In November 2007, the National Conference of Metropolitan Courts (NCMC) inked a contract for support services with the National Center for State Courts. It is the first time the Conference, one of the oldest court reform groups in the country, has reached out to another organization for day-to-day operating and management assistance in its 45 year history. Previously, busy presiding judges and court administrators in the nation’s urban courts handled those duties as time permitted, rotating the responsibilities on a yearly basis.

The contract provides for a part-time executive director, assistance with conference planning, membership management, financial planning, liaison with other judicial administration groups, and technology assistance such as website development, explained Mary McQueen, the Center’s President. “We are very pleased to serve urban trial court leaders in this new way, and look forward to a long and productive partnership,” McQueen added.

“The times have changed,” Rufus King, III, Chief Judge of the District of Columbia Superior Court and Chairman of the NCMC Board, said in announcing the new arrangement. “We must boost the ability of the Conference to better serve the nation’s busiest presiding judges and administrators, grow the organization, and address ever more complex problems confronting urban courts in new and more productive ways.”

According to the National Center for State Courts, the principal research, consulting and education think-tank serving state courts, there are 16,000 trial courts in the United States. Only a handful serve the metropolitan population of the country, but they account for more than eighty percent of all case volume ranging from traffic matters to murder cases, and small claims to intellectual property disputes. Metropolitan courts are organized around city, county or regional boundaries and have multiple judges and large court staffs often serving millions of people. The 25 largest urban areas in America account for 42 percent of the nation’s 303+ million people ranging from 18.8 million in the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island region to Cincinnati-Middletown at 2.1 million based on the latest census data as of July 1, 2006.

Kathy Hardcastle, Presiding Judge of the Eighth Judicial District Court in the Greater Las Vegas area and President of the National Conference of Metro Courts this year was instrumental in putting the agreement together. Her court will be the first benefactor as the host for the National Conference’s 45th Annual Meeting and Education Sessions in February 2008. “The National Center has already started to make a difference by helping us develop our education program around the theme ‘Leading Trial Courts in Dangerous Times’. A new feature this year will be two special, in-depth seminars targeting trial court leadership and courthouse design created by the Institute for Court Management which will front-ending the annual meeting and add a new learning dimension we have not had to date,” said Hardcastle.