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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 finally reaches the courtroom, it is reset because the right information is not in the right place at the right time. The person leaves frustrated, wondering why a system designed to deliver justice struggles to deliver efficiency.
This experience is often summed up in one phrase: “The justice system is slow.” But what people are really reacting to are a few consistent, visible symptoms.
The Most Common Symptoms of Slow Justice
When court users talk about delay, they are usually describing:
Unpredictable delays and continuances - Hearings are postponed, dockets slide without explanation, and cases require multiple appearances for issues that feel procedural rather than substantive.
Excessive time spent waiting or returning - People lose workdays sitting in court or coming back multiple times for matters that could have been resolved in fewer visits.
Confusion and lack of coordination - Parties receive inconsistent instructions, information is not where it is expected to be, and no single point in the system can clearly explain what happens next or why.
These symptoms are frustrating precisely because they feel avoidable. In most cases, they are.
The Root Causes of Slow Justice
Slow justice is rarely caused by one office, one person, or one bad decision. It emerges when the justice system’s interconnected parts fail to operate as a unified whole.
Operational and Process Misalignment
Court processes often evolve independently across departments. Clerks, judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, and support services may all be performing their roles competently—yet the overall workflow breaks down at handoffs. Continuances become routine rather than exceptional, cases are not triaged by complexity, and staffing levels are based on historical norms rather than actual workload.
Technology Gaps and Fragmentation
Even where technology is intended to improve efficiency, it often does not extend end-to-end. Partial electronic filing, disconnected case management systems, or hybrid paper-digital environments force staff to bridge gaps manually. The result is duplicated effort, inconsistent information, and delay—not because technology failed, but because systems were never designed to work together.
Space and Facility Constraints
Courthouse buildings quietly shape daily efficiency, often in ways that go unnoticed. When judges, clerks, courtrooms, and support functions are spread across multiple floors—or worse, multiple buildings—routine tasks require constant movement of people, files, and information. Each trip may seem minor, but repeated dozens of times per day, these inefficiencies compound into real delay.
Poor adjacencies force staff to leave their work areas to resolve simple questions, while inefficient circulation creates bottlenecks at elevators, security checkpoints, and corridors. Undersized courtrooms with poor sightlines and noise distractions prolong proceedings, requiring additional explanation, repetition, and procedural pauses.
When in-custody detainees must be moved through public hallways and elevators, it creates both operational delays and perception concerns. Potential jurors or members of the public may see detainees in restraints, undermining the presumption of innocence. While detainees are being moved, corridors are temporarily closed for security, stopping circulation and delaying courthouse activity. Over time, buildings that have long since outgrown their intended use become silent contributors to slow justice.
Governance, Culture, and Coordination
No single entity owns the full justice process. Departments naturally optimize their own responsibilities, but system-wide performance suffers. Cultural norms—such as a long-standing acceptance of delay—combine with risk aversion and resistance to change. Without shared data, common performance measures, and coordinated leadership, inefficiencies persist even when everyone recognizes that the system is not working as well as it could.
What Slow Justice Looks Like in Practice
As a court planner, I have participated in hundreds of meetings with judges, clerks, administrators, and justice partners. A core part of my role is to understand how courts and their supporting departments operate day to day so that we can properly plan space needs.. In these conversations, the symptoms of slow justice surface naturally, often without anyone explicitly naming them as such.
In one courthouse, I observed a fragmented operation split between two separate facilities. Judges and clerks routinely moved case files back and forth across a public roadway using rolling carts filled with paper. The situation was compounded by the fact that one of the buildings lacked a properly functioning elevator, requiring staff to carry heavy case bags up stairwells multiple times a day. No single step caused delay on its own, but together these conditions created constant disruption, lost time, and unnecessary physical strain to keep the cases moving..
In another jurisdiction, slow justice stemmed not from space, but from entrenched practice. A persistent culture had developed in which many public defense attorneys avoided meeting in-custody clients at the jail, where security screening was time-consuming, and interview rooms were limited. Instead, attorneys waited until their clients were transported to the courthouse, often meeting them for the first time at counsel tables immediately before the hearings. With little opportunity for meaningful preparation, continuances became routine rather than exceptional. Because the judges visited the court on a rotating schedule, these continuances often added a week or more to case timelines—delays driven not by legal necessity, but by workflow friction.
In a third example, I worked with a large, complex court where departmental relationships were strained. This dynamic was evident in meetings, during space tours, and in discussions about daily operations. Departments functioned in silos, and leadership was reluctant to convene cross-functional conversations about workload handoffs or shared responsibilities. Without a forum for collaboration, inefficiencies persisted—even as growing backlogs of pending cases made it clear that the system was underperforming.
These examples illustrate how slow justice emerges in different ways: through physical constraints, misaligned workflows, or organizational culture. Regardless of the source, the cost is real. For the public, slow justice erodes confidence in the system and creates unnecessary stress. For court staff, it leads to constant firefighting, workarounds, and burnout. For governments, it results in higher operating costs, growing backlogs, and facilities that feel perpetually inadequate. Slow justice is rarely intentional—but without coordinated attention, it becomes normalized.
Moving from Slow Justice to Smart Justice
Addressing slow justice requires more than a policy change or a new piece of software. It requires alignment across space, operations, technology, and leadership. Courthouse planning can be part of the solution—but only when it is paired with intentional process improvement and change management.
What Can Be Solved Through Courthouse Planning
Courthouse planning has the greatest impact when it is grounded in how courts actually function day to day, not just how they are organized on paper. Effective planning efforts focus on:
- Optimizing space arrangements so judges, clerks, courtrooms, and support functions are located to minimize travel, handoffs, and disruption.
- Designing spaces that reflect real workflows, ensuring that adjacencies, circulation paths, and support areas align with how cases move from filing to disposition.
- Separate circulation systems for the public, staff, jurors, and in-custody detainees reduce delays, enhance security, and preserve the presumption of innocence. While fully separated circulation can be challenging in older courthouses, strategic use of lockout systems and controlled scheduling can effectively segregate movement with minimal disruption to daily court operations.
- Integrating technology into physical space, such as e-filing support areas, remote hearing rooms, digital evidence presentation, and flexible courtroom layouts that support modern proceedings.
- Right-sizing courtrooms and support spaces so proceedings are not slowed by poor acoustics, limited sightlines, or spaces that do not match the function being performed.
Well-planned courthouses remove friction from daily operations. They do not solve every problem—but they eliminate many of the hidden inefficiencies that compound over time.
What Requires Change Management and Operational Alignment
Slow justice is ultimately a human and organizational challenge as much as a physical one. Even the best-designed courthouse will underperform without coordinated leadership and a willingness to change how work gets done.
Key strategies include:
- Engaging leadership across departments in a collaborative planning process that focuses on shared outcomes rather than individual silos.
- Acknowledging cultural and political realities, including long-standing practices, jurisdictional boundaries, and past friction that may have hindered collaboration.
- Using data strategically to move discussions from anecdote to evidence—identifying where delays occur, why they occur, and which changes will have the greatest impact.
- Applying Six Sigma or similar process-improvement methodologies to map workflows, eliminate unnecessary steps, reduce variation, and improve predictability.
- Aligning policies, staffing models, and schedules with actual workload rather than historical assumptions.
This type of change does not happen overnight. It requires resources and sustained commitment—but it is essential to achieving lasting improvement.
A Coordinated Path Forward
Slow justice is not inevitable. When courthouse planning, operational analysis, technology integration, and change management are pursued together with intention, the justice system can function more predictably and effectively. The goal is not rushed justice, but a coordinated system where space, process, and people work together to support timely, equitable outcomes.
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