U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina
Public, sourced statistics for this district — reviewed 2026-09-17. Every figure below carries the U.S. Courts source and reporting period it was pulled from.
- 01Prisoner petitions matters made up 40.4% of the district's civil docket in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025 (480 of 1,188 civil filings) — roughly 2.3x the 17.7% national rate.
- 02With 4 authorized judgeships carrying 900 pending civil cases as of the period reported, the district averages roughly 225 pending civil matters per judgeship.
What drives case duration in M.D.N.C.?
The reported median time from filing to civil disposition in M.D.N.C. is 8.4 months, faster than the 15.6-month national median. 48 pending civil cases — 4.5% of the district's civil docket — have been pending over three years, below the 28.3% national rate.
Duration in M.D.N.C. tracks the relationship between filings, pending inventory, and the bench available to move cases. M.D.N.C. carries 900 pending civil cases against 4 authorized judgeships, or roughly 225 pending civil matters per judgeship. The district reported 18 judgeship-months vacant over the period, a direct capacity constraint on disposition speed. For underwriting purposes, the aged-inventory share (cases pending over three years) is generally a better forward-looking duration signal than the median alone, since it captures the tail risk a median can mask.
How does docket composition in M.D.N.C. shape resolution risk?
Prisoner petitions is overrepresented on the docket at 40.4% of civil filings versus a 17.7% national share. Docket composition shapes resolution path because different case types carry structurally different settlement timing, dispositive-motion practice, and trial exposure.
A district's nature-of-suit mix is a durable structural signal, not a one-time artifact — it reflects the regional economy, the population served, and any specialty tracks the court has built around a case type. In M.D.N.C., that concentration in prisoner petitions matters means underwriting assumptions calibrated on a generic national civil docket will misprice duration and resolution-path risk for cases filed here; the relevant comparison set is the district's own historical resolution pattern for that case type, not the national average.
What should funders and counsel underwrite for specifically in M.D.N.C.?
The reported median time from filing to civil trial is 25.6 months, faster than the 34.8-month national figure. Circuit precedent runs through the Fourth Circuit, and this district's disclosure practice for non-party financial interests is a separate underwriting input from the merits timeline.
No standing order in M.D.N.C. specifically addresses third-party litigation funding disclosure as of September 2026. Corporate and financial-interest disclosure runs through Fed. R. Civ. P. 7.1 and this district's parallel local rule; a funder's involvement is otherwise surfaced only if the presiding judge's individual practice standing order requires it. Combined with the district's own disposition and aged-inventory statistics above, these are the three inputs — timeline, docket composition, and disclosure exposure — that a portfolio-level underwriting process should hold as district-specific rather than assume from a national baseline. Criterica Intelligence's duration and resolution models calibrate to exactly this level of jurisdiction-specific detail rather than a single national prior.
M.D.N.C. has 4 authorized district judgeships as of the 12-month period ending September 30, 2025, per U.S. Courts Federal Court Management Statistics.
The reported median is 8.4 months for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2025, faster than the 15.6-month national median for U.S. district courts.
No standing order in M.D.N.C. specifically addresses third-party litigation funding disclosure as of September 2026. Corporate and financial-interest disclosure runs through Fed. R. Civ. P. 7.1 and this district's parallel local rule; a funder's involvement is otherwise surfaced only if the presiding judge's individual practice standing order requires it.
Prisoner petitions matters were the most overrepresented category on the civil docket, at 40.4% of filings (480 of 1,188) in the 12 months ending September 30, 2025, versus a 17.7% national share.
- U.S. Courts, Federal Court Management Statistics — U.S. District Courts, District Profiles (12-Month Periods Ending September 30, 2020 Through 2025), 12-month period ending September 30, 2025.
- U.S. Courts, Table C-1 — U.S. District Courts, Civil Cases Commenced, Terminated, and Pending, 12-month period ending March 31, 2025.
- 28 U.S.C. §§ 81–131 (district and division designations).
The statistics above are drawn from the sources cited — historical figures reported by the U.S. Courts, not projections. They describe this district's docket-level trends, not the likely outcome or duration of any individual case, and are not a Criterica Intelligence platform statistic.
See how Criterica Intelligence calibrates duration and resolution-path models to M.D.N.C. specifically.
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