Readers may recall an earlier post that speculates how a law department could assess its litigation portfolio with an index based on a number of metrics (See my post of May 17, 2006 about indexing a law department’s litigation.). One of the ideas mentioned there was to factor in the quality of the judge presiding over each case. Now comes North Law Publishers Inc. and its website where visitors can rate federal district and magistrate judges.
The site, as described in Legal Tech. News, Oct. 2006, at 21, lets users rate judges on such factors as their ability to handle complex litigation, evenhandedness in civil litigation, scholarship, flexibility in scheduling, punctuality, and involvement in settlement discussions. A judge’s ratings on factors important to a law department could be one of the metrics in a litigation index.