One of the loftier ambitions of the American judicial system is to uphold openness and transparency and offer everyone their day in court. Yet the reality of the court system often includes delays and backlogs.

There is an alternative, though, a little-known profession in the legal field: private judges for hire.  These are judges that businesses or individuals resort to when traditional courts are too slow, too expensive, or too time-consuming. The wait for a traditional hearing can take months or even years, but private judges can hear cases much faster, hold hearings in offices, conference rooms, or even homes.

Jill S. Robbins has been a private judge for more than 30 years, focusing on family law. Before that, she worked as a Los Angeles family court judicial officer. She recently joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host Sabri Ben-Achour to discuss the field. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Sabri Ben-Achour: Who hires you? What kind of problems do they bring to you? And why do they go to a private judge, as opposed to the public judicial system?

Jill S. Robbins: Over the years, our judicial system has become so overloaded with cases, many times, one will go to court, prepare for a hearing, only to wait four or five hours and be asked to come back. And then they come back, they prepare again, and the same thing happens. So what happens in so many of those cases is the lawyers decide that it will be less expensive in the long run, even paying a private judge, because you prepare once, you have your date, and you go.

Ben-Achour: What kinds of disputes do people take before a private judge?

Robbins: I can only address family law, so just about anything you can think of — ranging from serious child custody issues to petty child custody issues, child support, spousal support, division of property, evaluation of property. These are all issues that go before a private judge.

Ben-Achour: Are the qualifications to be a private judge, are they the same or different than, I guess, being a not private judge?

Robbins: Actually, there are no qualifications. So anybody could just decide, "Oh, I'm going to be a private judge." Whether they would get business, I have no idea. But most of us have either been on the family law bench, many were supervising judges in family law. Many have years and years of experience.

Ben-Achour: If justice is a civil good that everyone is equally entitled to, does having a better, faster version of it — that is for hire — is that compatible with the idea of equal justice under the law?

Robbins: I can't sugarcoat it and tell you that every private judge is going to handle cases on a volunteer basis, which is something I also do. I can't tell you that they're going to reduce their rates, which have gotten completely out of control. But what I have done as of last year is create a modest means procedure, where, if a case has assets of less than $3 million or $4 million — and in California, you're going to have a house that's $4 million — or where the combined income of the parties is $300,000 or less. And in those cases, I reduce my fee by 40%. That enables people who could otherwise not afford a private judge to have that opportunity. I'm hopeful that other private judges would do that, but so far, that has not happened.