Judge Amy Clark Meachum, the Local Administrative Judge for Travis County, joins hosts Todd Smith and Jody Sanders to unpack recent legislation affecting the Texas judiciary and what it means for how courts operate today. Judge Meachum traces the escalating reporting and accountability mandates imposed on Texas trial courts through the 88th and 89th Legislatures; explains the central docket fight and how the Supreme Court's latest rule amendments will affect the Travis County system; and breaks down the new summary judgment rule’s impact on the courts. The pressure to perform on paper is real, she says—judges are managing their dockets with one eye on clearance rates and the other on the State Commission on Judicial Conduct. "No one's checking your substance. They're just checking your numbers. And that's why I call it lies, damn lies, and statistics." Her advice for practitioners: file your summary judgment motion only when it's ready and will be worth the judge’s time.

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Welcome to the Texas

Appellate Law Podcast,

the show that takes you inside the

Texas and federal appellate systems.

Through conversations with judges, court

staff, top trial and appellate lawyers,

academics, and innovators,

we provide practical insights to help

you become a more effective advocate.

Whether you're handling

appeals or preparing for trial,

you'll discover strategies to sharpen

your arguments, innovate your practice,

and stay ahead of the latest developments.

And now, here are your hosts,

Todd Smith and Jody Sanders.

Produced and powered by LawPods.

Welcome back to the Texas Appellate

Law Podcast. I'm Todd Smith.

And I'm Jody Sanders.

Our guest today is

Judge Amy Clark Meacham.

She is the district judge of the

201st District Court in Travis County.

She's been on the bench since September

judge in Travis County for about five

years now. Welcome to the show, Judge.

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

We're going to talk exciting

court administration.

Oh, do we have things to talk about today?

Our Supreme Court has been very active.

Our legislature has been very

active in handing down new mandates,

expanding on old mandates.

The ledge has enacted statutes affecting

how civil practice is handled in

Texas,

and the Supreme Court has adopted rules

that are designed to implement those

statutes. And so one thing we

want to maybe start with today,

we're going to cover a

lot of ground, I think,

because there's just a lot

of things to talk about.

But the big news that we have not

talked about on this show yet,

and we're so glad you could join us

to talk about this and other things,

is that most recently in

miscellaneous docket number

26-9019,

the Supreme Court handed down

new or amendments to largely

rules of Civil Procedure 303E and

then some amendments to the rules of

judicial administration that are

leveled at the central docket system

that we have here in Travis County. And

I believe Bexar County is the only other

county in Texas that has that same system.

There may be some qualification to

that. Am I getting that wrong, Judge?

I think we're the only two that have

formal centralized docketing systems,

right? That's actually how

we run of all of our dockets.

What we learned last year when we kicked

this off is there's actually quite a

bit of courts around the state that

have versions of the central docket.

They at least have very

heavy shared dockets.

They never officially transfer cases

from one court number to another

court number,

but they try to use the resources they

have in a particular county to hear those

cases as efficiently as possible.

Some of those were counties

like Angelina County.

We even learned that Collin County was

running a version of a centralized system

when it came to trying to get rid

of some of their car wreck cases,

like their low dollar car wreck cases,

because at some point it's constitutional

and actually it's not an aberrant.

It's actually of constitutional

design that judges for counties share

jurisdiction because that's just how

courts kind of came about in the state. We

really had to put a lot of look into this.

I had never really

thought deeply about it.

And so I had to become an expert on how

we ended up with this docket that in

Travis County we're all used to and how

it works in other counties and why it

works this way and that way.

So I've probably learned a lot

more about it than anybody should,

but it really was interesting to kind

of dig in and kind of figure it out from

the constitutional perspective of

how we got here and why we got here.

But we learned really that you're right

on some level that the only two counties

running like a traditional

centralized system in Texas were Bare

and Travis.

But versions of it in docket

sharing and bench sharing is really

happening by every trial judge. Not every,

but most trial judges across the state.

I don't practice much in

Austin and San Antonio. I have,

but I think for our listeners

who aren't in those counties,

when you say centralized docket,

can you expand a little bit more

on what we're talking about?

It's basically a master calendar system.

And we really have in

Travis County since COVID,

we've been really running a

hybrid system, which I'll explain.

I think that Bayer truly

has a true master calendar,

which is you don't really

run anybody through a court.

You run it through the presiding

docket judge who changes on a month to

month basis. In Travis County, we have a

very hybrid system, really since COVID,

almost because we had to.

And each individual judge

really has certain dockets

that they run that are done

by their court number.

And then we also have a strong hub system

with a court administrator that works

with me as the local administrative judge

to assign out cases to judges that are

available. So think of it

this way. Individual systems,

you just only ever hear pure the

cases filed in your court number.

But even that's not true because

judges have associate judges,

they have visiting judges, they

have judges who sit on assignment,

they have the presiding judge who hears

recusals. So even that's not precisely

true, but I think pure,

I think Tarrant is probably one of the

closest ones where you have where if a

case is filed in a

court number in Tarrant,

that judge mostly hears

absolutely everything. Unless

it's to a visiting judge,

unless it's to an AJ, unless

it's a PJ kind of recusal issue,

it stays in that one court. That's

the individual docketing system.

On a central, a purely central

master calendar system,

it wouldn't matter at

all where it was filed.

And it would just sort of end up through

the court administrator where it would

go. And the idea is you don't just

get caught up in the line, right?

If the checker at the grocery

store becomes available,

you move to the line where

the checker's available.

That's a judge in this instance,

but that's the idea behind it.

And then we have a hybrid

system in Travis County,

which works a little bit both ways.

We have a lot of cases that get set to one

judge. We try to make complex settings

or high conflict cases to one judge.

And then we have a lot of settings that

remain on a master calendar system,

basically, which we call the central

docket. It's really existed here. Again,

I had to become a strange historical

expert on this for about 50 years,

maybe even 60 years,

as best we can figure.

Yeah.

I was explaining to Jody before we started

recording that when I came here from

Dallas County back in 2003, Dallas

County has an assigned docket,

the regular quote unquote docket

system. When I came to Travis County,

it was an adjustment to get used to what

the central docket was. Warren Vavra,

who is hiring from his position

as court administrator,

would go around speaking to

lawyer groups and give CLE talks,

focus specifically on how to

practice in the central docket.

And I eventually learned the basics of

it at least and how not to commit too

many faux pas in trying

to get a hearing set,

announcing and all the details

that came along with that.

But we're going to talk about that.

We're going to talk about the new summary

judgment rule as time permits and a

few other things. But since we've

launched into the central docket,

can you give us a sketch of how the

central docket came to be since you're the

person who's probably the

most knowledgeable about

this now? And then we'll talk

about the transition to where we are now.

Government code,

the Constitution basically says that

judges who have the same jurisdiction can

share benches as law allows.

The best I can figure,

and I went back to Scott

McKall on a lot of this,

who was a judge about 20 years ago in

Travis County and was recently sitting for

us as a visiting judge, and he

helped me with some research.

He was also a civil procedure

professor at the University of Texas.

So it was nice to have him to

help me kind of work through it.

It's really as simple as that,

which is Travis County has a

unique docket in many respects.

It gets a ton of state related cases

and unique cases that are really

just filed in Travis County where they

have exclusive venue in Travis County,

comptroller cases, tax

cases, all sorts of issues.

And I think what Travis County

was struggling with in the 60s,

70s was how do we meet those cases

which do require a lot of kind of

support and they always got to get

met, right? You can't tell the state,

"We can't hear your case today.

You have to hear the state's

case." There's certain things.

I guess a good example is

a bond validation case.

There's a statutory requirement,

you got to hear it in 20 days.

And so they were meeting the demands

of how are we going to do that,

which all the state keeps passing all

these laws and also still keep car

wrecks and family court and really

and truly what courts are about,

which is access to justice and trying

to hear cases of real people with real

problems. How are we going to do both?

And I think Travis County realized we're

going to do it with a central docket

and we're going to basically run it where

we can always meet the demand of the

state,

but also keep our dockets running and

keep our dockets alive and make sure

people don't have to

wait for their hearing,

that they can set it when

they are available and we

can still keep moving. And

it's not dependent on an individual judge,

it's not dependent on

an individual election.

You can basically keep moving

even though the personnel changes.

That said, we've made a lot

of modifications because

as cases got more complex,

and this is more aimed at the

Dallas, the Fort Worth lawyers,

the Houston lawyers, for the

exact reason you said, Todd,

because I practiced in

Dallas to start with too.

And there's always this

concern that, well,

how is this judge going to know

what's going on in my case?

How are they going to be up to

date on the facts of the law?

And that became more difficult. I'm

We were already wrestling with that.

So we became kind of a hybrid

court in some ways then,

really assigning some of this

big litigation to one judge,

but trying to free up the other judges

to handle other cases. So if you're John

Dietz and you get stuck for three

months trying school finance,

all of John Dietze's

cases don't have to wait.

They can still go to other judges

to get those matters heard.

That's a unique Travis County problem

that we were able to fix with that,

but we also had to build in to make the

Houston lawyers and the Dallas lawyers

feel better, a way for them

to also request one judge.

On a regular complex setting,

we built a whole technology system

around sharing notes and it's

very expansive and the judges

on our docket make a lot

of judges notes and a lot

of docket entries that allow us to

kind of keep up what's going on.

Right. What I heard from the beginning

was the upside was if you wanted a trial

setting, you could get a trial

setting. If you wanted a hearing,

so you had a discovery dispute, you

could get your discovery dispute heard.

Then the ordinary parameters

of the central docket,

notwithstanding what you said

about special assignments,

and I know there was a

process for that. Like I said.

I undercut it for deeps. It wasn't three

months. It was more like six months.

I don't want him to watch this.

And.

Call me up and be like, "You got that.

Wrong." Well, and on top of that, he

managed the discovery docket for so long.

Who could forget Godzilla?

Anybody who ever was in front

of him would remember that.

If you ever get to see his portrait,

it's actually in the portrait.

There's a Godzilla embedded

in his judicial portrait,

so you'll have to find it next time.

That's very fitting. I need to see that.

Let's talk about the impetus for change.

I do recall that we had a letter from

Chief Justice Blacklock asking Supreme

Court Advisory Committee SCAC to study

the possibility of a statewide ...

I don't know if I'd call

it a statewide system.

It almost seems like it's

more of a adjustment to the

rule that at least at some

level might have been lodged at the

Travis and Bexar County systems.

Is that a fair statement?

I think so. That was certainly

what it said. It said,

"We're going to explore eliminating

central docket systems." And so I think I

had no other way to take it as it

being aimed Travis County and Bayer.

I think in fairness to the Chief

Justice and the Supreme Court,

the legislature has spent about

a decade now doing a bunch of

judicial accountability

statutes and a large

scale reporting requirement

now for judges. I mean,

when I started this job in 2011, I

think we had one collective report.

It was a collective report. It basically

reported up all your civil cases,

all your criminal cases, all

your family cases, collectively,

and your clearance rates. We now

have something like 16 reports.

And in the top six

urban counties in Texas,

every single judge in those top

six urban counties has to do a

monthly report on judicial data,

comes through the clerk's office,

but it has become a huge part of the job.

That was past two sessions ago and

then this last session. So

when they start last session,

which is also when this letter comes out,

judges are really desperate for a pay

raise. And there's a lot of concern about,

well, how do we ... The

Senate Judiciary Committee,

they have a lot of meetings about how

are we going to find the bad judges.

They just do. It's not

just one side or the other.

They like to meet and they like to talk

about how are we going to make sure

judges are doing the

job that they're doing,

that they're supposed to be doing

because judges want a pay raise,

but we don't trust that they're

working is basically their position.

And in fairness to the Chief Justice,

I think he's at one of these committee

meetings, committee hearings,

and they ask him, maybe the idea bubble

goes off in his head about, well,

I can help them find judges.

It's just Travis and Bayer.

They can't find Travis and Bear because

they have this central docket and we

can't make sure their data is correct.

And so if we get rid

of the central docket,

we can make sure they too have to report

because right now we're reporting by

court number and since I don't always

hear the court number that I sit in,

the data doesn't necessarily track me.

It tracks my court number and all

of our court numbers are some of the

best in the state in

terms of clearance rates,

but it doesn't tell you necessarily

what Judge Meacham is doing.

It tells you what the 201st

court is doing. And so I

think they were after that.

I think it was a lot more difficult than

they thought it would be because the

underpinning of a shared

docket is so strong in the

Constitution. And so there was

a lot of groundswell of support,

I think for the central docket and

the presiding dockets out of our two

counties. But I think more than that,

it's really a hard thing

to change the Constitution,

change the statutes and change a hundred

years worth of case law with a court

rule. And I think that

challenge was conveyed to them.

And instead we ended up with

something a little different.

It's not going to be easy,

but it's not precisely doing away

with the central docket either.

It's a different type of

rule as where we ended up.

It almost sounds like this was kind of

the perfect storm as opposed to there

being someone with an

organized agenda saying,

"We're going to go in and we're

going to target these two counties

specifically." Maybe that's

what it was. I don't know.

But you mentioned the pay raise,

you mentioned Travis County having

a super high clearance rate,

but yet you can't measure judge by judge

basis. It's just interesting to see,

and congratulations on getting the

pay raise, by the way. But oh yeah,

here's the tether that

comes along with it,

is you've got to do all this

reporting and give us all this data,

which is driving everything these days.

Well, the one that I was talking about,

the one that's for the top six counties,

that was actually from the 88th

session. And I think it's House Bill.

I never can remember these off the top

of my head, but there's a House Bill,

but there was another House,

there was a Senate bill that same

session that was a whole other reporting

requirement. So 88th session,

there's two big reports.

Then they do this 89th session. We

start with kicking it off with, well,

the judges really want a pay raise. And

what ended up happening is we got it,

but it's a 25 page bill called

the Judicial Transparency and

Accountability Act. And

so also in that document,

in addition to a nice pay

raise, took us from, I think,

49th in the country to

26th in the country.

So we didn't like blow

the doors off or anything,

but it certainly made the judicial pay

commensurate with other judges around the

country.

There are also 24 pages of new reports,

of new burdens on judges.

There's a timekeeping requirement for

judges now that goes live in July.

Every district court judge in the

state now has to keep their time.

There is a more teeth are added to

the state commission on judicial

conduct and now it's basically

completely appointed by the governor

and they don't have to be lawyers

anymore on the state commission on

judicial conduct. Gave them a lot

more ability to remove judges.

It's not a complaint-based system anymore.

They can do things on their own

without getting a complaint.

And I think what civil lawyers are

starting to figure out is that bill had a

real Christmas tree problem,

a real ornament on it that I think the

lawyers around the state are starting to

figure out,

which is they had these requirements

for the summary judgments where we

basically wholesale changed how

every lawyer in the state has to

practice summary judgment practice now.

And it's really quite been something for

something that no one was

even paying attention to.

I think that people were paying attention

to the bail parts of that bill because

criminal judges were up in arms and a

lot of the criminal justice community was

up in arms. Obviously judges were

paying attention to the pay raise.

There were parts of that bill that

different people were paying attention to,

but we end up with this really wholesale

change of summary judgment practice

that no one really knows

where it came from,

no one really knows why we did it.

And I think people are realizing has a

lot of real practicality problems for

lawyers across the state.

Yeah.

I'll refer our listeners and watchers

to episode 160 back in January

where we talked about the new rule before

it became final. And then episode 163,

back in March where we talked about the

final rule and the fact that there's

essentially four different sets of rules

that apply depending on when the motion

was filed and all of that sort of thing.

It is still quite a morass

to try and get through,

but I'm not telling you anything,

Judge. You're living it right now.

I was going to say, we have talked at

length about that and it really does.

And practicality for judges too,

because it puts you on time clocks that

while you do have some control over,

you don't have complete

control over because it also

requires the party's input.

And the party who files it sort of

controls the clock, but also doesn't.

Well, I'm living it. I'll

tell you, the clerks,

we are just talking judges and lawyers,

but the district clerks

around the state are very

apoplectic. I can't even

give you the right word,

but they are very worked up because

the reporting is actually on them.

They're like the judge's tattletales,

but they also have three very

hard reporting deadlines in this.

They have to both mine the data and get

judges the summary judgments that are

filed in their particular courts,

but then they have to come back in and

make sure that the judge and report that

the judges heard the summary judgment

within the 60 days or the 90 days if they

grant that small 30 day extension.

And then they have to report again on

the judge if they made it through ...

They did issue their written ruling

within the 90 days. And I'll tell you,

because you guys are rules geeks,

I can tell they sold an

entire room full of judges,

every judge across the

state the other day,

that you don't count weekends and

holidays. And we all looked at them ...

So because we were all looking at, I

think it's Texas Rule of Civil Procedure,

is it four or five? That's

just basic day counting, right?

If it's less than five days, you do count

weekends. If it's more than five days,

you don't count weekends and

holidays. We all kind of know that.

We were working off of a 90 day

understanding that it's 90 days as to a

calendar. And then they

said we had 90 days,

not including weekends and holidays.

And everybody on that

Zoom call were confused.

I'll just put it that

way. So there's a whole-.

I'm confused. What does that even mean?

Yeah, me too. I hadn't even

thought about that wrinkle.

Well, we were all like,

"Well, that's fine, I guess,

but I don't even know how to

count days like you're talking."

Some holidays are recognized in some

counties and not recognized in others.

There are natural disaster days.

And I would say those are rare,

except we've had them so much in

Texas, haven't been rare at all.

So when you think about it that way,

they've gone back to the drawing

board and they may redo their CLE

presentation for all the judges and all

the clerks because even the way they

were counting days is very different.

So it's very chaotic. It's chaotic,

the Office of Court Administration,

it's chaotic with every judge in the state

and every court administration in the

state.

It's chaotic with the clerk's offices

and it's all the way down to the lawyers.

But when you change things,

the way they've changed them,

it's a sea change in summary judgment

practice. I think it was always going to

be chaotic, but I'm curious,

and my pitch to the lawyers who watch

this is maybe lawyers can do something

about it. I think that judges probably

can't, as I told you for the last decade,

the legislature has really been after

trial judges. We could talk about why,

I'll try not to whine, and they want

us to do data and data and data.

And so they tied summary

judgments to judicial data,

which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I too want to try cases with

genuine issues of material

fact and law. That's my goal.

I don't want to go to a jury trial on a

legal claim that doesn't exist because

that's wasting my time, it's wasting your

time, it's wasting the taxpayer time.

But nothing in this

statute that they passed,

SB 293 or amended in HB 16 looks at

substance and purpose at all.

It just looks like deadlines and dates.

And the deadlines and dates unfortunately

don't get to the heart of the issue,

which is you want to be a lawyer for

your client on a particular case.

You want to give them advice about

when to file summary judgments,

what evidence to attach and how to

respond to those summary judgments.

And judges want to get there too.

At least the vast majority do.

I know there's urban legends

and I'm sure some amount of ...

There's veracity of some of this where

there were some judges who weren't giving

hearings or weren't ruling, and

that's a subject of frustration.

But I really think the vast majority,

the overwhelming majority of trial

judges around the state were actually

trying to take their

summary judgments seriously,

rule on them timely and get

to trial on genuine issues of

material fact and law because that made

the most sense for them and the cases in

front of them. Because there were

two bad judges, we ended up with,

and I don't even know if there were,

but we ended up with a rule that's

very hard for us all to manage.

And it's also tied to all this judicial

data and judicial accountability and

judicial responsibility

stuff. It is causing judges,

I think rightfully so,

to be very worked up.

And so you're seeing stressed out judges

worried about their own data and their

own careers, worried about that

state commission on judicial conduct,

worried about the responsibility to

manage their own dockets because in an

effort to kind of come after us and

go after even the central docket,

there's all that's out there now. It's

all about judicial accountability,

judicial responsibility,

and basically a numbers games on

clearance rates and disposition rates.

And because of that, judges

are right to be worried.

They're right to be concerned.

So you're facing that, unfortunately,

with you and your clients are facing

something that I've never seen before.

I've never seen judges this worked

up collectively about deadlines

really, because we've never had

anything really like this before.

Well, and I think the lawyers are worked

up at the same time because it totally

changes summary judgment practice and

kind of imposes deadlines on lawyers that

before were a little bit more manageable

and managed by things outside of the

rules themselves. And I mean,

were I a judge and I was worried about

disposition and I had a question on

summary judgment,

I would just deny the summary

judgment because of time pressures.

And that unfortunately may not

always be the right answer,

but I think that may happen

more frequently, unfortunately,

because judicial discipline

is now on the line,

which seems like an unnecessary

hammer in my own personal opinion.

Yeah. And what's the trickle down

effect from that? I think, okay, well,

if maybe otherwise meritorious summary

judgment motions are getting denied,

are we going to see an uptick in

mandamuses tied to summary judgments?

I also think what we're going to see

are creative ways where good lawyers

figure out maybe I can file

something that doesn't exist yet,

some sort of remitter,

some sort of motion to dismiss

that has yet to be discovered in

Texas practice.

Creative lawyers are going to try and

find ways around these kind of hard

deadlines because they know

judges are stressed out about it.

I don't know if it's going to work or not.

I'm not even encouraging you to do it.

I'm just saying I know lawyers and

they may come up with new pleadings

that we have yet to see to meet

the moment. I'll put it that way.

Those discussions I have heard ongoing

in the background and I understand it.

I do.

I think there's also worry that a

lot of judges, when you say deny,

I think there's a worry that there's

some judges who might grant without

opportunity for the respondent to

be heard. I think you're right,

that gets appealed and the denial doesn't,

but you're also then stressed about

meeting your disposition rates, right?

And so what's happening

all across the state,

for all the reasons I've been saying,

is judges are studying these

large drop dockets, DWOP dockets,

because again, we're worried

about our clearance rates. I mean,

we are paranoid and they are coming

out to get us, right? It's both.

And so one of the things the pressure

is, you may not just deny it.

You might grant it because when you

grant it, you get to dispose of a case.

And so both worries on both

sides, I think, are real issues.

It depends on what you're going to get

with each individual judge and maybe each

county. But you'll hear bizarre stories

now about how some cases are getting set

for DWOP dockets within six months of

getting filed because judges are just

trying to meet the demands of

judicial data. We haven't done that,

but I do know that I totally

understand the instinct, which is just,

if you're not doing your

case, I got to move it.

I was speaking recently at the advanced

medical torts on this issue out in

Santa Fe.

And they were worried because on

advanced medical torts in those cases,

if you're trying a med mal case,

even if you're doing a summary

judgment of med mal case,

it might take you two years.

You might really be working hard on that

case and it might be two years before

you get to a motion for summary judgment.

But under this new world where they're

reporting your clearance rates,

they don't want you to take longer than

18 months on anything. And so the idea

that a case is going to take longer than

18 months is antithetical to all this

judicial data that's

existing in the world.

I'm going to push back on that because

I've been doing this a long time and I'm

going to hold the line, but I'm a little

more comfortable as a fifth term judge,

about to be a fifth term judge in Travis

County because I just have a little

more historical understanding.

But if I'm a new judge and I'm just trying

to look good and not get an opponent

and try to stay out of the paper and try

to stay away from the state commission

on judicial conduct, I'm feeling the

stress and I've got to close my cases.

And the only way I can show judicial

data is this numbers game about how

efficient I am. It's not about substance.

No one's checking your substance.

They're just checking your numbers. And

that's why I call it lies, damn lies,

and.

Statistic. I had a question about,

it wasn't all that long ago.

It kind of seems like

it was, but it wasn't.

We were all dealing with

COVID and the backlog,

the litigation backlog

that came out of that.

Is Travis County or our statewide

courts generally, is that still a thing?

Are we still in a sort of a backlog

trying to clear out older cases that were

left over from COVID, or

is that mostly gone now?

It's about to get really weird,

but here's what I'm going to tell

you about data that's really weird,

is that all the clerks farm out

case management systems to a

third party company.

No county is running their data

on their own. They couldn't.

It's so much, especially think of a large

urban county. Think of Harris, right?

Think of how many cases there are. The

idea that you're doing this anyway,

especially with EE filing, that

you're somehow managing it.

It's all farmed out and most of it is

under a one company monopoly with a

company called Tyler, and they run a

case management system called Odyssey.

And what we started realizing

when we've all had to have,

and I'm really deep in the weeds

in this as an administrative judge,

and I think a lot of other administrative

judges are dealing with this too.

The truth is,

it's really been a battle to just

figure out what a lot of our data is

because we don't necessarily have

easy access to the cases that are

filed in our court and how they are

managed by the clerk's office and

managed by this third party vendor,

Tyler. Maybe we've had to look

at things this way and Travis,

we've noticed that there are

cases that we definitely closed,

that there are dismissals, there are

final judgments, and for whatever reason,

they're not coding closed because

we don't code them closed.

We just signed the order.

We don't actually type in the code and

we don't ever go back and check with this

third party vendor on what they're

doing on the backend. So I'll tell you,

we have a pretty good

handle on things in Travis,

have a good relationship with my clerk,

but I think every judge in the

state is really realizing, wait,

now Now that they're

looking at my data so hard,

now I really have to understand who's

got my data and how can I get to my data

and how can I start

making sure it's correct?

Because I started noticing right away

that there were just cases that definitely

have final judgments,

that definitely have dismissals

and they're still being

reported up as open. And

I'd never had to stress about that.

It wasn't like I was sitting around,

I was just signing my orders and lawyers

were going away because they thought it

was closed too.

But now we have this hanging

chat issue of another two,

three step process where we're just

having to make sure that they're actually

closed. And that has been really, frankly,

eating my lunch.

I just can't spend enough time on that

issue because every time there's always

some bizarre side story about, well,

when we changed case management systems,

this coding problem happened. And when

we did this, this problem happened.

And so sometimes it's a tech problem,

sometimes it's a personnel problem,

but it's really been a real battle

that the data's just not right.

It's just the data, even what

you're seeing isn't actually true.

And it's not just a Travis County problem,

it's a problem everywhere because we're

not like sitting there with our own

Excel spreadsheet,

clothing case is closed and those are

going up. Once we rule on an order,

we're trusting that the process

is doing that correctly,

but we've had to all realize.

And you'll talk to any judge about this

very boring topic. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

People are turning off now.

But this very boring topic of does a case

get closed when you've signed a final

order? And the problem

is sometimes it doesn't.

Well, I hear the reference,

I think I've seen the clearance

rate in Travis County is like 108%.

And so if you're clearing more

cases than you're bringing in,

to me that just kind of suggested that

maybe there still was a little hangover

from COVID. I hate to

dredge up that old topic.

I think that's a snapshot.

That was a snapshot because we have some

months where we do code it that much

and then we have some where we're more

like 80%. What happens also, again,

I'm getting real boring, but I'll just

give you a basic court administration.

Not for us. We are rules

nerds. As you said, yes.

And then in July, August, and September,

every year in all the big

counties, everywhere really,

what starts getting filed

are advoreum tax cases.

You might've filed one yourself, right?

But most of them are big

commercial ad valorem tax cases.

They get their change in

their tax. They protest it.

It's a tax protest ad valorem tax case.

They sue the central appraisal

district. For just concept,

in Travis County,

we get about two to 3,000 of

those a year in that timeframe.

So it's really hard to have a good

clearance rate in July, August,

and September because those

cases flood the system.

So we might have clearance rates

in those months as low as 80%,

but we try to make it up for

it later with a higher number.

You kind of learn these things.

I've had to learn them all myself as we've

gotten deep into court administration

and judicial data. It just depends. I

think that may be a one month snapshot,

Todd. And sometimes we have that

high. We try and stay around 90%.

You try and stay around 90%.

The truth is a real backlog I think

we don't have. A data backlog,

we definitely have. No

one was saying in Travis,

you couldn't get a hearing or this case

can't get set such that people were

waiting in the queue.

But we did notice whether they're

aberrations of cases not getting closed

that were closed or just whatever

reasons cases disappeared in the ether,

but there were some hanging open cases

out there that we got to get to closing.

And we have more of those

maybe than other places.

As much as I love statistics,

I'd like to talk about some of the

practical effects of this rule.

And that's all really helpful

background to hear, Judge,

and I appreciate you bringing

all of that to our attention.

We've joked around about,

we've sat around and pontificated about

what the new summary judgment rule means

for practitioners,

and we've only been able to

speculate what it means for judges,

and you've helped shed some light on that.

I know you've thought about

this and even spoken about it.

So do you have a roadmap or maybe

some tips for practitioners who

are crossing this rule for the first time

since it's come into effect and maybe

ways that they should go about handling

summary judgments that they didn't have

to think about before?

I also want to hear a lot of feedback

from y'all on this because I'm trying to

get from lawyers honest feedback as well.

I think there's very little

we can do to help you really,

but I want to try and

help you where possible,

especially the good lawyers who really

are paying attention and really are

trying to follow the rule. So let me know.

But I think my big thing for people is

what had always happened in previous

times that I think just needs to go away

is the summary judgment that's filed as

sort of a mediation tactic or a

settlement kind of strong arm,

right? Or even a want to see

the other side's evidence.

I think even that's hard.

I think you should really only be filing

a summary judgment if it's ready for a

hearing and you really mean it.

And it's weird that to have to say that

because I was a practicing lawyer. I

filed a lot of summary judgments.

I've worked with one lawyer who loves

to file them. It was just his rule.

He was like, "This is when

we're going to file it.

" Every case had a summary judgment

because that was how he practiced law.

I just think that's hard now.

If you file a summary judgment,

a judge has to rule on it and it

should be right. It should be ready.

It should be one that you think is worth

a judge's time. And when you file it,

you should set it as

contemporaneously as you can with that

judge or court administration or

whatever it is because what we're also

finding is they would get filed and

we've had to mine the data, right?

Clerks have to go in now every

week and pull out the filed

summary judgments of the week.

And about half of them haven't asked

for settings. They're just there.

And so we're then having to set them. I

don't know how it works in Fort Worth.

We'll talk about that a little bit

in other places. Do judges set,

do clerks set, do court

coordinators set or do lawyers sit?

It's a series of different ways

that courts do it around the state,

but the idea that we're going to leave

it out there and get to it later,

I don't think we can do that.

I think we have to know what our setting

is going to be when we file the motion,

because if not,

chaos is going to start ensuing or know

you're going to ask for it to be heard

by submission, whatever that's

going to be. I'll tell you,

the one thing the judge has is I think

the judge can still determine if they're

going to hear it orally or if they're

going to hear it by submission. So you

also are going to want to know what

your particular judge wants in the

jurisdiction that you're

filing it in. In Travis County,

we're mostly still going

to hold to hearings.

We still want to have an oral hearing,

but there could be judges around the

state who are really going to just move to

a complete submission practice.

And that's the one thing that the judges

do have the power to do under the new

law and rule. It's

completely our call, I think,

if we hear it by submission or

if we hear it by oral hearing.

Yeah. This whole thing about withdrawing

a motion to avoid the mandatory ruling

timeline is something we've talked

about. And I'm curious about,

is that going to become a thing?

And then how does the trial judge,

I'm not asking you to

speculate as of today,

but how would the trial judge view

the lawyer who continuously files and

withdraws and files and withdraws?

It just doesn't seem like

that would go over well to me.

I just was talking before this started

with Judge Maya Gary Gamble about that

very issue and how that was driving

her a little bit mad and how she

was sort of regretting explaining

the rule to the lawyer because now

she's at the third time where the clerk

has had to tell her there's a motion for

summary judgment.

We're reaching the point of absurdity

kind of where they would file a notice of

withdrawal and that very same day

filed an amended motion for summary

judgment.

And that just means we are having

to take time out of our day and

deal with it again, right? So- I.

Guess that restarts the clock, right?

It does. It restarts it immediately.

It's not going to go well, I think.

Don't do that. I would

recommend not doing that.

I don't want to say substantively,

I don't know. In an urban county,

as much as it's going

to be difficult for us,

we're pretty set up well with our

master calendar system to actually hear

summary judgments under the confines

of the statute. And by that mean,

basically you file a summary

judgment in Travis County,

you're going to have a date that is

after the 35th day and before the 60th

day. That is a date that exists on

our court calendar. You can find it,

you can set it, you don't have to

make sure the judge is available.

You can do that and that's

what the law requires.

But there are judges all across the state

and frankly, the more rural you get,

right?

They may sit on four different counties

on a circuit. They may be in the middle

of a felony case. They may not come back

to that county to hear it for a while.

So there's not even a date

available for them to even take up

that motion by oral hearing.

So they're only going to be

able to hear it by submission.

That's the only thing that's possible.

And they're going to have

to stop everything else

they're doing and consider it

on a date,

make a physical docket entry about it

because that's also required by us under

the rule.

And then make a note to yourself that

you have to rule on it within 90 days of

that. So the weird little

shoots and ladders of

the rule and the kind of trap doors

for judges are pretty extensive.

It's not going to help the trial

lawyer's case if they're making that more

difficult, especially in

Travis where quite honestly,

you can set your motion. There is a date

that exists on our calendar no matter

when your motion is filed

within that 25 day period.

And if you really need the extra

30 days, we definitely have that.

So you just need to know when

your motion needs to be set.

You need to have that date in mind and

you need to file your motion and set it

right away, if that makes sense. And

I think Travis, that's the answer.

Other places, maybe you can tell us, Jodi,

I mean, I'm curious how it's working,

you think, in an individualized

docket in Tarrant, for example.

I think it's just going

to depend on the court.

And that's part of the issue is some

courts have a lot more readily available

hearing dates than others do. I was

telling Todd before we got on the call,

this is not a summary judgment,

but in a general jurisdiction

court in a different county,

someone had asked for hearing dates.

It's April 15th when we're recording this

and the earliest hearing date they had

was mid-June, early to mid-June. I

don't know what you do with that.

And that sort of makes the decision

sometimes on the submission versus oral

hearing for you right there because there

really is nothing you can do about it

if the court doesn't have options.

I was curious, Judge,

I think you were talking about this

in the context of judges writing the

circuit,

but as opposed to choosing strictly

between either an in- person

hearing or ruling on submission,

would that not be a good opportunity to

use Zoom for a summary judgment hearing?

I'm fine with Zoom, but I

mean, you've met trial judges.

There's many of them who really don't

like it. They're not going to do Zoom.

They did all the Zoom they would ever do

and probably 100% more than that during

COVID. And they are happy to never,

ever, ever know what Zoom is ever again.

And I think it's the one, like I said,

it's the one thing that this rule still

allows a judge to decide within the

confines of the deadlines is

the format they want to use for

consideration of the summary judgment.

So if I wanted to set it by Zoom,

I could. You're right. It's not that

hard. It's a summary judgment, right?

You shouldn't get evidence in

any case. And so that's easy.

If I want to set it by submission, I

can. That's what federal judges do.

And if I want to set it by oral hearing,

I can do that. And I think it's the one

thing that's left for our discretion.

I don't think there's a lot of motivation

for a state trial judge to set a

summary judgment hearing over Zoom though

because you still have to do it from

the courthouse, right?

So it's not like you can do that from

your vacation home and Telluride or

something like that.

I was thinking particularly about

former Judge Roy Ferguson comes to mind

because he was hearing cases in these

vast counties and he had to even change a

time zone to go from one county

to another in one instance.

So that seems like that's maybe in those

instances a good example of a good use

case for Zoom.

But I totally understand if a Travis

County or any other county judge doesn't

want to offer Zoom hearings if it

doesn't really meet their need.

I mean, we tend to ... The Travis County

rule is basically if both sides agree,

you can just set it on Zoom on your own.

Before I was doing this with y'all today,

I had three hearings by Zoom and they

were just set because the parties agreed

to have them by Zoom.

We're pretty open to it,

but I do know a lot of judges who

really feel strongly ... I mean,

even some of my fellow judges

don't love it. Here's the thing,

I think Zoom works fine for

certain types of hearings.

It's not ideal for others. Some people

just like the in- person experience.

I don't really know that you gain or

lose a whole lot, if I'm being honest,

but it's just maybe

better lifestyle choice.

No, I think that makes sense.

We've kind of talked about Travis

County and summary judgments.

Has Travis County decided what it's

going to do post this new rule and how

they're going to transition

away from central docket,

what that's going to look like?

So we're going to pilot program for

the summary judgments and it kind of is

playing out in how we're going to do

all this because they're all coming

together at the same time.

So again, I don't think ...

And I've heard Justice Lehrman

speak on this recently too.

They did not eliminate

centralized docketing systems.

What they did was they put a new rule

in place under Texas Rule of Civil

Procedure 330E and the rules of judicial

administration that said judges will be

responsible for their dockets.

So that's why I'm saying it's

more tied to accountability now.

We're working on our rules

under the government code.

The local administrative judge is

also responsible for the local rules,

which is another great thing and

why no one really wants this job.

It's terrible. And so we're working

on that. It's a lot of work. I mean,

I think what happens now is people

come to me and request that all

their settings, that they

get assigned to one judge,

right? It doesn't matter what

court number it's filed in,

you got to ask the local administrative

judge to basically be for one judge

setting. And then I

assign it out to a judge.

What the big change is going to

be, and we're already doing it.

I'll just tell you, it's not a

secret. It's not a state secret.

If you have a pending case in Travis

County, you've already experienced this.

The individual court judge

is deciding that, right?

So rather than asking Judge Meacham

whether a case that's filed in the 459

or the 200th can have a special setting,

you're just going to ask that judge and

you're going to ask that judge if they

want to keep that case for all things

going forward or if they don't.

We're in a transition time because we

can still share benches and we're all

going to be responsible for our own cases.

We know that. But to an extent,

we're still going to keep a hub system

because we think it works for us and we

like it, but we are going to maintain

the responsibility of our cases.

And so if you wanted a special setting

and you thought your case was high

conflict or you thought

your case was complex,

you'll need to go directly to that judge.

Since we're in a transitional time,

you're still company to me because

that's what the local rules still say.

But in my letters when I'm assigning

them, I'm basically just saying,

"You asked for one judge, that

case is filed in the 459th,

and you're going to get that 459th

judge." We're also doing a lot more

transfers. You're going to see that

the entire time I've been here,

we've not once done an

intra-Travis County civil

case transfer, because when you

have a centralized docketing system,

why would you? But now we're going

to have to do a lot more transfers.

Of course, as I was just telling you

earlier, that involves the clerk's office.

It involves a third party vendor.

It involves several humans.

And so I'm sure a lot of mistakes are

going to get made because it's a lot of

additional work, but we've

already gone through that process.

I think for anybody who's noted if they

had a current setting of like one judge,

they're already getting those letters

now and they're saying this case has been

transferred to that judge

and assigned to that judge.

So that's how we're handling it.

I mean, there's a lot more to do.

That's not the only thing we're

going to do, but just so you know,

we're all going to run our own

dockets. We already did that.

We already have hybrid dockets.

We already have a submission docket

that goes to us directly for a lot of

different types of cases. We're just

going to basically use that process as a

more robust process to keep

responsibility of cases.

And then we'll still

use the central docket,

hopefully for small dollar cases,

the general work of the dockets,

the family court cases where

all the associate judges are,

at least that's the plan.

And I think based on hearing

Justice Lerman talk recently,

I think she thinks that's okay because

she's gone about in Travis County circles

and talked at a lot of CLEs about how

we can still run a central docket.

We just all have to be

responsible for our own cases.

So my hope is that's going to do it

because I wasn't given a bunch of FTEs,

employees to make it work and I wasn't

given a lot of money to make all the

changes.

So I'm trying to make kind of the simplest

changes and hope that's enough. We've

hired a lawyer to help us.

We have Steve McConico and Ken and Wooten

who are helping us work with our local

rules and try to make those better and

to give us some extension of time to

draft them because we've got to redraft

everything to make it work under their

new rules of judicial administration.

I hope that makes sense.

If you have questions about

it, I'm happy to answer.

Those.

So there is the mechanism in the order

that provides for an extension of time.

So Travis County is already

planning to seek one.

We sent during the comment period already

a letter that told them we're going to

seek one and we're definitely

going to seek one officially.

Gotten some indication that maybe

they're not that inclined to give us one,

which is disappointing.

I'm going to do my best,

but I've got to redraft rules that have

basically been in place for 50 years

that have been written and agreed

to by a hundred judges over time.

And I'm going to have to do it in three

months. When the last time it was done,

it took about a year and a half.

So it could be a challenge.

And that's why I'm hoping that these

changes that we've already made, Todd,

are going to be helpful and that we're

going to show them we've already tried

our best to kind of make the changes we

can make now to be responsible for the

cases filed in our court numbers. And I

hope that'll buy us some time to try and

get all these local rules in place.

The last thing I would just ask about

generally is just looking at the text of

amended rule 330, it was

reported in the media, "Oh,

the central dockets are

doomed everywhere." And I

read the text of it and I

said, nowhere in this amendment

does it say the word central docket.

And so I look at it and

it's like, well, okay,

it looks like it's a significant tweak

potentially to how my home county

district courts are going to have to

handle things, but I don't know. I mean,

am I reading that right?

It seems like it's much more

of an incremental adjustment

than just a complete

overhaul. I.

Totally think that's correct,

but I have hired a lawyer

to help me kind of ...

So I want to say, I agree with you,

right? That's how I read it too.

I think it pretty clearly reads that way.

But then I got in the same reaction

you had when I read a couple news

articles and I was like,

"That's not really what it says." And

so I've seen Justice Lierman actually

speak on this topic and she's answered

questions that that's not what it does

either. And so I think we all

understand on the sitting judges here,

it's voluntary. We were already

kind of dealing with that, right?

One judge wanted out

and we said, "Go ahead,

leave." They took the other tactic in

Bexar County when a couple judges wanted

out and they said they couldn't leave.

This rule definitely then makes clear

that participation in any sort of

centralized docketing system is voluntary.

100% it says that.

So any judge who doesn't want to

be part of it doesn't have to be.

I already thought that was the rule,

which is why in Travis County when

one judge wanted out, we were like,

"Okay." So I felt pretty strongly

that that already existed,

but it now definitely exists.

Beyond that, like I said,

we're making these tweaks that are

each individual judge is going to

decide whether a case is complex or high

conflict and whether they assign it to

themselves for all matters in the

case or whether they allow the court

administrator and his staff to assign

it on more of a master calendar system.

I think we all understand that we're

all going to have to be with our summary

judgments. We're going to have to

manage our own summary judgments.

We may not have to hear them all, but

we have to manage them all. And by that,

I mean, I am looking at every 201st

summary judgment that is filed,

every single one. And I am deciding

whether I hear it by submission,

whether I hear it, or whether I

set it on the master calendar.

And then a judge is kind of going from

there if I set it on the master calendar.

But I get this, we're capable

of doing it. It's a lot of work.

I'm not going to lie. It's a lot of

work, but it's all a lot of work.

And we're really committed in

Travis County to access to justice.

Laura Livingston who came before me and

John Dietz and Gene Muir and all the

judges who sat with us,

they were really dedicated to the idea

of this isn't court system for the rich

and the fancy. It's not just

for the tall building lawyers,

so it's also for them. It's for everybody

who needs a hearing and everybody who

needs their dispute heard

and justice administered.

And we really believe that

the central docket is really,

it almost democratizes courts and

makes them more open for everybody.

And we really want to keep to that

idea because even in this time of great

judicial stress and pressure,

we really still want to remember the

mission and the mission is access to

justice and fair and just courts.

And we want to keep that up.

And we work well together,

we collaborate well,

and the judges in Travis County want to

keep going forward like we have been to

the best that we can continue

to keep that mission in mind.

So glad y'all are doing that.

And thanks for all of this.

This has been super interesting and I

think kind of a helpful practice tip for

people who practice in central docket

counties and not, frankly. As we wrap up,

it's kind of our tradition to

ask for a tip or a war story.

I don't know if you have one in mind

that you want to share in our kind of

closing minutes here.

I mean, my practice tip in Travis County

and really all across the state is,

and again, what I said is true.

I think that we really are dedicated

to trying to keep our courts as open as

they can. But I want to say to

the lawyers that you're listening,

because this is my chance. We're

asking for your help. I mean,

I really do think that judges in this

moment aren't particularly persuasive with

the legislature, but I do think

it's possible that lawyers could be.

A lot of the key members of the House and

a lot of the key members of the Senate

are your brothers and sisters in the bar.

And I really think that they might be

persuaded that this summary judgment rule

and that some of these continuance rules,

some of these kind of imposed

deadlines aren't helping

lawyers and their clients get just

outcomes. And so if you could take that

message back to your

organizations and just say,

"Maybe we need to explain."

Don't help judges, but help us.

Help us be better lawyers for our clients

and help us give them good advice and

get them outcomes and hearings that

they need to have because we don't want

courts that are just about data. We

want courts that are about justice.

And some of these rules really haven't

allowed us to do that recently.

That's a really good one. Judge Meacham,

we're so thankful for you joining us

today, taking time out of your afternoon.

And I know this is going to

be an interesting episode

for not just the appellate

geeks like us,

but folks that practice in our county

and really need to know what's up. All.

Right. Thank y'all so

much. I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to the

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