As part of the ongoing program to evaluate and enhance judicial performance, the Supreme Judicial Court's Judicial Performance Evaluation Committee has sent questionnaires to attorneys and court employees in Worcester County. Jurors who have completed their service by the end of May will receive evaluations. Forty-one judges will be evaluated in the District Court, Housing Court, Juvenile Court, Probate and Family Court, and Superior Court.

The Judicial Performance Evaluation Committee requests that attorneys who receive questionnaires complete and return them to the Supreme Judicial Court as soon as possible, as the success of the evaluation program depends upon timely responses. A high rate of participation enables the Committee to provide judges with fair and complete evaluations. Lawyers who have appeared in court multiple times in Worcester County during the last two years, according to computerized court records, have received questionnaires. Both paper and electronic questionnaires should be completed by mid-April.

Attorneys whose email addresses are known to the Supreme Judicial Court received an invitation to use the evaluation website and were given a username and password. Out of the approximately 5,200 attorneys selected for the Worcester County evaluation, more than 3,000 will be able to complete the evaluation on-line. If attorneys wish the Supreme Judicial Court to have their email addresses on file for conducting evaluations in the future, email addresses can be registered at http://judeval.sjc.state.ma.us/?go=reg.

Among the categories covered in the evaluations are: a judge's knowledge of the law; temperament on the bench; courtroom control; treatment of litigants, witnesses, jurors, and attorneys; fairness and impartiality; and, timeliness in issuing written decisions.

All questionnaires are confidential and do not request the names of respondents. The resulting reports are also confidential and are given only to the judge being evaluated and to the appropriate Chief Justices.

Since the inception of the program in 2001, an evaluation of judges has been conducted in all the counties in the Commonwealth.

Please direct any inquiries concerning questionnaires and evaluations to Mona Hochberg, Supreme Judicial Court Judicial Performance Evaluation Coordinator, at (617) 557-1156, or via email at mona.hochberg@sjc.state.ma.us .For other information, please contact Joan Kenney, Public Information Officer, Supreme Judicial Court, at (617) 557-1113, or via email at joan.kenney@sjc.state.ma.us.