As I mentioned in an earlier post, Nevada is launching a pilot program to consolidate business court cases before judges dedicated to adjudicating business court cases. This is the Administrative Order creating the pilot program.

The pilot offers a chance to generate data for the next legislative session and to see how many judges will be necessary to carry Nevada’s caseload. This reorganization functionally creates a dedicated business court by dedicating two judges to handle business court matters exclusively. (Fully shifting to an appointed and dedicated system will require a constitutional amendment to pass the next legislative session and a public referendum.)

The Order provides than to “pilot a new Business Court model, Judge Maria Gall (Dept. 9), and Judge Joe Hardy (Dept. 15), will be designated full Business Court Judges.”

Business Court cases assigned to most other judicial Departments “shall be evenly and randomly reassigned to Departments 9 and 15.” The Business Court Cases currently with Department 13, Judge Denton, will remain with Department 13. The non-Business Court cases that were being handled by Departments 9 and 15 are also being reassigned. The changes will exclusively dedicate Judges Gall and Hardy to Business Court matters.

Consolidating Business Court cases before judges dedicated to handling Business Court Matter should substantially improve the pace of adjudication. I previously discussed adjudication times under the prior system. In 2024, the average time to adjudication for a business court case was 1,228 days. Part of the challenge has been that judges handling multiple dockets must continually rotate between Business Court and other civil and criminal matters. For example, a court might pause stockholder litigation to meet a Speedy Trial Act deadline for someone accused of shoplifting from a 7-11. This pilot program will show whether two dedicated judges can efficiently manage the vast majority of the Business Court caseload.

Exactly how many Business Court judges Nevada needs will be easier to determine when judges exclusively handle business court matters. Other jurisdictions with larger populations run business courts with just a few capable judges. For example, Miami’s Complex Business Litigation Division has two judges. The Miami area has about 6 million people. The Vegas Valley has roughly 2.5 million people and Nevada’s overall population now stands at about 3.2 million.

Although this should be good for business court adjudication times, I expect reduced docket fragmentation may also improve adjudication times for other disputes. By allowing three other judges to completely shed Business Court matters, the reorganization frees them to reallocate that time to other dockets.

Research on multitasking tends to show that it’s hard to switch between different tasks and it generally slows people down. Some research shows that “shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40 percent of someone’s productive time.”