This paper reviews the World Bank's use of case file analysis to improve its programming of judicial reform programs. It summarizes the history of the methodology, its adoption by the Bank, and the results of its application in five Latin American countries. The most important contributions of the approach were in testing and demonstrating the inaccuracy of the conventional wisdom informing judicial reform programs in the region for the last twenty years, indicating the need for more information on judicial performance, and demonstrating the shortcomings of other quantitative studies based on public and expert opinions in filling them. We also hope to have advanced a greater interest in the region in empirical research on judicial problems and a greater receptivity of the courts to facilitating them.

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