The Arkansas Bar Association said it had several concerns about running an advertisement in its Arkansas Lawyer magazine for JudicialRatings.com. Sam Perroni (top right), board president of the American Foundation for Judicial Accountability, says "the site is not designed for popularity contests."
A website set up by a North Little Rock nonprofit hopes to improve the job performance of Arkansas judges by asking attorneys and litigants to rate them anonymously.
The American Foundation for Judicial Accountability opened the rating window on Aug. 3 and it will continue to Dec. 1 for attorneys, Sam Perroni, president of the board, said in an email response to questions from Arkansas Business. Perroni has been an Arkansas attorney for about 40 years.
Arkansas attorneys can rate Arkansas Supreme Court justices, Arkansas Court of Appeals judges, state circuit judges and U.S. District Court judges and magistrates that they have had experience with, he said.
Questions on the website will include “Does the judge follow the law?” and “Does the judge favor either party in a civil case?” Attorneys can choose answers that range from “never” to “always.”
Attorneys, though, can rate a judge only once a year. If they try to rate a judge more than once, the site will reject the attempt, Perroni said.
“The site is not designed for popularity contests,” he said. “It is designed to grade judicial performance by attorneys who have had experience with a judge.”
The rating also will be open to anyone who has been a party in a case before a state circuit judge or U.S. District Court judges or magistrates.
Questions for litigants include “Do you feel the judge in your case was fair?” and “Was the judge courteous to you?”
The litigants can rate the judges throughout the year, although this year’s responses will cover less than a full year.
Perroni said that after the ratings are finished for the year, a separate report will be prepared by the foundation’s independent third-party administrator.
The results of the attorneys’ answers will be released by the AFJA by Jan. 31 each year. And the report based on the litigants’ responses will be released on March 31.
The results will be posted on its website, JudicialRating.com, its Facebook page and released to the media, legal associations and judges.
“We hope to give the Bar and the public a tool to measure the job performance of judges, and that the judges will in turn learn how to improve their work or learn from judges who have mastered the job,” Perroni said.
Spreading the Word
Perroni said one of the biggest challenges so far has been spreading the word about the website.
The foundation tried to run an advertisement in the Arkansas Bar Association’s Arkansas Lawyer, but Perroni said that the ad was rejected earlier this month.
The Arkansas Bar Association told Arkansas Business in an email response that it had “several concerns” about the ad.
“The advertising guidelines as passed by the Association’s House of Delegates do not allow for the Association to participate in this genre of advertising,” said Karen Hutchins, the executive director of the ABA. “Publishing deadlines also did not allow for adequate vetting of a member’s ethical inquiry in relation to the Supreme Court Rules of Professional Conduct.”
Perroni said the foundation isn’t seeking endorsements from legal associations.
“I suspect that some judges are not going to be happy about their scores and comments,” he said. “So we don’t want the associations to be put in the uncomfortable position of public endorsement.”
Perroni said he still faces the challenges of raising money and convincing people that their responses will remain anonymous.
He said that starting the foundation and website cost $20,000. The foundation will operate on donations and will seek grants.
‘Astonishingly Accurate’
Perroni said the idea for the survey dates back decades. The Arkansas Bar Association tried something similar in the 1970s using written ballots for lawyers to return anonymously.
He said the results “were astonishingly accurate and predictable.”
While the high-rated judges were happy and appreciative of the reports, the low-rated ones weren’t and eventually pressured the ABA to kill the program.
“I remember it like it was yesterday and I never forgot it — making myself a pledge that one day it would be resurrected,” Perroni said.
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