Court administrators and judges have long acknowledged that culture plays an important role in the function of the nation's 16,000 trial courts. Trial Courts as Organizations provides a comprehensive framework for understanding this organizational culture, along with a set of steps and tools to assess and measure the current and preferred culture. The authors examine how courts operate, what characteristics they may display, and how they function as a unit to preserve judicial independence, strengthen organizational leadership, and influence court performance. By using a systematic analysis of alternative values on how work is done, they identify four different types of institutional cultures. Each is shown to have its own strengths and weaknesses in achieving such goals as timely case resolution, access to court services, and procedural justice. The authors conclude by proposing a "mosaic" that reflects a mix of practices that could help courts operate most effectively in the future.