Despite extensive legislative reformulation of civil commitment procedures, empirical studies have shown that civil commitment hearings continue to be largely nonadversarial. The authors observed all civil commitment hearings during a three-month period at a large state hospital in Virginia and examined the characteristics of patients and the actions of attorneys, clinical examiners, and judges as a function of the length of time the patient had been in the hospital. The analysis revealed that as the length of a patient's hospitalization increased, the hearings became shorter and less adversarial; patients tended to show fewer signs of acute psychiatric illness and more signs of chronic schizophrenia. The implications of these findings for civil commitment policy are discussed.