© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(Nov. 30) – Houston and Dallas business attorneys are more satisfied with the federal judges in their area than they are with state judges, according to new data from the Houston Bar Association and Dallas Bar Association.
The two bar associations’ judiciary polls, which come out every two years, rate individual judges based on HBA and DBA members’ satisfaction with their impartiality, preparation for hearings and trial, timely opinions, knowledge of the law and temperament in the courtroom.
Six out of the 10 highest-ranking judges that received an “excellent” grade in overall performance in both polls were either federal district or bankruptcy judges.
The Texas Lawbook also examined the poll results for civil state district judges and appellate judges.
In Dallas, U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater ranked the highest, receiving an “excellent” overall performance rating from 90 percent of the respondents. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal had the highest such rating in the HBA judiciary poll of 80 percent.
Judges who received an excellence rate of 70 percent or higher were scarce for both polls, however. Dallas only had seven out of 33 judges, while only two out of HBA’s 52 judges had such a rating.
Fourteen percent of HBA members responded to their questionnaire, while 9 percent of DBA members responded to theirs. The HBA gave their members a little more time to respond to the poll – three weeks versus the DBA’s two-and-a-half week questioning period.
The judges with the lowest satisfaction were state District Judge Eric Moyé in Dallas and U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore in Houston.
Click here to view the full version of the DBA’s report and here for the HBA’s full report.
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