A shortfall in this year’s congressional appropriations is significantly impacting the Judiciary’s ability to ensure security at courthouses at a time of rising threats to federal judges and impairing efforts to provide critical legal defense services to people who can’t afford to hire lawyers.

Those concerns were outlined in an April 10 letter (PDF) to appropriators in Congress by Judge Robert J. Conrad, Jr., Judicial Conference secretary, and Judge Amy J. St. Eve, chair of the Conference’s Budget Committee.

The continuing resolution enacted in March provides the Judicial Branch with $8.6 billion, $391 million less than the Judicial Conference had requested. The branch had requested exceptions to the governmentwide funding freeze imposed by the resolution, but the requests were excluded in the final legislation. As a result, many of the Judiciary’s accounts are frozen for a second consecutive year, leaving them operating at fiscal year 2023 levels.

One of them is the $750 million Court Security program.

“We have significant concerns about our ability to properly secure federal courthouses given current resource levels,” Conrad and St. Eve wrote. “Consecutive years of flat security funding comes at a time when threats against federal judges and courthouses are escalating, making this situation unsustainable in the current environment.”

Currently, 67 judges involved in high profile cases are receiving enhanced online security screening services provided by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the U.S. Marshals Service, which is also operating at reduced staffing levels as a result of the funding freeze. In some instances, the Marshals Service has had to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure the safety of judges, the letter said.

The Judiciary’s Defender Services program was also significantly underfunded for fiscal year 2025. It received $1.45 billion, $129 million below the necessary level. A hiring freeze already in place was extended until at least the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. And the Judiciary will have to defer a projected $92 million in payments to private defense attorneys, who are appointed by the courts under the Criminal Justice Act to represent defendants who can’t afford to retain counsel.

“These are payments for constitutionally required legal work that has already been performed but that will be left unpaid for months simply because we cannot afford to make the payments,” Conrad and St. Eve wrote, noting that some attorneys may decline to accept future appointments as a result.

A shortage of qualified defense attorneys willing to take cases could create “unlawful delays in the constitutional right of defendants to a speedy and fair trial,” they said. 

The freeze is also having an adverse impact on maintaining necessary staff levels in probation and pretrial services, as well as in clerks of court offices. 

“Some clerks of court offices report they cannot sufficiently staff public counters to assist individuals seeking court information or help with filing,” the judges said, also predicting that “probation offices will have to focus limited supervision resources on the most violent, high-risk offenders, leaving low-to-mid risk offenders with less supervision, increasing the risk of offenders committing new crimes.”

As the Judiciary prepares to submit its budget request for fiscal year 2026, Conrad and St. Eve emphasized the need for congressional appropriators to provide adequate funding to help the Judiciary mitigate some of the adverse impacts of the recent appropriations shortfalls. Their letter was sent to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over Judiciary funding.

1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Will diversity policy affect hiring of independent…

Diversity

Will diversity policy affect hiring of independent monitor in Boeing case? Federal judge wants to know

By Debra Cassens Weiss

October 17, 2024, 11:11 am CDT

A federal judge considering a proposed plea agreement between Boeing and the U.S. Department of Justice wants to know how diversity, equity and inclusion policies will influence the selection of a monitor to assess compliance.

In an Oct. 15 order, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ordered briefing on the issue, report Reuters and the Associated Press.

Reed wants to know “what role Boeing’s internal focus on DEI impacts its compliance and ethics obligations,” the order said.

He also wants the government to explain how its diversity policy “furthers compliance and ethics efforts” and how it will be used in selecting a monitor.

The AP described Reed as “a favorite of conservative lawyers looking for a court to hear their lawsuits against policies issued by Democratic presidents.” He is an appointee of former President George W. Bush.

The deal before O’Connor calls for Boeing to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States for misleading the Federal Aviation Administration about a new flight-control system. The technology allegedly played a role in plane crashes that killed 346 people.

The deal calls for Boeing to pay a $487.2 million fine, with credit for $243.6 million Boeing previously paid under a deferred prosecution agreement, according to a July government court filing. The deal also calls for Boeing to spend at least $455 million on compliance and safety programs over a three-year probationary period. The monitor would be chosen by the government with feedback from Boeing.

The AP spoke with John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School, about Reed’s inquiry into DEI policies.

“I do not see this as a strategic move but as a detour motivated by the court’s skepticism of DEI,” Coffee said.

Hat tip to the Volokh Conspiracy, which linked to the order in a post by Paul Cassell, a professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law.

Cassell represents families of crash victims and thinks that the deal fails to hold Boeing accountable for the deaths.

Ari Kaplan recently spoke with Chantelle Jalland, a London-based managing director for digital investigations and discovery with J.S. Held, a global consulting company.

They discussed how the approach to digital investigations and e-discovery has evolved over the past decade, the types of litigation matters in which alternative legal services are the most appropriate, and how generative AI will affect digital investigations and discovery.

Ari Kaplan: Tell us about your background and your role at J.S. Held.

Chantelle Jalland: I qualified as a solicitor in Australia and moved to the U.K. about 15 years ago. For the last 11½ years, I worked at Herbert Smith Freehills in its e-discovery department, serving teams in London, New York and Sydney, and helping them work more seamlessly and efficiently. I moved to J.S. Held in November 2023, and a big part of my role is to grow the digital investigations and discovery practice in EMEA by focusing on a wider range of matters with law firms and corporate legal departments.

Ari Kaplan: How has the approach to digital investigations and e-discovery evolved over the past decade?

Chantelle Jalland: It has changed significantly. Aside from eliminating most paper files in e-discovery, it is much easier to persuade lawyers to use technology-assisted review as a standard practice. They are more aware of litigation support practices and recognize the value of these tools. The question has changed from whether to use them to which tools to deploy, so our advice is
becoming more complex as we concentrate on the process and aligning the technology to optimize it.

Ari Kaplan: How do the differences in the litigation processes between the U.K. and the U.S., among other jurisdictions, affect the e-discovery approach in each region?

Chantelle Jalland: I think that the processes between Australia and the U.S. are much more distinct than those between the U.K. and the U.S., which have several similarities. Of course, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in the U.S. differ from the Civil Procedure Rules in the U.K., but fundamentally, people want to cooperate. A decade ago, there were more tactics in the U.K. associated with disclosure, but today, the parties recognize the value of collaboration and cooperation. When it comes to production, the focus is on risk reduction, a shared concern in the U.S. and the U.K. In Australia, however, they apply bizarre methods in disclosure exercises by converting all ingested data to PDF versions, which materially increases the total volume of data, which can be quite wasteful and leads to concerns about sustainability. Data storage costs money, and legal teams should minimize the set to what they need to reduce risk and expense. There is a shift in Australia, which is issuing production protocols that are more consistent with the processes in the U.K. and the U.S.

Ari Kaplan: For what types of litigation matters are alternative legal services the appropriate solution?

Chantelle Jalland: I cannot think of any matter where you should not consider the use of alternative legal services. They can save so much time and money that they can be a transformative option in litigation of any size.

Ari Kaplan: Have client expectations of legal technology deployment changed?

Chantelle Jalland: Yes, particularly since most clients are technologically savvy and are very familiar with many of the tools available to them. They are also demanding more value for their money and are thinking much more about the pathway to an outcome, rather than the number of billable hours required to obtain a given result. We need to approach litigation more efficiently and adjust our strategies to meet or exceed heightened client expectations. If you can provide answers more quickly and cheaply, or more effectively and efficiently than a peer, you will obtain a competitive advantage. It is, therefore, imperative to develop creative ways to deliver complex services, and technology is central to that paradigm because skilled teams can distinguish which technology to apply to what problems.

Ari Kaplan: How do you see generative AI affecting digital investigations and discovery?

Chantelle Jalland: Generative AI will affect both the e-discovery process itself through integrations within all of the common platforms and by changing the way lawyers address litigation. It is already part of or being integrated into a number of the leading document review platforms, so over the next year, we will see more experimentation and deployment. As it becomes more mainstream, we will see less reluctance to deploy it in a broad range of cases. Everyone seems to be using it in some form, and most people recognize common limitations, so we need not persuade teams to test it. It will become another tool but not a replacement for talented practitioners. As more tools help summarize case judgments and documents, it will free professionals to work on the more interesting aspects of their matters, rather than time-consuming tasks for which AI is better suited. Instead, they will leverage verified AI-generated summaries and concentrate on creative strategy and dynamic advocacy.

---

Listen to the complete interview at Reinventing Professionals.

Ari Kaplan regularly interviews leaders in the legal industry and in the broader professional services community to share perspective, highlight transformative change and introduce new technology at his blog and on iTunes.

---

This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.