Greetings, Union Brothers and Sisters,
On March 3, 2025, your 005 Governing Board met with DCSS for our second session, discussing the opening of Department 134. UPE was concerned with the volume of work and highlighted some of the immediate problems that are causing backlogs and hardship. In sum, here are the issues that were shared and discussed with management:
There are no extra Legal Secretary positions, yet Office Specialists are not equipped to fill in the gap.
The Court is now assigning court dates, but this is slowing the process because it impedes the timeline for serving parties. DCSS informed us that the Court handles it because they own the procedure.
The plan of cooperation with the Court (five working days) is not working. Documents are not being returned to DCSS timely.
Hearings being done together are assigned later -- causing Court dates to be rescheduled after they were initially set. Management let us know this is because the Court has its own back-end process.
The new case management system ‘Simpligov’ has been helpful because now there are living fillable documents.
DCSS told the Court not to schedule hearings until five weeks out or later to help offset the volume of work.
Notice of motion form changes.
NERP changes (the forms have been restructured to make processing easier).
Management is trying to figure out how CSOs can do more front-end work to help with the workload.
Receiving two more attorneys in Court Legal.