Judge Jennifer D. Bailey served as a circuit court judge in Miami, Florida, the fourth largest state court jurisdiction in the country, for 30 years, retiring in November 2023. She was the Administrative Judge for the 25-judge Circuit Civil Division, and handled a docket of Complex Business Litigation cases, and previously served in the Family and Criminal Divisions. During the pandemic, she served as leader of the Pandemic Digital Workgroup setting up Virtual Courtrooms for Miami’s state courts, managed the first hybrid jury trial in July 2020, and served on the Conference of Chief Justices/Conference of State Court Administrators’ Pandemic Rapid Response Team, Civil Courts and Technology subcommittees.
Judge Bailey serves on the Board of Governors of Directors of the National Center for State Courts and on the Board of Advisors for the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) and the NCSC Institute for Court Management. She is an executive committee member of the Florida Commission on Trial Court Performance and Accountability where she chaired the Data Quality Workgroup. She serves on the Workgroup on Improved Resolution of Civil Cases and the Court Statistics and Workload Committee of Florida’s Judicial Management Council.
From 2013-2016, Bailey chaired the Court Operations subcommittee of the Civil Justice Initiative, a task force created by the Conference of Chief Justices to evaluate and recommend best practices to reduce cost and delay in state civil courts and has been involved in implementing those recommendations in Florida. She chaired the Florida Supreme Court Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Task in 2009 and led her circuit’s recovery from the foreclosure crisis. She served as Dean of the Florida College of Advanced Judicial Studies, as Chair of the Florida Bar Civil Procedure Rules Committee, and on the Florida Supreme Court Civil Jury Instruction and Business/Contracts Jury Instruction Committees. She is focused on how to innovate in courts, including recently in court technology, data quality, and case management and the future of courts.
Judge Bailey teaches across the country on digital and remote courts, innovation, and access to justice and trials during the pandemic. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Law, teaching a class on “Reimagining Courts,” and has taught as faculty/presenter for NCSC, CCJ, COSCA, NACOM, Florida New Judge’s College, the Florida College of Advanced Judicial Studies, and Conference of Circuit Court Judges as well as bar organizations and state judiciaries across the country. She graduated magna cum laude graduate from the Peabody School of Journalism at the University of Georgia followed by law school (BA, 1980; JD 1983) and holds an LLM in Judicial Studies from Duke University Law School (2018). She wrote her thesis on “Why Judges Don’t Case Manage,” https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol73/iss4/4/.
Bailey has received multiple awards for her service, including the 2021 Florida Justice Association’s Krupnick Award for Perseverance, the 2019 Miami Dade Justice Association’s Manny Crespo Award, the 2015 Florida Jurist of the Year from the Florida chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, the 2013 Sabadell Community Service Award, and the 2011 Equal Justice Judicial Leadership Award from Legal Services of Greater Miami.
Judge Bailey is a former member of the IAALS Board of Advisors.