The Commission Chairperson Hon. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly provided an interview with DC Bar Evaluation Committee Chair Kate Rakoczy on Wednesday November 29, 2023 in the Tapestry Room at the United States District Court building in Washington, DC. CJDT’s goal for this interview was to promote and emphasize the importance of the DC Bar Evaluation Survey and how the Commission uses it. The interview was published on the DC Bar website on December 6, 2023.

Regarding the survey, Judge Kotelly stated that, “The survey results are very important to the Commission because they are an easy and accessible way for the community to provide essential and real-time feedback during a judge's term of service,” said U.S. District Court Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Chair of the Commission. “While there are naturally some limitations, given that the responses are anonymous, we also learn things about a judge’s performance that we may not otherwise know because this will come in the interim, as opposed to through complaints or when we do fitness reviews.”

According to the article,” Each year, in support of the D.C. Bar’s mission to aid the courts in improving the administration of justice, the D.C. Bar Judicial Evaluation Committee conducts a performance evaluation survey of selected D.C. Courts judges.

The anonymous survey is open to Bar members who have appeared before the judges during the 24-month evaluation period. For the 2023–2024 survey, the Judicial Evaluation Committee invites eligible Bar members to provide feedback on the performance of 3 D.C. Court of Appeals judges and 23 D.C. Superior Court judges. The survey is available through January 12, 2024. 

The full article is available here: DC Bar - Why Judicial Evaluations Matter: A Conversation With Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.