Common Pleas Judicial Needs Assessment Project

The Common Pleas Judicial Needs Assessment is a statewide study that uses data to help to determine the ideal allocation of judicial resources needed to manage and resolve current Common Pleas Court caseloads.

A judicial needs assessment is not a simple metric that indicates whether a judicial district has the right amount of judges, too many or too few. It is really the beginning of the analysis and discussion for decision-makers to examine judicial resources necessary to meet the needs of traditional and specialized caseloads.

Overall, Pennsylvania’s Courts of Common Pleas are sized correctly. That means that counties have the right number of judges to do the job. The calculation is based on a time study. The study serves as a component of ongoing year-to-year measurement and analysis. An updated analysis using 2022 caseload statistics is available here.

In 2023, the AOPC contracted with the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) to conduct an updated judicial needs assessment. The assessment is in progress and the results will be released in 2024.

• In 2013, the AOPC contracted with the NCSC to conduct the statewide judicial needs assessment. In the past 20 years, the NCSC has completed judicial workload assessments in more than 30 states and three countries.
• The judicial needs assessment is an evidence-based study to calculate how many Common Pleas Court judges are needed to handle the workload in each judicial district. Studies of this kind are also known as weighted caseload studies since they measure not only the number of cases handled by each court, but also the amount of a judge’s time needed to perform the various tasks related to a case.
• A Judicial Needs Assessment Committee (JNAC) was assembled for the purpose of helping define study parameters and assisting the NCSC. Members included judges from judicial districts large and small, urban and rural, and AOPC staff.

• To ensure utilization rates are not skewed by an unusually heavy or light caseload in a given district in a given year, the study uses a three-calendar year average.
• A utilization rate greater than one indicates that the judges in that district need to work more than average to meet their caseload. The most recent three-year statewide average utilization rate, using data from calendar years 2020, 2021, and 2022, was 1.09 – meaning the average judge works the equivalent of just more than one judge to get the job done.
• The Judicial Needs Assessment model is recalculated annually using annual case filings, judge complement, judge vacancies and senior judge use from the previous year.

• Common Pleas Judicial Needs Assessment Project Updated Using Calendar Year 2016 Data (April 2018)
• Common Pleas Judicial Needs Assessment Project Updated Using Calendar Year 2017 Data (February 2019)
• Common Pleas Judicial Needs Assessment Project Updated Using Calendar Year 2018 Data (December 2019)
• Common Pleas Judicial Needs Assessment Project Updated Using Calendar Year 2019 Data (December 2020)

current as of January 2024