The state and federal courts that have jurisdiction in Rhode Island have issued a series of administrative orders to address court operations during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The list below attempts to catalog all state and federal court orders that…
Tag: Superior Court
Paean to Pro Bono: Applying Economic Theory to Why Pro Bono is Good for Lawyers and Clients
Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. For the bulk of lawyers who charge for services by the hour, their most valuable asset for revenue is their time. Attorney choices on allocating the scarce resource of time…
Law Clerks From Soup to Nuts, Or More Accurately, From September to August
Chief Justice Roberts’ recent 2018 Year-End Report is largely a description of the federal judiciary’s efforts to address sexual harassment, but he begins with a lengthy description of law clerks and their special role in the federal courts. The report…
Good Things Come in Threes: Three New Calendar Orders for Kent County
Growing up my older brother played hockey, so of course I did too. One perk of being a squirt (that’s a hockey term) was trips to the old Boston Garden to watch the Boston Bruins. Tradition held that if a…
Decoding The Calls and Different Court Calendars in Rhode Island Superior Court
When I was more of a spring chicken than I am now, a senior associate invited me to tag along at a Superior Court motion calendar hearing. “It’s time you learn what formal, ready, and ready subject mean,” she said. …
Stipulation or Consent Motion or Private Agreement? A View from the Salt Mines
Litigation is adversarial. The inherent conflict means that most lawsuits involve parties who don’t like each other, and there’s a natural tendency to refuse to budge on anything. But sometimes, in the midst of this systemic friction, it makes sense…
The Score is 167,504 to 759. So yeah, the State Courts Handle a Few More Cases Than the Federal Court
167,504 to 759. It sounds like a lopsided cricket score (those matches go on forever!), but it’s really the number of proceedings filed in Rhode Island state courts versus the Rhode Island federal court in 2016, the most recent year…
Reconsidering the Non-Reconsideration of Motions to Reconsider in State Court
The mulligan is one of the great unwritten rules in golf. Smack a duck hook in the water? No problemo, tee up a new ball. Completely whiff with a massive John Daly-esque swing, but the wind pushes the ball one…
Reading the Tea Leaves on the Latest Superior Court Judicial Assignments
It’s a new year, and just as the seasons change, so do the calendar assignments for the Justices of the Rhode Island Superior Court. The latest Administrative Order, effective December 31, 2017, is a mix of stare decisis and some…
A Handy Guide to Superior Court Civil Standing Orders by County
Back in the day, you had to know a guy, who knew a guy, who might have heard from some other guy, if there were any standing orders floating around that remained in effect as the judges rotated through the…