Interview conducted and edited by Matthew Kleiman & Taylor Allison Editor’s note: Courtside Conversation has always highlighted court administrators, focusing on their backgrounds, their management styles, and their relationships with judges and other administrative staff. This one is different. In… Read more »
About a month ago something strange happened. I was walking to work and noticed scooters, at least five, had just been left on the sidewalk. Interestingly, they all had the same sticker on the vertical post to the handle bar…. Read more »
Distracted, indecisive, selfish, disruptive, entitled, impatient, entrepreneurial: traits not typically solicited in a court administration job posting. Yet these traits are often associated with Millennials, the generation occupying and applying for the majority of jobs in courts worldwide. Each year,… Read more »
The average workplace in America today is made up of employees all over the age spectrum. With Baby Boomers electing to continue to work longer and newly minted adults starting to enter the work space, the professional environment is becoming… Read more »
Despite years of debate, accepting gifts is still one of the most challenging topics in court ethics. Many stand adamantly against court personnel accepting gifts under any circumstances; others worry that taking such an unflinching stand harms employee morale and… Read more »
Dawn Palermo Dawn Palermo is the judicial administrator at Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court. The court has three elected judges and two hearing officers with 56 staff members. Dawn has been a member of NACM since 1999. How did you get… Read more »
In his book The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals, Thomas Suddendorf studies the six traits that separate us from other species — language, mental time travel, theory of mind, intelligence, culture, and morality. Suddendorf argues… Read more »
As courts become increasingly complex, it is the court administrator who manages the ever-expanding breadth of operations. The areas of expertise possessed by court administrators have grown over the years, and their insights are all the more valuable. Negotiating contracts,… Read more »
Connecting Business and Technology As noted by Kofi Annan, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.” Such a simple and powerful message! But how do you find the information you seek? Ah, there’s always a catch. While Google works well for… Read more »
Access to the Whole Case, and Nothing but the Whole Case (Online) Think how frustrated you would be if you couldn’t access your credit-card or bank-account information online at a moment’s notice. Consider the stress you would feel if you… Read more »
In the 1991 song “The Beauty of Gray” the alternative rock band Live offers an important precept for living in and developing an understanding of the world around us (however simple and sometimes unheeded) in the chorus: This is not… Read more »
“Do what is right, not what is easy” —author unknown My typical day, like many court leaders, is spent transitioning from one important task to another while putting out unanticipated fires in between. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy… Read more »
My regular job duties provide me an opportunity to visit courthouses throughout my state. Some are looming and opulent. Some are quaint and unassuming. My favorite sites are those with beautiful stained-glass rotundas and grand staircases. When I visit clerks’… Read more »
So, you work for a court. It may be a small court with one judge in a rural city. It may be a large court with 60 judges in a major metropolitan city. The work seems to go far beyond… Read more »
Cherie Garofalo A Season of Firsts Cherie Garofalo is the deputy court executive officer in the Superior Court of California in San Bernardino. San Bernardino County has a population of 2.1 million people and is the largest county by geographic… Read more »
Over the years, I’ve had a number of court employees share their feelings about management. A recurring theme, often by those who have to clock in daily, has been resentment over performance evaluations by supervisors who do not perform the… Read more »
In Rafa: My Story, Rafael Nadal discusses his final pregame ritual before squaring off against Roger Federer: As important as all the preparations that went before, was to look up, scan the perimeter of the stadium, and search for my… Read more »
Chances are, you’ve had more than a passing conversation about online dispute resolution (ODR, for short) within the last year. Maybe you’re investigating ways to implement ODR and looking for signs that the technology is beyond the major pitfalls of… Read more »
Early last fall, the NACM Board met to discuss its strategic priorities for the coming year. One of NACM’s strategic focus areas is Advocacy for the Profession. A goal under advocacy is that NACM will be an influential and respected… Read more »
As the new editor of Court Manager, I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself. I have been working in the court system since I became a law clerk in 2004 in Columbus, Ohio. While my current job affords… Read more »
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