I’ve spent my career on the ground with courts as they go through some of the biggest technology changes their staff will ever experience. Over many implementations, ranging from municipal courts to common pleas, and now probate and domestic relations courts, I’ve learned that the projects that succeed and the ones that struggle rarely come down to the software itself. They come down to people, process, and preparation.
What drew me to implementation work in the first place was the client contact. I like having the chance to sit across the table from different individuals, in different courts, all trying to solve the same basic problem in their own way. No two courts get there the same way, and I’ve come to genuinely enjoy pulling lessons from each one and carrying them forward into the next.
Here are five lessons I’d want every court to know before they start a technology implementation.
1. Implementation Is a Process Project, Not Just a Technology Project.
The biggest misconception I see courts walk in with is thinking of their project as purely a technology rollout, and it’s an understandable assumption. But the truth is, we’re not just asking courts to learn a new system. We’re asking them to look at how they do something, not just what tool they use to do it.
The software itself simply enforces whatever your business processes are. If we don’t take the time to understand how a court actually operates day to day (the workflows, the exceptions, the workarounds that have built over years), we can’t configure a system that actually works for them. Courts that treat this as a process conversation, not just a technology upgrade, are the ones that come out the other side with something that truly fits how they work.
2. Build the Right Internal Team and Give Them the Time to Do It.
One of the most avoidable mistakes I see courts make is not building the right internal team from day one, and not protecting the time that team needs to do the work.
At minimum, a court’s project team should include:
- A project lead with real decision-making authority, someone who can make a call on the spot, rather than needing to run every decision up the chain.
- A representative from each division — clerks, finance, and any other functional area — ideally the manager or most senior person in that group, so their input reflects how the work gets done.
- An IT liaison who understands the court’s own infrastructure and can work directly with our team.
Just as important: courts need to set realistic time expectations before the project starts. I’ve seen this go a lot of different ways. Sometimes it’s one knowledgeable clerk who ends up championing the whole project. This is great, because they’re a fantastic resource, but it also means their day-to-day workload needs to be adjusted, so they have real, scheduled time for the project rather than scrambling to find coverage the day something comes up. Setting a clear weekly time commitment upfront, rather than treating it as a same-day scramble, makes the entire process smoother for everyone involved.
To help with this planning, equivant Court has developed The Court Innovator’s Implementation Workbook. With interactive worksheets and tables, this resource is a great asset for any court at the beginning of their implementation project. See page 5 for the Team Planning Flowchart.
3. Get Staff into the Software Early. Not Just Before Go-Live.
Training and hands-on exposure to the new system can make or break how smoothly a go-live goes, and it’s one of the clearest differences I see between implementations that go well and ones that turn into a slog.
It’s not enough to involve staff at a high level and then read them in on the details right before transitioning. The window clerks and data entry staff doing this work every day need real time in the application, well before go-live. The courts that build in consistent check-ins and hands-on training throughout the project, rather than saving it for the final stretch, consistently have an easier transition. The exposure staff have to the actual software before day one has a direct, measurable impact on how confidently they operate once it’s live.
4. Change Management Is Really Trust Management
Whenever a court tells us, “But we’ve always done it this way,” I don’t treat that as the end of the conversation. Instead, I treat it as an invitation to dig deeper. I’ll ask: why do we do it this way? Is there a specific reason it has to work this way? Have we looked at other approaches before? Ultimately, the client makes the final call, and that’s the way it should be, but opening their eyes to other possible paths to the same solution is part of the job.
That kind of open dialogue is what change management comes down to: getting staff buy-in by including them from the start. That means showing them what the application looks like early, meeting with individual staff or groups along the way for input, and showing them how a change will make their work better rather than just telling them it will.
Building that trust starts with the vendor relationship, too. In my experience, it comes down to a few things:
- Being honest about pain points from the very beginning.
- Being present and available, whatever time of day an issue comes up.
- Staying consistent. The same project manager and implementation specialist staying with a court from the business review all the way through. Constantly rotating people onto a project is a red flag, and for good reason: courts don’t want to feel like they’re navigating this alone.
And I’d add one more thing I wish more vendors understood: court staff are already doing a significant amount of work with limited resources every day. When there’s pushback on a new tool or process, it’s rarely resistance to change for its own sake. It’s staff protecting the continuity of service that keeps their court running for the public they serve.
5. Keep an Open Mind. The Technology Will Do What You Tell It to Do
Technology will do what you tell it to do. The hardest part isn’t the software; it’s making the decisions, bringing your team together, and being willing to look in the mirror and ask, “Are we doing this the best way we can?”
Just because something has been a process for a long time doesn’t mean it’s still the best available approach, especially as the technology available to courts continues to shift. That’s true of implementation work broadly, and it’s especially true of where the field is heading. AI is already changing how we train and support clients, giving them faster access to answers and resources. Configurable, out-of-the-box products are giving courts more say in decisions that used to be made for them. And self-service tools (online check-ins, ePayments, and easier access to case details from a phone or web portal) are only going to keep growing.
None of that changes the core lesson, though: keep an open mind, ask why you’re doing things the way you are, and look for ways to improve with the tools you already have available to you.
