Even as the Texas population and number of new lawyers increased over the past 10 years, the number of new civil lawsuits has dropped by 17 percent, from 610,355 cases in 2005 to 505,104 in 2014.
The downward trend is more striking in county-level courts, which saw a 10-year drop of 36 percent of new civil cases, compared with district courts, which experienced an 11 percent decline. Some case types—auto accident lawsuits, district court contracts cases and condemnation cases—actually increased over the 10-year period. But other case types—torts that don’t involve vehicles and debt cases—dropped more than others.
