- law dawg
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With all the recent talk about DOGE and yet another bill proposing a Nevada Office of the Inspector General [via TNI], we thought we would give you the opportunitiy to identify what you think are the biggest wastes or inefficiencies in the Nevada court system. If you were the head of a hypothetical Department of Legal Efficiency, what would be your top priorities? Is it the filing system? Is it hearings on every motion? Is it discovery disputes? In this imaginary situation, you have the ability to change the rules and/or the way things are done. What would you do?
I am watching probate court right now. To be clear, when you log on microphones and cameras are muted by default. Yet, somehow people keep unmuting themselves and interrupting Commissioner Geist.
Zoom is frankly just unworkable for probate court and other settings. It works well in front of the Discovery Commissioner, although admittedly I am rarely in front of the DC (of which I am proud).
The default rule should require an in person appearance. Leave of court should be required to appear by Zoom. And for the love of Jay Sarno’s ghost, no more probate sales by Zoom, it’s a total disaster.
Can’t speak to the criminal / family / probate experience, but on the civil litigation front the state trial courts have done an excellent job in adapting post-COVID hearing protocol to modern technological realities and making it clear which types of hearings are presumptively heard via Zoom and which require in-person attendance. Although oral argument is far less common in federal civil practice, the federal court should consider adopting similar guidelines. I’ve saved countless hours avoiding tasks that have nothing directly to do with merits advocacy, particularly (1) hunting down and print any documents that I might need to reference, (2) traveling to the courthouse, and (3) awaiting my hearing at the end of a large stack of other litigants.
“on the civil litigation front the state trial courts have done an excellent job in adapting post-COVID hearing protocol to modern technological realities and making it clear which types of hearings are presumptively heard via Zoom and which require in-person attendance” This is false and varies department by department. I tell all of our associates to check each judge’s webpage to see which hearings are presumptively remote because it varies widely.
I completely disagree. My last appearance was a status check that took thirty seconds. There is absolutely no reason for me to drive ten miles or so to the courthouse, park, pay to park, go through security, wait for the elevator, and then ride the elevator with sketchy people on their way to a sentencing in order to handle a non-contested appearance. Contested motions are a different story.
Except when you have some attorneys appear on zoom on a massage table, McDonalds drive thru eating and smoking or shopping … pretty ridiculous.
It’s indefensible that Nye County does not have electronic filing. This needlessly wastes time and drives up costs through runner fees, etc.
Every court in the state should be required to have electronic filing – ideally they would have the same or compatible systems.
Nevada doesn’t have to look far for a good example of a statewide electronic filing system. Utah is a state with comparable population with a comparable mix of a couple of high population counties and the rest being mid down to very small population counties. Their statewide Greenfile system works great and is uniform across the state. I don’t understand Nevada’s piecemeal approach to e-filing with different systems in each different county or counties with no e-filing at all (Nye).
Everything in Utah is run better than Nevada. Schools, universities, state budgets, courts, newsrooms. Same population (size) but a totally different world. Sitting right next to us, embarrassing us in every possible facet.
At least we have the better hockey team.
Kinda like living next door to Canada!
Does the hypothetical office get to make suggestions to the US District Court? Expending time and resources to conduct discovery while a dispositive or jurisdictional motion remains pending for months or years is not efficient.
You can file a motion to stay discovery pending the outcome of your dispositive motion. Lots of judges will grant it. Others won’t.
Unless you have a special reason (e.g. a jurisdictional defense) it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to stay discovery pending the MTD unless the other side stipulates.
(1) Absent exceptional circumstances, the Court puts people on a clock for oral argument on motion calendar. Judge Gonzalez used to do this. I think Judge Kishner has done this (although she never enforces it and allows her calendar to drag in large part due to her pontifications).
(2) Absent an agreement with Opposing Counsel, if counsel has not appeared 15 minutes into the hearing because they have to be in another department, then argument is taken from the party present and matter otherwise submitted for decision.
(3) Judge Delaney’s clock needs to be set 30 minutes ahead without her knowledge.
(4) Allowing Judge Israel to decide anything meaningful which is unnecessarily clogging our appellate court system.
As someone who loves to talk, I welcome a 10 min max.
Even better, tentative rulings that focus oral argument. And in cases where it’s clear, just issue a decision without oral argument.
Tentative rulings should be a routine thing. They are in most of socal. And boy do they speed up the hearings. That, and submitting proposed orders with all motions and/or oppositions to hasten the order drafting process.
Judge Reynolds’ tentative ruling procedure seems to work. Here’s our tentative decision, if you don’t tell us by the early morning that you want oral arguments, we’re vacating the hearing and that will be our decision.
That’s how most California courts do it. I’d love if all the judges here start doing that.
Tentative rulings
Yep, that’s the way it was done when I was practicing in CA.
If the tentative was adverse, some parties would stip to the tentative. If not, the attorneys knew where the problem was and what they had to argue.
Save a lot of time.
New one on me this morning. In a Zoom Hearing and there is a participant continually logging in as “Drew’s Notetaker (Otter.ai).” Court kept logging it out; AI kept logging in. I know Otter.AI is a transcription bot. What are your thoughts on firms sending transcription/notetaking bots into ZOOM?
Smart I guess, but any notes it take would only be for internal use only as it wouldn’t be considered an official transcript.
SCR 229 says fuck your bot.
That’s funny.
I would honestly think it would be wholly improper to in any manner record court proceedings without the approval of the court.
I disagree with any AI bot’s joining a Zoom video hearing. Having said that – if you use something like Krisp.AI on your computer and route both your microphone and speaker through it, it will create a transcript for you of the audio. SO…if you’re trying to get a bot to join, that would be a way to do it. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a bot on because it will get to a point where there are 15 extra attendees – all bots.
Judges should resolve more motions via minute orders in advance of hearings. Dept 20 and 12 do this often. Saves everyone time and avoids useless argument when the result is clear from the briefing and the judge already knows how they will decide. On this same thread – agree with setting time limits for oral argument unless you get a special setting.
Other federal jurisdictions like CDCAL issue tentative rulings on some types of motions which are circulated to counsel in advance of oral argument. The tentative rulings I’ve seen are pretty much a full-blown opinion. In my admittedly limited experience with these rulings, I’ve found them to be a great way to focus my argument on those portions of the record which the Court clearly has focused on instead of going on for five minutes about some aspect of the case which the Court has concluded is not critical to its decision-making. The Nevada federal court might consider exploring adoption of tentative rulings.
1000% agreement on time limits for oral argument.
12 has 20 civil cases compared to 500 for most split dockets and 1000-1500 for the all-civil dockets.
Each department is different because they carry vastly different and disparate cases loads.
Why are certificates of service required when all parties must be registered for e-service?
Why do we have to hurdle through an ECC, JCCR, and Rule 16 conference, which are of no substantive help to a case, instead of just jumping into discovery? Cases would be active for far less time if we remove those 60-90 days of nonsense hurdles and allow discovery to be served with the complaint.
No can do, I need the billing.
Because Pro Se’s do not register for E-Service. Same reason why when the court sends you a Notice of Hearing you are required to then do a separate certificate of service showing that you actually served the Notice of Hearing on those parties who were not registered for E-Service.
It’s not only Pro Se parties – I have cases where I have to repeatedly ask opposing counsel to register for e-service so I can stop printing everything I file and the court issues and mail it to them. It’s usually much older non-tech attorneys who walked uphill in the snow (I’m not far behind, but mine was uphill in the rain), or in family law cases it’s attorneys who do a lot of unbundled flat fee limited scope cases.
If an attorney fails to add themselves to the e-serve list, we just add them to the list from our end so that they can be e-served. They are required by rule to do it, so we do it for them if they can’t/won’t. I’m not messing around with mailing docs to someone who doesn’t comply with the rule that has been in place for 15 or so years now.
That’s what we do too. And I’ve actually had complaints about it. They can pound sand.
E-Service
“we just add them to the list from our end”
I don’t think that approach is “service”. Sure, the other party will get emailed a copy of whatever. However, the Rules require a party to consent to eservice. You can’t consent for them.
Consent isn’t required to serve via the court’s e-filing and service system established under NEFCR 9. Consent is only required for different electronic means. See NRCP 5(b)(2)(E), (b)(3).
NEFCR local rules require attorneys to be registered for and use e-filing systems and provide an attorney’s registration on such a system is deemed to be consent.
@6:27
” local rules require attorneys to be registered”
6:09 here. Yes, thank you for proving the point. The attorney has to register. You cannot register another party or their counsel.
Random – but has anyone ever successfully gotten records from Amazon via SDT?
Every person with e-file & serve access must provide an email address, or group of email addresses, that the e-file system automatically adds to the service list for the first time that party or attorney enters into the case. i.e. ‘filings@lawfirmwhatever.com’;’paralegal@lawfirmwhatever.com’ etc. So when we file a complaint, or an Answer, or MTD, etc, we don’t have to have “step 2” to be “Once confirmation of filing acceptance is received, go back and add our e-service email address, the assigned attorney, and assigned paralegal to the e-service list from firm contacts.”
I recall asking Judge Gonzalez (when she was chief judge) about this at one of the e-filing meetings seemingly forever ago and was told they were looking into doing that exact thing. Here we are 8-9 years later and still that feature has never been introduced.
OP here – the above should start with “I think they should implement a rule that requires….”
How about having every District Court Judge write on every Friday five things you did this past week. Seems to me that most judges do not even show up or work on Friday. You can throw a bowling ball in the courthouse halls and not hit anyone.
As a Short Trial Judge Pro Tem, I hold jury trials on Fridays. We are not in the hallways, but in the courtrooms.
Because the full time judges are vacating their courtrooms for your short trials
According to the statistics there are hardly any short trials.
3:58–Yeah you are the only one in the empty courthouse.
Enough with every township getting their own justice court — especially in Clark County. For the rural area of the county, there should be one northern Clark County justice court and one southern Clark County justice court. Vanity courthouses for small towns should be closed.
All judges should have law degrees. Lay people should not make decisions on legal issues that could deprive a person of their freedom or place a community at risk by creating errors that could be avoided with some knowledge of how to read a case or statute.
There are judges in Nevada without law degrees?
Justices of the peace except in Clark and Washoe do not have to have to be lawyers to qualify for office.
Yes. Both suspended and unsuspended.
“Hearing masters”
End the death penalty. It’s insanely expensive and serves no purpose beyond a life without sentence. Nevada has a horrible track record of successfully prosecuting a case through execution. Whether it’s right or wrong is a different issue, but it’s fiscally irresponsible and the amount of money and time spent on these cases could be used in many better ways.
Putting prisoners to death is good politics, so don’t hold your breath.
death penalty -It’s insanely expensive
1. Stop the never ending appeals.
2. Carry out the sentence. OD of sodium pentothal (used to euthanize pets humanly), morphine (widely used in hospitals to let terminal patients go), hanging, or firing squad.
This argument has been made for the last 50 years. Half a century of trying to make it work is enough. Violent crime rates are lower in states without the death penalty. Give it up.
This.
Is anyone else unable to read comments on mobile? It keeps scrolling/snapping back to higher on the page as I try to read and it is even doing it to snap away from the comment box every few seconds.
No problem here.
Yes, this happens to me when reading on mobile
“Department of Judicial Efficiency” still has the DOJE-sounding acronym. This is tongue in cheek of course.