Why does it take so long to resolve civil cases in both federal and state courts?
Even though approximately 95 to 97 percent of civil cases settle before trial, they still take a long time to get to that point of agreement.
The average federal civil case takes 2 years and 7 months before trial. In state courts the average time before trial is two years, with the time extending even longer for complex cases.
One of the reasons for long delays is the complicated nature of many of the lawsuits and the fact that multiple parties and multiple claims are usually packaged into one case to be unraveled by a judge or a jury.
The more complex the case, the longer it usually takes during the “Discovery” period. Discovery is the multi-pronged process by which parties to a civil suit try to gain information from the other parties prior to trial.
Discovery takes many forms but often starts with requests by both the plaintiff and defendant for production of documents in the possession of the other party. These are usually key records and sometimes can be a few pages but can be up to warehouses full of documents.
Then the parties usually swap “Interrogatories.” Those are written questions to be answered by a party, in writing and under oath. There may be multiple sets of interrogatories.
Civil cases also permit “Depositions” of the parties to the lawsuit or any witness who may testify. A deposition is the oral taking a witness’s testimony under oath prior to the trial.
Depositions can be used in lieu of testimony at a trial or can also just be done for pure discovery purposes. In most civil cases, there are multiple depositions done by both sides.
Although discovery usually aides in bringing about settlement of cases, it prolongs the time that a case is pending in court.
Join retired judges Gayle Williams-Byers and Thomas Hodson as they explore why civil cases take so long on this new edition of Next Witness…Please.

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order trying to eliminate cashless bail in Washington D.C. and in other parts of the country with alleged high crime rates.
However, many states have had a cashless bail option that has worked well over decades. States set their own criteria for what judges may consider in ordering a bond and what kind of bail may be set by a court.
There are significant questions of whether Trump has the power to do so since bonds are determined by individual judges based on individual defendants and set criteria that must be considered.
The concept of bail and bond for people arrested for a criminal charge is often controversial and many people do not understand how judges decide what form of bond to use and the total costs of being released from custody prior to trial.
It is predominant in both federal and state jurisdictions that bond should not be a pretrial punishment because defendants, under the U.S. Constitution, are presumed innocent until they may be proven guilty in court.
Instead, bond is designed to protect the public and to assure the defendant’s presence at each stage of the judicial proceeding.
Both state and federal judges must consider certain guidelines in determining the kind and amount of bond to set.
Several of the considerations include the past record of the defendant, the defendant’s propensity for violence and whether the defendant is a flight risk.
Notably some defendants have been held in jail either without bond or with high bonds because it is feared that they would flee the jurisdiction of the court. Such is the case with music mogul Sean Diddy Combs on his sex trafficking and prostitution charges.
Defendants may also be held if the court fears that they might intimidate possible witnesses prior to trial.
In this episode of Next Witness…Please, retired judges Gayle Williams-Byers and Thomas Hodson examine considerations a judge must consider in setting a pretrial bond.
They also outline some of the various forms of bond from cash bond to cashless bail. They also discuss property bonds, bonding companies, and the concept of house arrest as a form of bond.

As President Donald Trump fends off critics of his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking of minors’ case, new attention is swirling around Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted as a conspirator in 2022.
She has been interrogated for a day and a half by Trump’s former defense attorney and now Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
She has been subpoenaed to testify before the House Oversight Committee.
She has filed a sudden appeal of her conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, and she has been transferred to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas as she serves her 20-year sentence for sex trafficking of minors.
At the center of this Maxwell maelstrom are legal terms that many people do not understand such as “immunity,” “limited immunity,” “absolute immunity,” “clemency,” “pardon” and “commutation.”
What do these terms mean, in everyday language?
For example, Maxwell was given “limited immunity” to talk with Deputy Attorney General Blanche.
Her defense attorney has demanded that she receive “immunity” before she testifies before Congress. And Maxwell’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court concerns whether she was immune from prosecution by an earlier Epstein agreement with the federal authorities.
Meanwhile, her attorney has said that she would cooperate fully with the government if she received “clemency” from President Trump in the form of either a “pardon” or a “commutation” of her sentence.
Retired judges Gayle Williams Byers and Thomas Hodson break down these terms into understandable bites on this episode of their podcast Next Witness…Please.
They delve into legal strategies in play and talk about what might happen as this legal drama continues to unfold.