Page 13 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2023

What’s Next?24
The short answer: big challenges ... that I am confident we can handle.
Employee Recruitment and Re- tention. Our vacancy rate consis- tently runs at 15–20%, and we had a turnover of almost 50% during CO- VID-19. We lose employees to other State agencies and to the private sec- tor because of our salary structure, and we lost employees who decided, after COVID-19, that they wanted to work at home. Human resources are our most valuable resources, and we are so fortunate to have such dedicated, hardworking, and loyal employees. We recognize that stress from the vacant positions, the volume of the work, and vicarious trauma take a toll, and we are grateful for the sup- port of the Chief Justice and the Ad- ministrative Office of the Courts as we work to address this problem.
Technology. Technology, as we all know, moves at lightning speed. It is a real challenge (and expensive) to stay current. The Judicial Informa- tion Center (JIC) works tirelessly to keep every court’s courtroom tech- nology in working order and up to date — a non-stop, time-consuming, and labor-intensive endeavor. And this is only one facet of JIC’s work.
We appreciate JIC’s efforts and are grateful that technology is high on the judicial branch’s priority list. At some point, we will have e-filing for criminal cases. Implementing this will require significant effort, time, and money, but imagine the benefits.25
Realtime Court Reporters. We are experiencing a shortage of real- time court reporters. This is an issue for state courts around the country, and it’s not going to go away. Giv- en this, we have to rethink how we schedule and how to best deploy the small number of reporters we still have. Preserving the court record
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