Ten years ago, there was little mention of the service of special masters among members of the bar. In the last several years there has been a substantial increase in the appointments of special masters by federal and state courts, on both the trial and appellate level. There is now an Academy of Court Appointed Special Masters. The author of this article serves as a special master as part of his law practice; however, in this article he will not discuss any matter he has been involved in and will not make any comment on the nature of his service.

A special master is a person appointed by the court, or in some instances hired by litigators, to act at pretrial, during trial, or post trial. A special master may be appointed to solve problems in discovery, act as a fact finder, solve problems created by complicated statutory procedure, deal with complaints of ethical violations, and manage unique multi-party legal proceedings, in an effort to minimize the court’s time and resources. Special masters are often appointed pretrial to narrow the number of issues presented by the pleadings, or post trial to implement a court order. The need for special masters is the result of the complicated nature of today’s law practice. Court-appointed special masters are usually paid by the litigating parties.