We keep up on statistics important to our clients, such as
the
time it takes to decide appeals, and we were especially
interested to see how the pandemic had affected the Sixth
Circuit. Our gut feeling was that things might have slowed
down a little in more complicated cases, but that the circuit had
generally kept on top of things overall. So we were not
surprised to learn from the Judiciary's latest statistics that
the average time to decide cases from the notice of appeal until
the decision, across all the circuits, had slowed by almost a month
to
9.7 months. Many circuits, including the Sixth, have
specifically worked for years to streamline the appellate process,
shaving the average time to decide an appeal from
11.7 months in 2010 to
7.7 months in 2017, so this backsliding is a little
disheartening.
