Five change management must-do’s for court leaders

Courts are designed to be stable institutions. Stability protects fairness, consistency, and public confidence, values that matter in the judiciary. Those same values can make change difficult, though—even when the status quo is clearly failing the people courts are meant to serve. 

And yet today’s court leaders are operating in an environment that no longer tolerates slow adaptation. Caseloads are more complex, resources are tighter, technological risks are mounting, and public expectations for access and transparency have risen sharply. At the same time, the need to safeguard judicial independence, due process, and the integrity of proceedings introduces constraints that private-sector change models simply do not account for. The result is a leadership challenge that is often underestimated: how to modernize court operations without undermining the very principles that underpin the judiciary.  

The most effective court leaders understand that judges, clerks, justice partners, and the public each experience change differently. Acknowledging the gap between merely issuing a directive and achieving adoption, these leaders approach change as a disciplined, people-centered effort that respects institutional culture while still confronting hard realities about performance, risk, and service to the public.  

In our work helping state and local judiciaries implement new technologies, new ways of working, and new systems, five broad actions have consistently emerged as must-do’s. Together, they can make the difference between change that sticks and change that stalls out. 

1. Define the problem before you present a solution. 
Court leaders often feel pressure to implement a solution before there is shared agreement on the problem it’s meant to solve. A new case management system, a virtual hearing platform, an AI solution, or a reengineered workflow often gets presented as a necessary or even inevitable best practice or modernization move. That abstract framing can undermine adoption. 

Effective court leaders invest time in defining the problem in terms that resonate with those performing the court’s day-to-day work. That means naming pain points: backlogs that force continuances, inconsistent practices that confuse litigants, security risks that threaten continuity of operations, manual processes that pull staff away from higher-value work, and, not least of all, public frustration that erodes trust. 

Just as important, strong leaders clarify boundaries. They are explicit about what the change is not intended to alter: judicial decision-making, due process, ethical obligations, and courtroom authority, for example. This clarity reduces fear and reframes change as support for the court’s core mission rather than an intrusion on it. 

When the problem is clearly defined and broadly understood, the conversation shifts. Judges and staff stop debating whether the change is necessary and start engaging on how to make it work. 

2. Build shared ownership. 
In courts, formal authority can authorize change but can rarely deliver it. Even when administrative leadership or a chief judge approves an initiative, day-to-day adoption depends largely on professional judgment, local practice, and the example set by respected colleagues. That reality makes shared ownership essential at every level. 

Effective court leaders distribute responsibility for change across judicial and administrative roles. They identify respected judges, experienced clerks, and trusted managers who can serve as change champions, not just advisors. These individuals do more than endorse the change; they help shape it, model it, and troubleshoot it in real time. 

Shared ownership requires clear lines of accountability. Courts often form committees or task forces without defining who is responsible for decisions, implementation, and follow-through. Leaders who effectively manage change establish governance structures that answer three questions:  

• Who decides?
• Who implements?
• Who is consulted?

Just as important, ownership must extend beyond internal leadership. Large-scale changes don’t stop at the courthouse; they affect the full continuum of justice partners, including: prosecutors, defense counsel, law enforcement, detention facilities, probation functions, and service providers. If these partners are brought in only after decisions are finalized, resistance often builds. Courts that succeed engage key justice partners early, acknowledge their constraints, and incorporate their operational realities into the solution’s design. 

Finally, shared ownership strengthens legitimacy. When judges hear about a change from respected peers rather than from an administrator, skepticism eases. And when staff see their leaders using new processes themselves, adoption accelerates. Change becomes something the court is doing together, not something being done to it. 

3. Get the messaging right and repeat it relentlessly. 
Messaging is not a soft skill in judicial change management. It is a core leadership function. Court leaders must develop and consistently reinforce a shared narrative that connects modernization to the court’s constitutional role, legal obligations, and public responsibilities. 

Effective messaging does three things well: 

• It links modernization to mission and vision. When messaging is vague or inconsistent, stakeholders fill in the blanks, often assuming the change is driven by cost concerns or politics rather than core purposes such as protecting due process, ensuring timely resolution of cases, improving access for court users, strengthening security, and maintaining public confidence. When modernization is positioned as a way to uphold these values rather than circumvent them, resistance drops. 
• It acknowledges what the solution won’t do. Court leaders build credibility by recognizing the constraints imposed by judicial independence, ethical obligations, and statutory limits. Saying “this change will not affect how judges decide cases” or “this complies with existing rules and safeguards” matters. It signals respect for the institution and reassures stakeholders that core legal principles remain intact. 
• It reaches multiple audiences in multiple places, repeatedly. One announcement is not messaging; it is noise. Courts that manage change effectively reinforce the narrative in judges’ meetings, staff briefings, bench-bar conferences, training sessions, and written guidance. Consistency matters more than polish. When leaders repeat the same message, using the same language, people begin to trust it. 

The most effective court leaders also understand that messaging depends on action as much as words. When leaders adopt new practices, reference the change in decision-making discussions, and reinforce it in everyday interactions, the narrative becomes real. Silence or mixed signals, by contrast, quickly undermine even the best-designed change effort. 

4. Pilot before scaling. 
Pilots with defined goals, timelines, and decision criteria can reduce operational and legal risk and ease uncertainty. Pilots that lack those elements often become open-ended exercises that delay decisions and undermine confidence. 

Effective court leaders pilot change with discipline, posing a set of concrete questions that the pilot is meant to answer and developing a clear scope that defines duration and decision criteria. Leaders should be able to say in advance, “If these outcomes are achieved, we will expand. If they are not, we will revise or stop.” Without that clarity, pilots become open-ended experiments that boost skepticism rather than learning. 

Pilots should also be subjected to real-world conditions. That means conducting the pilot under normal caseload pressures with the participation of judges and staff who will be using the solution in their everyday work. A pilot that works only when tested by volunteers or early adopters in controlled situations is not ready to scale. 

Feedback matters, but evidence matters more. Any assessment of the pilot’s success should depend on both qualitative feedback (from judges, staff, partners, and other stakeholders) and quantitative data (such as error rates, backlog reduction, and case processing time). This combination allows leaders to distinguish between discomfort, which is expected, and true operational risk. 

Finally, court leaders must close the loop. Pilots that end without a clear decision undermine trust and signal hesitation. Leaders should communicate what was learned, what will change, and what happens next, even if the answer is “we are not moving forward.” 

5. Reinforce the change until it becomes the way the court operates. 
Without deliberate reinforcement, even well-designed reforms slowly erode and the organization drifts back to familiar practices. New ways of working need to be woven into the fabric of the institution so that change stops feeling like disruption and starts feeling like progress. 

Reinforcement begins with formal alignment. Policies, rules, standard operating procedures, bench guides, and training materials must incorporate and refer to the new solution. When official documents lag behind practice, mixed signals emerge and staff are left to decide which version of reality to follow. 

Sustaining change also requires knowing which outcomes to measure. Courts have long tracked caseflow and clearance rates, but change leaders may also need to track additional indicators such as adoption rates, consistency across courtrooms, user experience feedback, and operational reliability. These measures can provide early-warning signals that indicate lagging adoption, enabling leaders to intervene with support rather than waiting for failure. 

Leadership behavior is the most powerful reinforcement tool. When judges and administrators consistently use new processes, reference them in meetings, and address drift directly, they legitimize change. When leaders stop paying attention, the organization notices and adjusts accordingly. 

Finally, reinforcement requires continuity planning. Courts experience regular leadership turnover, and change initiatives that live only in people’s memories rarely survive. That makes embedding change into onboarding, continuing judicial education programs, and recurring review forums critical. 

Purpose-driven change 
When change is institutionalized in this way, it can strengthen judicial independence and public trust. The court becomes more resilient, more accessible, and better equipped to deliver justice consistently over time. That is not transformation for its own sake. It is adaptability aligned with purpose.