Do workload assessments account for the work of quasi-judicial officers?
All of the formulas that have been developed by the National Center for State Courts to determine judicial need account for the activities of quasi-judicial officers or parajudicial personnel. These activities are accounted for by a variety of methods. One approach is to account for all judicial activity regardless of the type of judicial officer (judge, magistrate, referee, or commissioner) who performs the activity. Models that are developed in this manner typically do not make a distinction between the types of judicial resources that are necessary to handle the caseload. The resource decisions are based on the idea that judges and local court managers are the best qualified to determine the type of resources required to ensure timely, efficient, and quality case processing.Another method that is used to account for the work of parajudicial personnel is to supplement the case weights with a separate set of ratios that detail the percentage of work within particular cases that should
