The different ways federal district courts provide settlement assistance to parties is the focus of a new study by theFederal Judicial Center (FJC). Eight district courts are participating in the study to be completed by late 2014.
“We hope to provide a thorough picture of the variety of ways in which the federal district courts have designed and use their ADR procedures,” said Donna Stienstra, the project’s director. “We’ll look at mediation, arbitration, early neutral evaluation,...
Over the past 200 years, litigation in federal courts has continually changed. The greatest change has taken place in the past 25 or 30 years. During this period, we have seen the almost total disappearance of civil trials in federal court. Trials have been largely supplanted by motions practice and settlement. But lawyers have not responded to this change and still conduct pretrial as if their cases are going to trial. I think that is a mistake, and in this article I offer suggestions as to what...
