Alliance bar group seeks warm bodies for this week's judicial candidate evaluation session

I debated long and hard about whether to report on this.

And, for reasons I shall explain, I am not here revealing the name of the Alliance bar group in question.

But this is the third time it's happened---that an Alliance bar group sends an urgent solicitation for anyone willing to spend around three hours or so---with the minimal time committment broken down as follows: Reviewing candidate materials (15-20 minutes), participating via Zoom in the evaluation meeting (c. two hours), and drafting and uploading the evaluation (approximately 30 minutes).

What other qualifications will any volunteers be required to satisfy before they get a direct, and perhaps decisive, say in whether a man or woman gets a chance at judicial service? Aside from a willingness to burn three hours of time?

Apparently... no other qualifications at all. No specific courtroom experience is required. No training. No screening to determine if Volunteer A is the best bosom buddy of Candidate B, or perhaps her sworn adversary, ever since that playground incident in first grade. No screening to determine if Volunteer A hates and loathes all judges, or persons wishing to serve as judges, or whether Volunteer A expects all judges to profess, or at least reliably parrot, whatever political slogans that Volunteer A finds appropriate. Just be sure to log in 15 minutes early so as not to get locked out of the process.

Did I mention that these evaluators, hailed in off the streets like the wedding guests in the Gospel of Matthew, will hold in their hands the fate of whatever unfortunate candidates are brought before the camera for an interview this coming Wednesday night? Because the failure to secure the unanimous approval of each and every one of the 13 members of the Alliance of Bar Associations for Judicial Screening issuing evaluations will be fatal to a candidate's associate judge prospects. Or chances of being slated by the Democratic Party. Or endorsed by the Tribune (if the Tribune has not already been dismembered by March 2022).

And I know I have mentioned this already, but this is the Internet, and repitition is often necessary: This is the third time this has happened.

That I know about.

From this one group.

And now we get to why I will not name the group: There may be other bar groups in the same predicament. This one, at least, is being candid and forthright about its critical shortage of evaluators.

There will be those who decry my publishing this post. Don't I realize that I am undermining confidence in the peer evaluation process by so doing?

Yes, yes, I do. And I am very unhappy about it.

I have nothing better to offer than peer review. No real alternative. And this post will give aid and comfort to those who insist that peer review is only a popularity contest, or a scam, or a cynical way to perfume a partisan political process. Or to those who would "just run" and avoid peer evaluation no matter what. I profoundly dislike giving the naysayers this ammunition.

If anyone were to ask me---which you may be assured no one has---I would suggest that any group who finds itself short of trained, experienced evaluators for any given candidate session simply abstain from participation. For this session. Perhaps for the entire AJ process, or for the upcoming primary. Work instead to build up numbers, and give the new recruits some training and some appropriate criteria by which to judge the men and women who want to serve on the bench.

So what if Candidate A is screened by only six or seven of the 13 Alliance members, while Candidate B, evaluated on a different date, gets ratings from 10? Just as long as the evaluations are meaningful and thoughtful and based on something other than the White Sox having played a day game Wednesday so the night is free for someone to take a stab at playing evaluator!

I suspect that a lot of bar groups are hurting right now because of the COVID-19 closures. Not only were many lawyers denied the opportunity to make a living, those that were making a living weren't necessarily---weren't probably---making it where they ordinarily did. And, even without commuting time, seemingly everything has taken longer to do in the last 15 months than it ever did. A lot of extracurriculars have suffered. (Recall, if you will, that the CBA scaled back its evaluation reports for the 2020 retention election because of Covid. Even the biggest groups had numbers problems.)

It's OK, I believe, to acknowledge that, thanks to the coronavirus, bar groups are not operating at heretofore accustomed strentgths. We always knew some groups had more evaluators than other -- long before Covid there were occasional documented instances of persons at Alliance hearings covering for more than one Alliance group. I think fair-minded people can agree that this is a weakness in the system which can only be addressed through recruitment and training. But pretending that a group can still function as an evaluating group when it has to dragoon evaluators in with 11th hour emails does more harm to the process than good.

Because you know, if I know about something, others know about it, too. Even if I chose to sit on the story.

Which I no longer can.