The monthly case activity reports for the district and county-level courts, which are submitted by the district and county clerks to the state Office of Court Administration (OCA), have been changed to more accurately reflect the work of those courts. The changes are effective September 1, 2010.

For some items on the new reports, the clerk may not have the required information and will have to rely on the judge or the judge’s staff to provide it. Examples include the number of:

• Civil cases ordered to or returned from arbitration or collaborative law proceedings;
• Probate and mental health hearings held;
• Regular status hearings held in drug courts or family violence courts; and
• Release or transfer hearings held (determinate sentence proceedings) in juvenile cases.

The judges who worked on the multi-year project to review and recommend changes to the monthly reports decided to include these items because they were considered critical to accurately reflect court workload. These new items will require collaboration between the clerks, judges, court staff, and case management software vendors or county information technology staff to determine the best methods to collect, compile, and report the required information. If this information is not provided to the clerks, they will not be able to report it and show all the work that your court is performing. The arrangements and processes developed for obtaining the information from the courts will likely be unique in each county.

OCA staff have repeatedly communicated to the district and county clerks at conferences and meetings, as well as in memorandums, the importance of planning for and working on the implementation of the reporting changes now. While September 1, 2010 may seem far in the future, a project of this magnitude requires clerks to start working on the implementation now, rather than waiting until the summer of 2010. The clerks will need your assistance in developing processes and procedures to capture the required information that they do not currently have.

In May 2008, the Texas Judicial Council, the policy making body for the judiciary, approved the changes to the monthly case activity reports and instructions, and adopted new reporting rules (Sections 171.1 through 171.6 of Title I of the Texas Administrative Code) for the district and county-level courts.

The changes to the reporting forms will:

• Provide more detailed, useful information about court workload and activity, particularly in family law, juvenile and probate cases, where little information is currently collected and the information that is collected is of limited usefulness;
• Allow policymakers and other interested parties to track important, growing caseloads in child protection, guardianship and mental health cases, which require   long-term court involvement and satisfaction of statutorily-mandated timelines; and
• Provide a more accurate picture of a court’s pending caseload by indicating how many cases are “active” cases (i.e., cases under the court’s control) versus “inactive” cases (i.e., cases not under the court’s control, such as a criminal case where a defendant has absconded and warrant has been issued for a defendant’s arrest, or a civil case in which one of the parties has filed for bankruptcy and the case is subject to an automatic stay). This enables a court to measure the age of its pending caseload more accurately and to determine meaningful case-processing times.

The new reporting forms and instructions and further information about them are posted on the OCA website at:

http://www.courts.state.tx.us/oca/required.asp.