Press Release | Implementing Professional Division of Labor and Alleviating Judicial Overwork: Press Conference on Institutionalizing "Legal Assistants Drafting Judgments"

Our Foundation previously suggested in the legislative amendment draft aimed at "reducing the judicial burden and enhancing the quality of judgments" that the practice of legal assistants "drafting judgments" be institutionalized. Recently, this draft has sparked discussions due to a proposal by legislators, which has also raised concerns among legal assistants.

To broaden the discussion and protect the labor rights of legal assistants, we must first explain that the purpose of this draft is to promote a professional division of labor within the courts. At the same time, we call upon the Judicial Yuan and all courts to attach importance to the labor rights of legal assistants and respect the professional division of labor among judicial personnel. Only by doing so can we secure cooperation from all sides in the process of promoting reform, thereby achieving an overall improvement in the over-burdened judicial front lines.

In this regard, we hereby put forward four demands as follows:

1. Breaking the unwritten rule: Supporting operational mechanisms should be established for legal assistants "drafting judgments"

2. Rejecting "fully delivered" adjudication! The drafting of judgments and rulings by legal assistants must be institutionalized

3. Respecting professional division of labor is an important step toward alleviating judicial overwork and preventing deterioration

4. The Judicial Yuan must squarely face the labor rights of assistants; reform must not be built upon the sacrifice of grass-roots personnel

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1. Breaking the unwritten rule: Supporting operational mechanisms should be established for legal assistants "drafting judgments"

In Taiwan's judicial system, legal assistants play an important role in assisting with adjudication. With the surge in litigation caseloads year after year, the legal assistant system has become an indispensable core pillar for maintaining judicial quality and efficacy. According to Articles 12, 34, and 51 of the Court Organization Act, the work of legal assistants consists of "handling, under judges' orders, the review of litigation case procedures, analysis of legal issues, collection of information, and other matters." More detailed regulations are enumerated in seven types of duties under Paragraph 1, Article 24 of the Regulations Governing the Selection, Training, Business Management, and Performance Evaluation of Judicial Assistants.

Judging from the aforementioned provisions, it can be found that the current work of legal assistants does not include "drafting judgments." However, in actual practice, "drafting judgments" has always been a core duty for some legal assistants. Two research reports in Volume 37 of the 2021 Judicial Research Annual, titled "Policy Evaluation of the Introduction of the Legal Assistant System to Date," both clearly indicated that this status quo has persisted for years (specifically, the work item "drafting judgment opinions" can be found in the task-point calculation methods for legal assistants. Taking the Taiwan Taoyuan District Court as an example, in the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019, 75.7% and 68.5% respectively of the task points (work performance) of legal assistants in the Criminal Summary Division were derived from "drafting judgment opinions." In other divisions, the proportion reached at least 30%.), and proposed similar legislative recommendations. While "personal formation of conviction" is unquestionably a core power of a judge that cannot be delegated, if a judge personally forms a conviction and provides the gist of the reasons for forming such conviction, there is no reason why they cannot inform the assistant and have the assistant draft the initial judgment reasoning according to the judge's instructions.

For instance, page 1 of the Law Clerk Handbook published by the Federal Judicial Center of the United States mentions: "In general, the broad duties of a law clerk include: conducting legal research, preparing bench memos (case summaries), drafting orders and opinions, editing and proofreading the judge's orders and opinions, and checking citations." Meanwhile, the handbook also clearly states: "The ultimate responsibility for the performance of the judicial function rests with the judge." Therefore, although a judge may ask an assistant to help draft the initial version of the judgment reasoning, the judge must specify the conclusion and the reasons for judgment, and then instruct the assistant to draft the initial version.

That is to say, both in practice and in theory, it is not that legal assistants cannot "draft judgments," but rather how supporting operational mechanisms should be established.

2. Rejecting "fully delivered" adjudication! The drafting of judgments and rulings by legal assistants must be institutionalized

However, constrained by the fact that "drafting judgments" is not a statutory duty of legal assistants, there are many ambiguities in its operation. Under the current system, there is a lack of clear basis and regulations regarding how judges instruct legal assistants to draft judgments, and whether written records or drafts are retained.

In practice, there are judges derisively referred to as "fully delivered" who hand over the entire case files and dossiers for legal assistants to independently form convictions and draft judgments, which are then directly adopted as the official adjudication content. This method of assigning duties by such judges is tantamount to "outsourcing" adjudication duties and must be strictly prohibited. Conversely, due to the lack of clear guidelines on "drafting judgments," conscientious judges may not know how to assign tasks or dare not assign them (fearing being evaluated by colleagues as not being diligent).

We believe that the aforementioned problems should be squarely addressed, the practice of assigning "drafting judgments" to legal assistants should be institutionalized, and both judges and legal assistants should retain task-assignment records that can be examined and meet actual operational needs, thereby preventing a minority of judges from fully "outsourcing" adjudication. In other words, the intention of the draft is not to legalize "full delivery," but to establish clear mechanisms to provide a basis to follow.

To this end, in addition to explicitly stipulating in the Court Organization Act that the duties of legal assistants include "drafting judgments," we simultaneously propose the draft of Article 26-1 of the Regulations Governing the Selection, Training, Business Management, and Performance Evaluation of Judicial Assistants as follows:

1. Where a judge instructs a legal assistant to draft judgments or rulings, the judge shall provide the legal assistant with the gist of the adjudication and the reasons for forming the conviction.
   
2. The legal assistant shall record the gist of the adjudication and the reasons for forming the conviction mentioned in the preceding paragraph, and retain the compilation and revision records of successive adjudication documents in an electronic format subject to third-party inspection.

Of course, there is no harm in elevating the aforementioned principles to the rank of the Court Organization Act; actual implementation still relies on the Judicial Yuan to enact specific, transparent execution regulations that can balance efficiency.

3. Respecting professional division of labor is an important step toward alleviating judicial overwork and preventing deterioration

Although the aforementioned legislative concept is one of our Foundation's proposals for "reducing the judicial burden," its purpose is definitely not to reduce the burden on judges by increasing the burden on assistants. We believe that by establishing a clear division of rights and responsibilities and assignment rules, both judges and legal assistants can focus on their core duties, thereby achieving efficiency through division of labor.

Conversely, the endless expansion of legal assistants' duties will undermine this division of labor and instead reduce the efficiency of systemic division of labor. The aforementioned research report, Policy Evaluation of the Introduction of the Legal Assistant System to Date**, criticized the phenomenon of legal assistants taking turns as court clerks and acting on behalf of the Civil Execution Division, arguing that such work assignments violate the expertise of legal assistants.** However, at the end of last year, the Taiwan High Court comprehensively required legal assistants to support court clerk work under reasons such as "insufficient courtroom attendants," "it is inappropriate to erode the recording duties of court clerks," and "legal assistants are most suited" (Press Release Link). In fact, back in 2018, the High Court had already caused dissatisfaction among legal assistants due to promoting similar practices.

Such practices that undermine the professional division of labor or even institutionalize it, aside from ignoring the rights and professionalism of legal assistants and dampening their morale, may perhaps resolve temporary needs in the short term. However, against the backdrop where the labor rights of legal assistants have long been unaddressed, the justification for courts unilaterally demanding that legal assistants—who are hired on a one-year-contract basis and find themselves in a structurally vulnerable position—"weather the storm together in the short term" is already insufficient. In the medium to long term, no concrete plans for improving the manpower problem can be seen, and supporting measures such as a "sunset clause for supporting courtroom attendant duties" and "correspondingly increasing legal assistant manpower" have also failed to be clearly explained or planned. In conclusion, sacrificing the rights of contract assistants is no different than quenching thirst with poison, which will only drive away and deter outstanding talent, causing further deterioration of the judicial labor environment.

4. The Judicial Yuan must squarely face the labor rights of assistants; reform must not be built upon the sacrifice of grass-roots personnel

In fact, in the aforementioned research report, Policy Evaluation of the Introduction of the Legal Assistant System to Date, questions were raised regarding the impropriety of hiring legal assistants on a one-year-contract basis. Voices calling for the improvement of labor rights and conditions for legal assistants over the years can be enumerated as follows:

• The duties of legal assistants are obviously regular and continuous in nature, yet they are hired on a one-year-contract basis, placing the labor relationship of legal assistants in a state of uncertainty. Therefore, when their rights are infringed upon or they encounter workplace bullying, they may also worry about whether it will affect their contract renewal, making it difficult for them to actively strive for or safeguard their own rights.
  
• Practices regarding overtime pay for legal assistants vary across district courts and fail to reflect actual overtime conditions:
  • There are caps on overtime pay expenses or caps on hours, which severely fail to match actual overtime conditions;
  • There is no overtime pay, and not even compensatory leave;
  • There are limits on the number of times overtime can be claimed retroactively, and approval from the court president is required.
    
• There is a lack of systematic pre-service and in-service professional training for legal assistants.

However, in the aforementioned controversy regarding the High Court demanding that legal assistants support courtroom attendant duties, the reason given by the High Court in denying the legal assistants' criticism that it was "pushing policies forcefully" and "forcing legal assistants to act as firefighters" was surprisingly that "meetings were held with 'judges' and their consent was obtained," and "after approval, legal assistants were 'notified' and training was conducted." From this practice, one can imagine that the distrust and dissatisfaction of legal assistants toward the judicial authorities will only continue to increase.

Based on this, regarding the draft proposed by our Foundation and the improvement of labor conditions for legal assistants, we also plan to issue a public questionnaire after the meeting to consult the opinions of the legal assistant community and judicial personnel, serving as an important reference for our Foundation in promoting related bills and conducting reform advocacy.**

We call upon the Judicial Yuan and all courts to attach importance to communication with legal assistants, actively face up to and improve their labor rights, so as to gain cooperation from all parties when promoting reform.

In addition to "institutionalizing the drafting of judgments by legal assistants," we also have multiple legislative advocacy items for "reducing the judicial burden." We simultaneously urge the public to pay attention together in order to improve the over-burdened judicial environment and achieve the goal of enhancing the quality of judgments.

Press Conference Time

June 4, 2026 (Thursday) 9:00

Press Conference Location

Room 102, Legislative Yuan Research Building (Chung-Hsing Building), No. 3-1, Sec. 1, Jinan Rd., Zhongzheng Dist., Taipei City

Attendees

Huang Hsu-tien ｜ Chairperson, Judicial Reform Foundation

Lin Yung-sung ｜ Standing Board Director, Judicial Reform Foundation

Tsai Hsueh-i ｜ Standing Executive Committee Member, Judicial Reform Foundation

Lu Cheng-yen ｜ Deputy Executive Director, Judicial Reform Foundation

Press Contact

Lu Cheng-yen, Attorney-at-Law, Deputy Executive Director, Judicial Reform Foundation

Phone: 02-2523-1178#37

Email: elvin@jrf.org.tw