilnius district
court;
- further consolidation of District
courts is still in process.
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16. 2.3 Ongoing consolidation of district
courts
- 49 district courts at present;
- 15 district courts after consolidation.
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17. 3. Criteria of the effectiveness
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The goal;
The quality of the judgments;
Case lead time;
Due date performance;
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18. 3.1 The goal
Final judgment is the goal of the court system
• Efficiency of the law court system is to be
measured by the number of finished cases
(throughput);
• Focus to be shifted on the goal of the
system, rather than different intermediate
judicial procedures management;
• It requires systemic approach, while
lawmakers tend to deal with isolated issues
of legal system.
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19. 3.2. The quality of the judgments
Retrospective dynamics of the
judgments robustness.
- the judgments and the law are not
meant to meet public expectations;
- the only way to evaluate how
throughput improvement impacts
the quality of the judgments is to
follow the judgments stability
dynamics;
- stability of the judgments in
Lithuania varies about 95 %- 98 %.
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20. 2.3. Case lead time
- Less than 15% of criminal
and civil cases leads
longer than 6 months in
Lithuania;
- While the long lead time
is a source of public
disappointment, public
must appreciate that
some complex processes
will lead for years ;
- Better case lead time ≠
better throughput!
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21. 2.4. Due date performance
• Time is currency of judicial process;
• Time is a measure for the case complexity;
• Rate your case by time it will take away, not by
number of the files, litigants, witnesses;
• Due date performance- number of
cases, finished in allocated time;
• …it’s difficult.
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22. 4. Starting point
• judicial process is as simple as strightforward
assembly line;
• complexity lies not in the process itself, but in
the number and variety of simultaneously
running judicial procedures;
• judges are multitaskers;
• … is there any common point to start with?
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23. 4.1. Constraint
Hearing in the court is the most common
problem and a weakest chain of the system
• Hearing is the bottleneck of the court system;
• Following Theory of constraints, all remaining
judicial procedures must be subordinated to
the hearing process;
… do we have any resources to subordinate
within existing legal framework?
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24. 4.2. Subordinating the system
resources
- Pre-trial is a stage, where
uncertainty about the number
of incoming cases, reveals
itself in a form of work time;
- Steady pace of the „production
line“ can be kept by controlling
of the flow of „inventory“ to
the hearing (WIP) stage;
- The judge starts running a
„drum“ himself;
- Decision making is a buffer
(„cache“);
- As decision making consumes
most of the judges time, it can
be distributed to the
time, previously allocated to
postponed hearings.
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25. 4.3. How it works
Example
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Inventory: 100 cases to be heard;
Each case is evaluated by time;
6 work hours distributed to 3 hearings (2 hours each);
Total: 600 hours of the work time.
1 strategy
Divide the cases to be heard into
the 5 fractions by 20 cases yeach.
Processing the fractions into WIP
stage consequently.
2 strategy
Proceed all 100 cases to WIP and run
them simultaneously.
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26. 4.4. Results
Average case lead time
43 work days
63 work days
- Strategy 1 - lead time is ~30 % shorter;
- By the time the 1 final hearing is started following Strategy 2, there were 60
% of finished cases by following strategy 1.
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27. 4.5. Example 2
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Sinking ship;
100 passengers;
10 lifeboats for 10 passengers;
3 minutes to take the boat down;
3 minutes to set down passengers;
30 minutes left.
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28. 4.6 Example 2
Strategy 1
Strategy 2
Saved
Lost
Saved
Lost
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29. 4.7. Importance of WIP cases number
control
1. Keeps the rhythm of the judges job at the steady
pace. Protects from the unexpected increasing of
incoming cases as well as from the seasonal or
other factors. Judges job is a seasonal one.
Number of incoming criminal cases
at Vilnius district court
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30. 4.8. Importance of WIP cases number
control
2. Judge himself keeps the rhythm of his work. Controls the “drum”.
3. Reducing the number of WIP cases, the judge also reduces the intervals between
hearings.
4. Helps to keep the lead time of big cases (Mega cases) within reasonable terms.
Intervals between hearings in work days.
Based on the first example.
Strategy 2
Strategy 1
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31. 4.9. Dealing with Mega cases
• Again. The key is a time;
• Evaluate Mega case in time and number and length of
hearings;
• Keep the time, allocated to all WIP cases unchanged;
• Reduce the number of regular WIP cases keeping them
as “inventory” so far;
• Fit Mega case into vacant slots of your schedule,
previously allocated to regular WIP cases.
• Plan much in advance. It is better to appoint more
meetings, than less;
• This way a steady pace of the job will be kept.
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