Well, it’s official, at least here in the Garden State. The pandemic has sent the litigation backlog for family law cases (divorce and child custody) into the figurative stratosphere. As reported by the New Jersey Law Journal, the current backlog for family law matters has increased by 128% between March 2020 and March 2021. That’s a lot of “conscious decoupling” gone bad. At this slow rate of adjudication, unhappy spouses may want to consider reconciliation or possibly separate bedrooms. The SDL can’t solve everyone’s problems.

But for civil personal injury cases the backlog (as reported by the New Jersey Law Journal) has seen a growth rate of 46% in the March 2020 to March 2021 timeframe. Interestingly, there was also mention of strong complaints from plaintiffs’ counsel that defense attorneys and insurers had stopped seeking to settle cases given the expanding timeframe for lawsuits. However, this has not been the SDL’s experience or the experience of many of my colleagues on the defense-side. In fact, we have increased our number of settled cases, especially when a plaintiff’s counsel is willing to factor in backlog and the slow process of the court system into his or her demand.  

At this point, I would not describe the amount of “reasonable plaintiff lawyers” in this pandemic as amounting to herd status. Yet, you can tell when an adversary has spoken to his or her client about the uncertain conditions and unique obstacles that still govern this practice during these unprecedented times. This SDL believes that this type of communication provides a valuable service to all litigants and the overwhelmed court system.