Most lawyers only see a handful of cases handled by the federal court each year. In the Norfolk Division of the EDVA alone, 667 civil cases were filed on the public civil docket in 2017. In an effort to better understand the Court’s workload, we’ve examined this universe of cases. Of those, more than half—392 cases—are either pro se filings, filed by an incarcerated prisoner, or a federal Habeas petition. Many of the 392 cases meet all three criteria. Another 26 cases are suits related to Social Security benefits. The remaining 249 civil cases constitute cases in which an attorney has filed a civil claim in the Norfolk division—those are what this blog defines as the “core civil cases.” In future posts, we’ll take a deeper dive into these core civil cases to look at how they are resolved, what types of cases are frequently before the Court, and information that can be determined by studying the Court’s docket.
