Something new

During my last trial calendar, the Judge got a little impatient because we were still working cases out at 10:30 in the morning. (Nevermind that I had 10 cases on the calendar, half of which hadn't returned my calls and the other half involved poor victim contact on the prosecutor's part.) Anyway, we chatted afterwards, and came up with a solution that we decided to try at our next arraignment, which was last Monday.

At arraignment, client's receive notice of their next courtdate. I went ahead and put appointment times on the notice, and the Judge threatened that if they didn't keep their appointments, he would consider revoking their bond. The advantage is, I can get people into the office fairly quickly and have plenty of time to work their cases. The downside is, if they don't keep their appointments, it puts me in a very uncomfortable position. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.

In any event, I had 7 appointments scheduled yesterday, and 5 people actually appeared. That's a much better rate than I have ever had working here. Back home, almost all of my appointments were kept. Of course, those were felonies, where people were facing significant jail time. I guess we will see how the remainder of the week goes.