Staffing Formulas and Resource Allocation
Members of our firm played a major
role in the development of staffing allocation formulas
for the federal judiciary in the United States. These
formulas are based on detailed statistical analysis of
the caseloads of individual courts and the staffing
levels needed to process those cases in a timely
fashion. Since the mid-1990s, the formulas have been
used to allocate federal funding to the individual
courts for staffing and other needs.
The creation of the staffing formulas was a joint effort
of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts
and the individual federal courts, and our team members
come from both worlds. Together, this group developed a
set of quantitative indicators to measure the efficiency
of each court’s operation and designed a program to
collect and analyze the necessary data. The centerpiece
of the data collection effort was a series of visits to
individual courts, which gave us considerable insight
into how case processing was evolving in era of
budgetary stringency and rapid changes in information
technology.