• Image of Heather
    Heather Buchanan
September 26, 2017
When law school applications took a downturn around 2011, some law schools redesigned their curricula to add more experiential learning opportunities. Aimed at ensuring that their students were prepared for practice after graduation—and improving their graduates' chances of getting hired—schools hoped the refocused offerings might attract more applicants. In the midst of this shift, David Thomson and Stephen Daniels planned a three-year study of students at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. The results were published recently in an article titled, "If You Build it, They Will Come: What Students Say About Experiential Learning."
  • Image of Zachariah DeMeola
    Zachariah DeMeola
September 19, 2017
With nearly 30 percent of lawyers responding to our Foundations for Practice survey indicating that “life experience between college and law school” was “very helpful” (and another 49 percent saying it was “helpful”), why don’t lawyers discuss these experiences more on resumes or in interviews? The focus generally is to keep their background “strictly legal,” but the Foundations survey indicates that employers are looking for new hires that have grit, work ethic, and experience. And if you’re a young lawyer, likely the only place you can draw on past experience is non-legal jobs.
  • Image of Zachary Willis
    Zachary Willis
September 15, 2017
Last night, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Director Alli Gerkman was honored at the 12th Annual Raising the Bar Dinner hosted by the Colorado Women’s Bar Association Foundation. Each year, the CWBA Foundation honors women lawyers “who have made a difference in our communities and have ‘raised the bar’ for all of us.” With over 400 people in attendance, Alli was honored along with four other women attorneys for their work to raise the bar through reform or innovation “that has significant systemic impact.”
  • Image of Margaret Hagan
    Margaret Hagan
September 13, 2017
At next month's Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference, we will spend Saturday morning in a Design Thinking workshop. It will be a hands-on way to learn what a design approach is, for you to use as an experiential teaching method or as a problem-solving process. When you hear the word “design,” you might assume this method is all about visuals, making things look nice, and choosing the best PowerPoint themes. Good visual design is important. But “Design Thinking” focuses not so much on visuals, as on solving problems in more human-centered and experimental ways. It's about understanding a challenge area from different stakeholders' perspectives, and then quickly building and testing new solutions to see which have the greatest promise.
  • Image of Heather
    Heather Buchanan
September 7, 2017
The U.S. legal system is already hard to navigate and understand, but even more so in the aftermath of a natural disaster. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and in preparation for Hurricane Irma, the legal community is coming together in different ways to make legal aid more accessible to people in affected areas.
  • Image of Heather
    Heather Buchanan
September 6, 2017
In July, the nonprofit organization Progress Florida sent a letter to the Florida Constitution Revision Commission outlining proposed revisions to Article V, Section 11, of the state's constitution. The revisions add rules for judicial nominating commissions, such as limitations on membership and provisions ensuring impartiality. The Constitution Revision Commission meets every 20 years, per the state's constitution, to review and recommend constitutional changes to be put on the ballot for voters to consider.
  • Image of Brittany Kauffman
    Brittany Kauffman
September 5, 2017
Across the nation, states are reforming the civil justice system. They are taking action in response to the Conference of Chief Justices' (CCJ) and Conference of State Court Administrators' (COSCA) endorsement of 13 recommendations focused on ensuring our courts are affordable, efficient, and fair for all. States are creating civil justice reform task forces and committees focused on improving the delivery of civil justice in their own states. To aid that process, IAALS and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) have rolled out several new tools as part of a three-year Implementation Plan to provide states with education and technical assistance. This month we released two new tools.
  • Image of Brittany Kauffman
    Brittany Kauffman
August 31, 2017
A recent study conducted for Voices for Civil Justice, with support from the Public Welfare Foundation, found that voters strongly favor reform of the civil justice system. Overwhelming majorities of voters believe it is important to “ensure that everyone has access to the civil justice system” and “strongly support a wide range of services to enhance access.” Moreover, voters support increasing state funding to build a more accessible civil justice system. The survey highlights that equal justice under the law in our society is fundamental, with voters considering it a right, not a privilege.
  • Image of Keith Lee
    Keith Lee
August 30, 2017
A while back, Alli Gerkman wrote about the importance of life experience for new lawyers. But lawyers often don’t discuss these experiences on resumes or in interviews. They try to keep their background “strictly legal.” But the Foundations for Practice survey indicates that employers are looking for new hires that have grit, work ethic, and experience. And if you’re a young lawyer, likely the only place you can draw on past experience is non-legal jobs. Along those lines, I recently asked the people in LawyerSlack.com (the largest, private, lawyers-only Slack community) about their work history and experience.
  • Image of Rebecca Love Kourlis
    Rebecca Love Kourlis
August 29, 2017
Bill has been involved with IAALS since 2012, when we launched the Honoring Families Initiative Advisory Committee on which he serves. We have worked together on our original vision-paper, on the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce, the Family Bar Summit, The Modern Family Court Judge, and now our online dispute resolution project called Court Compass. At every turn, every phone call, every email, Bill has been a generous, responsive, and wise partner.
  • Photo of Doug Keith
    Douglas Keith
  • Photo of Laila Robbins
    Laila Robbins
August 24, 2017
This month, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the American Bar Association Judicial Division released Building a Diverse Bench: Selecting Federal Magistrate and Bankruptcy Judges, a resource that offers practical steps the federal judiciary can take to promote a more diverse bench. A diverse bench is essential to an effective judiciary. A bench that reflects the diversity of the public it serves enhances public confidence in the role of the courts in our democracy, and provides role models for groups underrepresented in the legal profession. And diversity is more than symbolic—having broader perspectives on the bench produces a richer jurisprudence, incorporating a wider and more representative range of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives.
  • Image of Caitlin Anderson
    Caitlin Anderson
August 23, 2017
The 6th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference is right around the corner! In addition to our fantastic lineup of program speakers, we are excited to have fifteen Ignite presentations from a broad swath of law schools and legal organizations. As you may know, it has become ETL Conference tradition to kick off the first day of the conference with a series of Ignites. Presenters have 6 minutes, 20 slides, and 18 seconds per slide to share their projects, successes, and ideas.