Censoring is the condition in which a matter has not yet reached its end event when it is measured, so its true duration is known only to be at least its current age. Ignoring it biases duration estimates toward optimism.
If only resolved matters are counted, the matters that remain open, which are the long ones, are missing, and the average duration is understated. Recent filing years are especially affected, since matters filed recently have had little time to resolve.
A sound method treats censoring explicitly, using an estimator built for it, and states which one it used. Where a figure is computed only from resolved matters, the figure says so.
Censoring is not missing data in the ordinary sense. The matter exists and is informative: it tells us it survived this long.
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