Time to come up before a court (4)
I believe the answer is:
area
'court' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'time to come up before a' is the wordplay.
'time' becomes 'era' (I've seen this before**).
'to come up' says the letters should be written in reverse.
'before' says to put letters next to each other.
'era' written backwards gives 'are'.
'are'+'a'='AREA'
(Other definitions for area that I've seen before include "Region, zone" , "Succession, order" , "Locality" , "Field -- expanse" , "Geographical region" .)