Hi everybody, its Andy and welcome again to my office in Modesto, California. I'm
an attorney licensed to practice law in California as well as New York. In this
video I'm going to go over the idea of a Case Management Conference in California
state Superior Court, specifically civil cases. So all of those kind of, you know,
conditions and, you know, disqualifiers that I put at the end there, they are
important because if you have a criminal case, for example, this video does not
apply to you. If you are dealing with an appeal situation of any kind, does not
apply to you. If you are dealing with federal court in any way, this video does
not apply to you either. So that might sound like a lot of conditions and a lot
of exclusions. It's actually not that big a deal, I think, because most kind of
typical average run-of-the-mill members of the public, when they file cases of
all, it is going to be in state Superior Court and that, you know, basically is
not covered by any of the exclusions that I've mentioned. So, if you are
outside of California, for example, Superior Court in California is the
court where, like I said, the average person files all their cases. So if it's
a divorce, probate, guardianship, you're adopting a child, if you have a contract
that you've signed with somebody and they're not paying you that's, you know,
where you would file the case. If you saw a doctor and the doctor screwed up and injured you,
medical malpractice, state Superior Court. So a lot of cases are filed in state
Superior Court. Small claims in California, small claims court, is part of
Superior Court so when I talk about filing cases in Superior Court, civil
cases, I'm including small claims in that also. So if you are a lawyer, I'll
describe state Superior Court like this: it is the state trial court in
California of general jurisdiction. If you're not a lawyer, don't worry if you
don't know what that means, but if you are a lawyer, hopefully you remember your
Civil Procedure well enough to know what state trial court of general
jurisdiction is. So, anyway all of that said, imagine it like, imagine a
case management conference like this: the courts, not just, you know, not just in
California, but the courts generally, are going to have new cases filed every day.
Every day -- I mean for lack of a better word -- everyday somewhere somebody's
getting into trouble or disagreements are happening. New cases arise every day.
And I don't know if any of you have ever thought about it, but the thing is cases
generally will finish at a slower rate than which they're filed. So, in other
words, more cases are filed than finish per day. So it's like, it's kind of like that.
So because of this, there is going to be an ever-increasing kind of mound of
cases that the courts are going to be managing. So chaos means -- it should be
fairly obvious, I think -- that chaos and total disarray would result if there was
no system, if there was no protocol or procedure or something, to manage this
ever-growing mound of cases. So that intuition is correct and the protocol,
the procedure, the system that the courts use, the Case Management
Conference is basically one important component of that. So all of that said, a
Case Management Conference basically can be summarized in one word: update. So at
the Case Management Conference what you are basically doing is updating the
court, updating the judge about how your particular case is going. So if you are
representing yourself, this burden unfortunate falls on you. If you're
represented by a lawyer, hopefully your lawyer will be able to take care of this
for you. Don't count on it, though, so the thing is, like, you know, if you are in a
limited scope representation kind of situation, make sure that, you know, Case
Management Conference statements, or sorry, Case Major Conferences rather, are part
of what the lawyer is doing for you. If you don't know what a limited scope
representation is, I have a video on that which I'll link right over here. So, basically,
a Case Management Conference then is a tool by which you update the court, update the
judge on how your case is going and the general expectation that I've seen kind
of having done, you know, countless case management conferences is basically that
the judge will want to see that you have made some progress. If you show up and
say "Judge, I have done nothing on my case at all. I've sat on my hands for four
months," generally not a good idea. Generally the judge
will come down on you fairly hard. So four to six months, for example, like, you
know, basically in terms of timing, once you've filed the case, I personally
would expect to have an update hearing or a Case Management Conference hearing
roughly, you know, four to six months after the case is filed. Obviously
that varies, you know, depending on the county and the judge, the type of case,
budget, all that stuff, but four to six months is my kind of rule of thumb about
when I have to go to an update hearing for cases of mine. So that said, I guess,
one important part of a Case Management Conference that I think a lot of people --
regular, you know, lay people -- representing themselves will forget and actually
lawyers, to be honest with you, will forget about this also, is to file a Case
Management Conference Statement. Now a Case Management Conference Statement,
that terminology can be used specifically or generically. There is
actually a document called a Case Management Conference Statement. The
blank version is a Judicial Council form in California, its form CM-110. Write it up
right over here. I have a video that goes over how to get blank Judicial
Council forms. I'll link it kind of up here. So go ahead and download the CM-110
if that's not something that, you know, you've done, that you need to do. So there
is a specific Case Management Conference Statement, like an actual document called
that that you need to file before you go to a Case Management Conference.
There's also is a, like the idea of updating the judge in writing before you
go to the hearing, there's another thing called a Status Conference Questionnaire
or Status Conference Statement. It is the same kind of idea like, you know, you
basically filling it out to update the judge on what's going on. The terminology
sometimes is used kind of sloppily. Case Management Conferences, there's a state
level forum for that. Status Conference Questionnaires or Status Conference
Statements, when I've seen them, generally have been local forms. So I have another
video -- actually two of them -- on what local forms are and how to get them, etc. I'll go
ahead and link it over here. So go ahead and take a look at that
if you are, like if the terminology you're hearing is Status Conference, Status
Conference. If that's what you're hearing, go ahead and watch that, hopefully
that'll help you. So, but the basic idea regardless of what it's called, case
management, status, something else entirely even, the basic idea is that
there is a type of hearing where you basically go and you update the judge on
what the case, like what's been done, how, how the case is progressing. Generally
that's gonna be several months after the case is filed, but that's going to
depend on what your local rules say. So if you're not familiar with local rules,
I have another video on that, which I'm going to link down to the bottom here
and you should go ahead and check that out because local rules are going to be
very important. And for a Case Management Conference Statements in particular,
they're going to be very important because they specify how soon before the
court hearing you have to file your statement. So the rule of thumb that I
generally go by is something like 15 days. Some counties that I appear in will
have a 15-day local rule. Some counties that I appear in have a 10-day local
rule so if I assume 15, I'm covered both way. Yeah. So, anyway, hopefully all of
that was helpful. A Case Management Conference Statement, you know, the takeaway is
that it's an update hearing. Generally it's going to be fairly short, unless
your particular case has a big problem in it of some kind. A lot of times
people will will think "Oh, the case management conference. We can finish the
case then." Very - I mean, possible, but very, very rare. And a lot of times people will also --
clients and, you know, people that I see in court -- basically will stress out about
the Case Management Conference State, or Case Management Conference also. They'll think
"Oh, my God. I'm going to court. I'm, you know, I need to,
I need to prepare, I need to take the day off work, etc. It's, it's generally
not that, like it's unnecessary to worry about it to that degree, I think,
Unless your case has a humongous problem in it, you generally, like the Case
Management Conference is going to be something fairly routine. It's something
that hopefully should not take more than a few minutes so don't stress out about
it. Other types of hearings are more involved and if you have to stress out,
stress out about those, but Case Management Conference is generally I'm not
terribly complicated. So anyway, hopefully that helped. I run into people who
don't know what Case Management generally is and what a Case Management
Conference is. They think court and, like I said, they, you know, stress out about it or
they forget to go or something. So all of those are bad things. So basically, you
know, hopefully this video helps you kind of, you know, basically enlightens you, I
guess, on what a Case Management Conference is, what it's about, the work
involved, etc. So, anyway, as I always say which I guess based on some of the comments I've
gotten, I don't do terribly well. I tried not to make that too confusing, but the
law sometimes does not lend itself to, you know, extreme simplicity. Yeah, go
ahead and rewind, subscribe, leave me a comment, all of that nice stuff and I
will talk to you guys next time. Thanks.