Architectural firms and court planning consultants have both unique and overlapping skill sets. If you are concerned that your courthouse is overcrowded and out of space, which should you hire to plan for future space needs and courthouse planning?

After years of courthouse planning, it is still painful to go into a courthouse where the operations, security, and image of the court are suffering due to the need for more space. In my experience, ten common symptoms indicate that a courthouse has inadequate space for all the court components.

When a court is short on space, alternative dispute resolution (often called ADR) can be a viable option for addressing space constraints. In this post, I will discuss a particularly effective example where ADR has been successfully used to avoid the need for expansion of courtroom space while...

Courtroom sharing is a controversial issue considered by courts all over the country. Most of the courts I work with have one courtroom per judge. However, in an effort to save space and associated costs, the possibility of courtroom sharing frequently arises during courtroom planning.

For many years, I assessed courthouses, and additional file storage has been a common need for court and related components. The introduction of electronic filing and imaging has now reduced storage in many courts, and I find more courts with reduced filing needs and even vacant file rooms. This...