Survey invites attorneys

Invitations to participate in the 2010 Judicial Performance Evaluation were mailed Monday to all attorneys licensed to practice in Nevada and having business addresses in Clark County.

The Review-Journal has sponsored the survey every two years since 1992. Attorneys are asked to evaluate judges as "more than adequate," "adequate" or "less than adequate" on several job-related criteria, and they are asked whether the judge should be retained by voters. Results are published in the Review-Journal and are cited in campaigns for judicial office, by judges themselves if the results are favorable and by opponents if they are not.

Besides rating the justices, attorneys are invited to write short paragraphs explaining what a particular judge does well or might do better. The comments are anonymous, and a few are published at the Review-Journal's discretion; all are provided privately to the judges and justices about whom they are made. If a judge feels some valid point is raised in the anonymous feedback, the judge often will modify his or her behavior to address it.

Jurists rated in the survey include Nevada Supreme Court justices, all judges of Clark County District Court including the Family Court, and justices of the peace and municipal judges in Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas.

Ron Parraguirre, chief justice of the Nevada Supreme Court, urged all eligible lawyers to participate.

"For nearly two decades," he wrote to the Review-Journal, "the judicial survey has provided the opportunity for members of the bar to offer important feedback to the judges and relate information to the public regarding judicial performance.

"The information we receive is valuable in a number of respects: it can demonstrate certain systemic issues and difficulties that attorneys encounter that may not be otherwise apparent, and, the information allows individual judges and justices to gauge the perception of their performance and make appropriate adjustments.

"The judiciary invites constructive comment, and I would urge all attorneys to complete the surveys pertaining to the particular jurists before whom they have appeared within the last two years."

Thomas Mitchell, editor of the Review-Journal, said the survey was created as a tool for voters who otherwise have little practical information about judges at election time.

"Some of the most important votes citizens can cast are for our judges and justices, but most of us have little contact with the courts or lawyers and have little personal knowledge of what makes a good judge. The Review-Journal started doing this 18 years ago because we needed to help our readers with better information about sitting judges, and we created the judicial survey, asking lawyers who have personal knowledge about our judges to evaluate each one every election year. It has proven to be a reliable tool, as judges and justices who fared poorly in the survey tend to fare poorly in the election," Mitchell said.

The survey is conducted electronically. Each licensed attorney with a Clark County address, identified by the State Bar of Nevada, should receive by surface mail this week an envelope from the Review-Journal, containing a unique pin number and password to access a temporary survey Web site.

The attorney opens the Web site and fills out an electronic questionnaire about the judges and justices with whom the lawyer has professional experience. The attorney may stop midway and complete the task later, if he or she uses the same computer, but must complete it by March 8. Attorneys are asked to rate the judges as soon as they can to avoid last-minute overloads on the survey computer.

Nancy Downey, president of Downey Research Associates, arranges and supervises technical aspects of the survey, interprets the data and prepares the detailed report on every judge's ratings. While the Review-Journal does stories based upon the most interesting or important findings, the complete report is published on the Review-Journal Web site.

The 2008 survey results can be found at: http://www.lvrj.com/hottopics/in_depth/judges/judgingthejudges2008.html.

Contact A.D. Hopkins at adhopkins@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0270.