Submitted herein is the seventh annual report produced by the Administrative Office of State Courts.
I am proud to report that the state courts have reversed the pattern of growing backlogs and lengthening delays that had been troubling us in recent years. Despite the fact that the number of cases brought to the courts has continued to generally increase, both the number of cases awaiting final disposition and the average time taken to dispose of these cases have been reduced in 1978. Each court has developed new procedures and systems to increase its rate of dispositions, and this progress has been achieved without additional judgeships in any court. Our judges and all court employees have responded to the problem of increasing caseloads with resourcefulness and commitment that has now met this challenge. In the sections of this report on each of the courts and in the statistics on the last pages, the progress made in meeting those goals is described in more detail
