I was recently sitting in a courthouse planning meeting reviewing demographic and economic data with county officials. The trends were interesting. Population growth was steady but not extraordinary. What caught my attention was the county's rising median household income. For a largely rural...

One of the most important questions in courthouse planning is also one of the most difficult to answer:

How many courtrooms should a courthouse contain?

It is a familiar scene in many older courthouses. Just outside a courtroom door, an attorney leans in close to a client, speaking in hushed tones while people stream past. Another attorney is doing the same thing a few feet away. Conversations overlap, and sensitive details are exchanged within...

 It started with a contradiction.

Over the past two decades, one fast-growing county where we were engaged to perform court planning had added tens of thousands of residents. As part of our work, we examined the trends shaping the courts and the broader community. New subdivisions replaced open...

A person arrives at the courthouse early, having taken unpaid time off for a hearing expected to be brief. As the morning unfolds, small delays quietly stack up—information moves slowly between offices, schedules drift, and no one can say exactly when the case will be called. When the matter...