 Welcome, we now have, hello, Don, Don Federico from Boston, the Boston Bar Association President, and Marilyn McNamara, she's President of the New Hampshire Bar Association, and finally Paul Manzioni, Manzioni, President of the New Hampshire Association for Justice. Thank you, I guess I'll start. Thank you for the opportunity to appear, and what I'd like to talk with you about today is really some of the things that the Boston Bar Association has been doing in an effort to support the courts. The Boston Bar Association is an association of more than 10,000 lawyers, judges, and law professors in the greater Boston area. We have a three-part mission, one of which is access to justice, because properly functioning courts are critical to access to justice, and courts cannot function properly without adequate funding. We devote a great deal of our time and attention to trying to help our courts secure funding. As you heard from Chief Justice of Administration and Management Robert Mulligan earlier today, in recent years we have not been particularly successful in persuading our legislature to level fund or increase funding for our courts. The Massachusetts Trial Court's budget has been repeatedly cut since 2008, and the cuts have cost the Trial Court tens of millions of dollars. To cope with the severe cuts, the court has had in place a hiring freeze for several years as you heard earlier today, and has been unable to replace the more than 1,000 employees who have left for retirement or for other reasons. Although the remaining judges and staff have soldiered on, they have done so under very difficult circumstances, and we're very concerned that they cannot do so indefinitely. The Boston Bar Association, along with other bars, has therefore stepped up its effort to help the court secure adequate funding, and I'd like to describe for you some of the initiatives we've undertaken and how our thinking about them has evolved somewhat over time. Let me start with our written reports on the court budget, and I am going to describe a number of materials that we have prepared that are going to be submitted as part of the record in these proceedings. The reports are included. For the past three years, the Boston Bar Association has developed such reports. Copies of these reports are included in the materials. The 2009 and 2010 reports were prepared by task forces we comprised for that particular purpose, and those task forces included various bar leaders, including past presidents of the Boston Bar Association. For 2011, we took a slightly different approach. We enlisted the services of our administration of justice section to gather the data needed and to prepare a draft of the report, which the BBA staff and I put into final form before we released it just a few weeks ago. Each report has had a different emphasis. In 2009, we focused primarily on the numbers. In 2010, we gathered anecdotes of issues facing particular litigants in the courts to try to humanize the issue beyond merely a statistical reporting. This year's report takes even a different approach, a higher level approach that provides an overview and analysis of what has happened to the courts, why it has happened, how the trial court has responded to the crisis, and what is likely to happen if minimally adequate funding is not provided. In preparing our reports, we followed certain guidelines. First the report needs to have accurate numbers regarding current funding levels, the number of persons employed by the courts, case loads and clearance rate. We've always been able to get those numbers very readily from Chief Justice Mulligan's office in the trial court and other sources within the judiciary. We also in the reports have attempted to play out in a general way differing scenarios based on whether the court gets the funding it needs. We also pay very close attention to the timing and distribution of the reports. We aim to release our reports before the House and Senate release their numbers and while there's still time to influence the debate in the legislature over the final budget number, we disseminate the reports electronically to legislators, judges, and we can file bar association members and members of the media. The reports are accompanied by news releases that function as executive summaries. And the reports and news releases are also posted on our web pages and broadcast by email through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. One advantage of having a bar association publish a report like this is that we can say things that need to be said but that the judges really cannot be expected to say. For example, it's easier for a bar association to acknowledge the impact that severe budget cuts are having or will have on a court's performance than for a Chief Justice who bears responsibility for running the courts under even the most difficult circumstances. A well-written credible report takes time to produce. It's also important to very carefully select the persons responsible for the preparation of the report. At the Boston Bar we've had reports drafted by partners at law firms who have their ears to the ground and who have access to plugged-in members of the judiciary for purposes of acquiring data and testing certain basic premises. Two key contributors to this year's report were a retired judge with significant experience working in the executive branch at a high level and a lawyer who had more recent experience working in the legislature. We also are fortunate to have an excellent government relations director who worked for legislative leaders before joining the BBA. Of course we're not content to rely on the published report and this year we've made the case for court funding in a variety of additional ways. Through the efforts of our communications director the day after our report was released, we also were able to place an op-ed in the Boston Herald talking about the difficult situations the courts are in and the need to support the courts. Putting it in a way that the lay public hopefully could understand and appreciate it. If you go on the Boston Herald website you might find it and you might see comments from people who are not particularly fond of the courts and it did remind me of the remarks when I heard Professor Tribe speaking. I think what he was saying was exactly right. There are people out there certainly who don't care enough or think highly enough of the courts to put it mildly to want to support them. But hopefully that's not the general public and we believe that the op-ed has had an impact. I will say I received calls from a number of judges after we placed it, thanking the Bar Association for doing it and I understand it also has created a little bit of a stir in the state house with the legislature. We did this because we know that merely creating a report for the consumption of legislators does not draw enough attention to the critical issues at play nor does it even begin to give rise to any public sentiment in favor of court funding. We believe that there is an important public education component that needs to happen in order to get our elected officials more invested in funding the courts and we view that op-ed as a first step in that process. We also strive to make our message clear to our members repeatedly in a variety of ways in order to enlist their support in contacting legislators to lobby for court funding. One example of that effort again in the materials that will be submitted is an email that was sent to members just this week urging them to call their senators to advocate for a number of amendments to the trial court's budget including two amendments that would restore millions of dollars to that budget. We believe that this sort of grassroots effort is an essential element of our strategy to move the needle on court funding. We communicate this message to our members in a variety of other ways. For example our members receive a weekly email alert called BBA week which keeps them informed of pressing issues including court funding. Our government relations director this year also started a blog on public policy issues which again includes a description of legislative developments regarding court funding. As mentioned previously we occasionally send strategically timed email alerts to all of our members in an effort to summons them to action by calling their legislators and this year I used the president's page of the Boston bar journal as a vehicle for reminding our members of the need to advocate for the courts when they are under fire from other branches of government as we have seen happen in a variety of ways in Massachusetts this year. I'd like to conclude with three general observations. First the courts have no natural constituency. As we explain in this year's report and in our op-ed piece the electorate generally does not care enough about the courts to lobby for their funding. The public has little understanding of or sympathy for the courts and most are likely to be much more focused on funding for such items as jobs, education and health care than on court funding. Again I think Professor Tribe very accurately described one of the problems that we face in trying to advocate for the courts but I think there are other issues as well. The public simply in general does not think about the courts very much and does not care enough about the courts to put any kind of pressure on their elected officials. The public, most people deal with schools on a daily basis, people deal with job issues on a daily basis, people deal with health care issues frequently, all of which make their way into the legislature in one way or another. But most people deal with the courts very rarely and many of the people who do are in situations where they would not want to support the courts, criminal defendants for example. The second concluding point I'd like to make is that our experience in Massachusetts is that only a minority of our legislators are lawyers and that minority is shrinking. We thus not only have to persuade them but we also have to educate our legislators about the important role our courts serve. We also need to know who the lawyers are in the legislature, particularly in leadership positions who can help us make the case for the courts in the legislative debates. Finally, we have to be clear in our message as some of the witnesses said earlier today, that the courts are not just a state agency or an expendable service but that the judiciary is an indispensable co-equal branch of government on which we all depend for the peaceful resolution of disputes for public safety and for the preservation of our liberties. We need to communicate and repeat this message at every turn as too many people in the other branches of government and the public that they represent still do not fully appreciate the importance of our courts and the need for a strong, stable and independent judiciary. Thank you. Questions? I believe we're going to ask questions one at a time, correct? We have in the past done the whole challenge. Okay. You're the chairman. You're the aunt, right? Stick up. What do you want to do? I'll fight to the death just to work your decision. Let's go ahead and have the all three testimony. Thank you. Thank you. And good afternoon. I've been limping around the place today and so the real purpose of my being here is I'm trying to find a personal injury lawyer who will represent me in a car accident two weeks ago today. So I'm good. I don't think I'll have a problem. No, but I do. Thank you and good afternoon. As president of the New Hampshire Association for Justice, I'm grateful to be able to be here this afternoon and to be part of this task forces work. The New Hampshire Association for Justice is also proud to be in support of the work that this task force is doing. Each of our members of the association when he or she signs on a test to our mission as an association for justice, which in general is to assure that justice is brought to anyone who has been damaged by the wrongful act of another. And so this idea of access to the courts is integral to the mission of the New Hampshire Association for Justice as it is to all association for justice throughout the country. So we are particularly interested in this and particularly interested in being as helpful as we can be to your purpose. Several years ago, the American Association for Justice, who at that time was at luck, published some materials to its members, and it was a time when the idea of jury trial was somewhat jeopardized. I mean, it's constantly jeopardized from our perspective because we're constantly faced with the idea of legislation both at the federal and state level of so-called tort reform that threatens every now and then to perhaps eliminate or otherwise hinder or do away with a person's right to jury trial. And so this is a subject about which we are very sensitive and have been a part of for many, many years. But particularly several years ago when this issue was particularly heated, the American Association for Justice published some literature and along with it some slogans. And one slogan in particular is one that I've kept with me and thought about a lot. I've used it in trials to emphasize the importance. But I think it's a very important slogan for us to think about today as we think about this work. And that slogan is that without justice, there is no freedom. And without the jury trial, there is no justice. So if we slightly modified that for our purposes today, without justice, there is no freedom. And without access to the courts, there is no justice. So I think this goes to the Chief Justice's from Maine's remarks this morning about it's not just the courts, it's our democracy that is at stake here. Without justice, there is no freedom. I think of my father who fought in World War II and all the others who have come after him. And most recently, this concept of freedom particularly here in New Hampshire, our license plate is live free or die. Without justice, there is no freedom. Without access to the courts, there is no justice. So I think that kind of encapsulates to some extent the importance of what the task force is doing and what we as an association of justice in New Hampshire do as part of our regular mission. And so that's why I think working together is so important for this. The other thing that I bring to this particular issue is that in 1981 when I was admitted to the bar in California, and I've been practicing in California since then and have kept my license active, and I've practiced in New Hampshire for a number of years as well as in Massachusetts. And I can tell you that in California, particularly back in the 80s and all through the 90s, when you filed a lawsuit on behalf of an injured person or plaintiff or someone else who was wronged and for whom you were seeking justice, you knew automatically it was going to be five years to get that case to trial, five years to get that case to trial or to get some kind of recourse. And of course the insurance industry on the other side of the case was well aware of those delays. And if you think that cases can resolve voluntarily through a settlement process, without the threat of an immediate trial date or at least resolve in a way that is just, it is extremely difficult. And so therefore the ability to resolve cases is lost because once a lawsuit's filed everybody involved in the process knows it's a five year process. There's no incentive on the other side's part to think about a reasonable resolution of the case until they have to unfortunately is a common experience. And so I represented hundreds of people, for example, who working families where both spouses were out working full time, every day in full time jobs to earn enough money to own a home, to buy a house and to afford the mortgage. And there was a time when I had a lot of people whose houses were literally falling apart. They had been negligently constructed. It was a very easily proven fact in this particular case. And so I brought claims for these homeowners. Now the largest financial investment, everything they've gone out and worked full time for are tied up in this mortgage. It's the biggest financial investment, probably the largest asset in real people's lives. Every day they come home, they see the problems, the cracks in the walls, the doors that don't work. Whatever the problems were, they wake up in the morning, they see it. They live with this day in and day out, 24 hours a day. First thing when they wake up in the morning, last thing when they go to bed at night. These are real experiences for these people. I had people who had small children and they'd say to me, we want to landscape the yard and put up a swing set and we want our children to play in the yard. Maybe we'll put in a pool. Whatever it was they were going to do, and of course they wouldn't do it, because the house is falling apart and they can't put good money after bad. They can't borrow against it. They can't sell it. They're stuck and so there they were. And I thought, well we can get remedies for all these folks. And I brought a number of lawsuits for hundreds of people at times. And of course California and the Case winds its way five years through the process. And in the end, some cases took seven years. And in the end when there was ultimately compensation for these people and I was able to send them compensation or meet with them and give them compensation, they would look and say, you know, the kids have graduated school. They're off in college. The whole purpose of what we were trying to accomplish, the whole purpose was lost. Was absolutely lost. And it was lost because of the delay that it took to get these cases resolved through a legal system. Now that's just one small example. I've had clients who have died during a lengthy medical malpractice case and never got to see the benefit of the outcome of their cases. I have had that experience firsthand. When I came to New Hampshire, as a result of the tremendous efforts and great work of a, I guess, a task force comprised of members of the bench and bar, New Hampshire had tackled the problem of delays in getting cases to trial. And when I began practicing here, shortly after that, you would get a case to trial within one year from filing a complaint. Within one year, I remember Judge Perkins, as one of the judges, talking about how proud he was to have been part of that force where it got, and for someone coming in from a place like California where it would be five years automatically to be able to get my clients into the courtroom with one year, I can't tell you how great that felt, what a tremendous accomplishment that was in the state of New Hampshire to be able to afford clients justice within a reasonable period of time. And so I can say, from a person with firsthand experience, that now that's lost. That one year of getting cases into court in the state of New Hampshire is not only threatened, it doesn't exist anymore, and it's being threatened even more and more as access to the courts because of financial cuts and budgetary problems dwindles. We're now back in a situation where it's looking more and more like California. And my message to the task forces, don't let all places become like California was or probably still is, because I know firsthand what that means in real life and real time to people who are in need of a resolution. The old adage, justice delayed is justice denied, which is what we talked about this morning for me, has been a reality. And more importantly, for hundreds of my clients over the years. It was, in listening to Professor Tribe today, I think that I greatly appreciate and respect the comments that one of the things that will help to get the court system improved and get support financially is to help the image of the lawyer, to take away those reasons why there are so many lawyer jokes. But I can tell you nothing would help that image more than a lawyer's ability to get justice for a client. Because when I hand people compensation after six or seven years of them waiting, there's probably a lot of lawyer jokes that they can think about, not only that would apply to me, but to the process. You cannot raise a lawyer's position and esteem in society where you're working within a system that fails them and the clients feel of you that you weren't able to do anything meaningful or that the system doesn't do anything meaningful. So I agree, we need to raise our image and one way to raise our image is to show that we can deliver. We can deliver on justice through a system. I'm glad to know that there may be no more furlough days in New Hampshire, but the lack of judges can be just as devastating in terms of delay here. And so to just bring it to a local level and picking up on the idea of offering perhaps a potential helpful solution, at least on the local level as far as New Hampshire is concerned, I would be very interested in picking up on the work of that previous task force of those judges and lawyers who worked so hard years ago to get cases to trial in the state of New Hampshire within one year. And I would be very interested in seeing the details of what they did, how much of it was financially driven, how much of it was accomplished through other tasks and means, and pick up where they left off and see if some of what they accomplished then could be built on now under different circumstances but still be useful. I think it would be awful to see that work go to waste, and I think they have something to say that would be useful to all of us. And I would like to see, at least here in New Hampshire, to work with them and see if what they've done couldn't be revised and used again today. So I'm glad to be here. I speak with firsthand experience of where this could end up and where it might go unless the work that we're all trying to accomplish succeeds. And I thank you for all of the hard work. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Monsioni. Now, Ms. McNamara. Yes, thank you. I'm Marilyn McNamara. I'm the president of the New Hampshire Bar. I am fully responsible for the beautiful weather that we had today. Do you believe that? I've got two swamp land. I am an attorney at Upton and Hatfield here in Concord. I've been in the bar for, this is my 34th year. I spent about eight years fairly recently being the director of a legal services corporation program here in New Hampshire. So I have a point of view and I will express it more likely than not. Try to stop me. I want, first, I want to give you a little context of New Hampshire than I want to perhaps complain bitterly about lack of resources and other issues. I want to talk a little bit about law and culture and maybe a tiny bit of ancient history and then get on to what we are doing in New Hampshire that is truly innovative and exciting and hard and also to talk about possible other solutions. I know many of which you've already heard but which I would like to add to. I want to give you the context of New Hampshire which is a rather unique state. If you've not been here before, I hope you appreciate the fact that we do have a bit of our own culture. New Hampshire is among the wealthiest states in the country. It is among the oldest by age. We have a median age actually higher than Florida. Our crime rate is very low. We are well educated. We have access to excellent medical care. There is a hospital on every corner in every city. This is true. Quite, not quite. But even for very low income persons, our state is recognized as being one of the healthiest and safest places to raise a child. We have a very high level of volunteerism and get very high marks for tolerance of other cultures and people. Possibly not Yankees fans, but otherwise we are a very tolerant place. By agreement with our governor, our judges passed through a non-partisan selection committee, nominated by the government, and by the governor rather, and approved by an executive council for a period of term lasting up until their 70th year. We have no income or sales tax. Now's the time to buy if you're here in New Hampshire. By reputation, we are flinty, frugal, and independent, and there is sufficient evidence to support that characterization. You don't need a helmet to ride your motorcycle in New Hampshire, although your child does. You don't need to purchase car insurance in New Hampshire, unless you have previously failed to pay for damages from some accident that you did in fact cause. Seat belts are just suggestions if you are an adult, and the state motto, as you heard, is live free or die, and every year, a certain number of people live free and then die. Now we claim here in New Hampshire, this is the bitter part, we claim to love liberty and personal freedom, but in our state, the branch of government that upholds the constitution of our state protects our rights and assures us equality of opportunity under the law, is cutting back staff, scheduling into the next year, closing its doors too early and too often, rendering orders and opinions that cannot be repaired. Colleagues report to me, temporary support order, hearing scheduled so far out that homes are foreclosed, and I know of children who are eating from food pantries whose parents make, or whose supporting parent makes over $100,000 per year because there is no support order and the obligor will not pay. Children eating from food pantries because the court system cannot put orders in place for obligors to pay. Those orders are written but not processed for weeks and they often come too late for true relief to be useful. The filings are lost in the crush of paper and sometimes never to be found. That's an inconvenience for lawyers who can document the filing but devastating for self-represented litigants who may not know to keep good records. This is based on anecdotal evidence from lawyers who say I've been told I hadn't filed something, I went to the court, I had my documents with me, I showed the court, they found the filings. It's about a level playing field and what we cherish or not, and we should cherish the level playing field. It's a sacred place. When you watch television and you watch the football stadium and all the folks rolling out their canvas and baseball players, baseball diamonds, where they roll it out and roll it back and watch for the rain and make sure the field is good. The field has to be level, it's important for the sport if you will. Law isn't a sport and yet our playing field deserves at least as much attention to being level and fair so that everyone on that field can be heard properly and get fairness and that's not happening. It's not happening here and it's not happening elsewhere as well. We've been raised to value fairness but we don't seem happy to pay for it. Those who seek justice within this judicial system are judged themselves for raising an issue, for not working it out, for insisting on judicial processes and this level playing field. For doing what the Constitution says we have a right to expect. Having the ability to have a dispute judged and processed and dispensed with is an American expectation. It's a right that we have and in this little corner of the universe there have been courts within the 17th century for 400 years of courts in Massachusetts and the colony area. That's how much our earliest settlers valued dispute resolution. I know that there were 400 years of courts because I've seen court records and I'll just give you a couple of quick examples even though they're kind of interesting. John Emory, Kittery Main, Find for providing aid and comfort to the Quakers. Suzanne Pulsifer Find for her husband was Find because she wore a silk bonnet to church and that was apparently wrong and of course the most egregious example unfortunately of Justice Gone Wrong, John Proctor hanged as a witch in Salem and again in the 17th century. We have valued courts even when they've been wrong or crazy or had values that we now no longer support. That's the history of this area of the world and what we're seeing now is it's not there anymore. It's not there effectively at this time. Here's another interesting feature of the New Hampshire Constitution if you haven't had an opportunity to read it you should perhaps. Article 14 of the New Hampshire Constitution says every subject of this state is entitled to a certain remedy by having recourse to the laws for all injuries he may receive in his person property and character he may obtain right and justice freely without being obliged to purchase it completely and without any denial promptly and without delay conformably to the laws. That's not happening here but let me tell you how we're working on it. Among the most interesting and innovative solutions is the consolidation of the district court, probate court working with the legislature a body we often complain about is being rather frugal working with the legislature statute was passed that enables this very innovative consolidation to take place the expectation is this consolidation will reduce costs by studying how people work and how they are able to produce their work we now know that it is more efficient to have people at the counters only to answer questions for people who pop in but to otherwise direct people with questions to a call center and that's something that we will be working on another issue we meaning the court system of which I'm not a part but nevertheless we will also be working on having some of the paper processing occur outside of regular court hours so that those individuals can work on paper without being interrupted by telephone calls or visits to the window in fact tests that have been run on this issue demonstrate I want to say a three fold increase in productivity people in the court's clerk's offices are left alone to do their work not answering phones and the like so the call center is very exciting there have been other innovations as well we've unfortunately lost a fair number of staff through layoffs that's not good and we're not happy with it but the effort is to get more consistency in the courts to pay the clerk to one clerk to oversee a number of our courts and then have others beneath to actually take over the day to day decision making and the like so that all of the courts are operating consistently consistency with consistency and operating well these are kind of dicey we don't really know how everything is going to work at first it will be perhaps confusing to people you walk into court are you in family court you know probate court district court no one will know we're lawyers we're against change so it will take some time for us all to settle in but that we think is going to truly save the state and the court system a fair amount of money the other items when you have asked about well what are the solutions in my view case assessment is a very important way to determine what if any services need to be rendered to a particular case at a particular time because my field is family law for example lawyers used to do all of the case assessment people would come to their office sit down they would tell you all their story you would tell them what to do or not try to work things out and move it along that doesn't happen so much with self represented litigants those are the people who are really slowing our court system down quite frankly case assessment means finding out what is needed and then providing only the services that are required rather than asking people to go through the same process from one beginning from the beginning to the end of the process if they don't need something they shouldn't be getting it or don't need to have technology and then increase in the use of technology I think has already been discussed and our court system is working very hard to get up to speed moving toward I think an electronic filing environment and I think that you know that too will help us in terms of efficiency we've talked about you know video conferencing for example although we are a tiny state for many of you it feels pretty big to us and it would be good for us to be able to do a lot more video conferencing in some matters of less substance perhaps I believe in and strongly would support as does the bar robust civic education from kindergarten through 65 or 80 civic education that is clear directed goal oriented and tells people what they need to know about the value of our court system and how it works as a family law lawyer I interview many people you would be shocked perhaps to learn how little people understand about court systems and about the way justice operates I also believe that our educational system needs to continue to support critical thinking skills and life skills to help people stay out of the trouble they slide into when they don't have the skills needed or the knowledge needed to for example enter a contract enter a marriage by a car and otherwise become consumers in our economy those are my general comments and I'm happy to take questions as we all are thank you Ms. McNamara questions Paul we did this at lunch but it struck me that the only segment of the bar that has been traditionally intensely involved in political activity are your ancestors in ATLA and yourself and while you and I might have slight differences towards this how organized are they are you and how successful have you been in your focused goals well here in New Hampshire we've been I think very organized we've met with Chief Justice Delanis in the very beginning after she was appointed I and some of the officers of the association met with her which we felt was very important of course to get a perspective of the court as to what we and the court hope to achieve and so that through our lobbying efforts which we have as an association and we are very proud of the lobbying that we do on this topic particularly we're very well organized in that regard and we've made efforts in conquered at the legislative level to try to assist the court in getting funding legislation passed last year we did it under the leadership of our past president and our executive director came up with alternative funding ideas as did Chief Justice Broderick at the time to present so that we weren't just going up there with a lot of complaints about lack of funding we were trying to go the next step and actually suggest ideas as to where funding might be gotten but of course like everything else it gets very political and if you identify sources of funds there are going to be other people who are going to want those sources as well surprise and those efforts while good I think didn't quite succeed but in short the answer I think we're very well organized we're working closely with the courts we have with the justices who are forming this new court the circuit court we've met with them as well justices King and Kelly to see what that's all about and to help them particularly among our membership to support that idea if indeed that's the way to go so no we continue to do that and I think that's another important purpose of our being here today too because to have coordinated efforts and as much information as we can get and understand as we go forward with the legislature I think will be very helpful Mr. Federico you highlighted something I think is becoming increasingly apparent your statement about the courts don't have a natural constituency and you furthermore pointed out I think several of you that even when they win their participants in the system may not be happy and of course we understand they're people who lose so one of the things that I thought you might help us with in expressing is that you've developed an ongoing grassroots continuing commitment to communication with the legislature so how successful is that what can we learn from that and are there any other specific proposals about communication that you think work well sure you know I was speaking actually during the lunch break with Chief Justice Mulligan about this it often doesn't feel like we're successful because as you've heard our efforts the court budget continues to get cut but as Chief Justice Mulligan put it we may not feel like we're having a direct or immediate impact but long term the situation first of all would likely be worse if we weren't doing what we're doing and long term hopefully we will have an impact the one thought I have we are I think really just beginning the approach of community outreach beyond the bar that I described when I mentioned the op-ed piece I think we need to do more of that that's a very long term solution and I don't even know what kind of difference it will make but I think we have a duty to really get out there in the communities and make sure people outside of the legal profession have a better understanding of the courts the other thing I would say is this and we have done we've actually done a fair amount of this in Boston engage the business community I heard comments earlier today about the business community having some understandable concerns about prioritizing courts above other things but I really think that the business community needs to be very much engaged in this effort we have a group of very committed general councils in Massachusetts and I think you start with the general councils and some of the leaders within the Boston Bar Association are general councils of major corporations in the last couple of years they have put together letters signed by a hundred general councils of businesses in Massachusetts to the legislature to advocate for court funding once you get the general councils engaged you can then hope that they in turn will get the CEOs engaged and the politicians who are controlling the budgetary decision will listen to the CEOs so that's another strategy that I think this is an issue you know Mr. Madera I think was addressing a question of the trial bar the plaintiff's bars involvement in these types of issues I think the plaintiff's bar and the general councils share this concern that our courts be able to resolve disputes and resolve them efficiently and with some expediency and I think that would be the next thing I would recommend doing thank you very much I'm afraid our next panel has a time issue so we need to conclude with your remarks but thank you all very much for coming