Brian J. Ostrom, Ph.D. is a Principal Research Consultant with the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Virginia. In his more than 25 years at the NCSC, he has worked with courts throughout the US and internationally. His interest in the idea of high performance courts grew from working with several state court systems to improve their effectiveness through careful assessment of court management culture, judicial workload, and court performance. An approach to assessing court culture is laid out in his book Trial Courts as Organizations. In addition, he led the development of the CourTools performance measurement system and has directed projects developing judicial and court staff workload models in many states. Dr. Ostrom describes the main concepts of the High Performance Court Framework in Achieving High Performance: A Framework for Courts. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington.
