Professor John Lande of the University of Missouri School of Law gives students a realistic and comprehensive perspective on legal negotiation through a semester-long simulated experience in his Negotiation course. Lande describes his course as unique and particularly relevant to the legal profession because he uses multi-layered six-step negotiation hypotheticals to walk students through the entire negotiation process.

Since launch, nearly 60,000 calculations have been made using the calculator, which gives prospective law students the most transparent and complete law school employment rate information available. We were also featured prominently on the home page of the ABA's website, and we made several improvements to the tool to make it even easier to use. Here are a few.

Last week, Bill Sullivan, lead author of Educating Lawyers and the founding director of Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers, did an interview with Insight Labs on the future of law, discussing legal education (and reform history), the Carnegie Report, experiential education, teaching judgment, the role of the profession, and the importance of law in society. It's worth reading in full, but here's a glimpse.

In 2012, IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis was named an Honorary Diplomate of ABOTA—the American Board of Trial Advocates. She received the award last month in Austin, Texas, when she presented at the ABOTA National Jury Summit 2013. Since 1958, ABOTA has acknowledged only 26 individuals as Honorary Diplomates for their tireless work in furtherance of the American Justice System and the civil jury system.

IAALS is extremely grateful for the unwavering generosity of the Gates Frontiers Fund. Entirely supported by gifts and grants, IAALS values support at every level. They have been with us from the beginning—investing in our practical, comprehensive, non-partisan process and partnering with us at every step. While their financial support is significant, their belief in us is truly priceless. Thank you to all of our donors.

Harvard Law School's “Case Studies Blog” recently featured the University of Denver Sturm College of Law's Lawyering Process Program as one that helps students begin to develop their identities as lawyers in the first year of law school. Lawyering Process retains all of the traditional research and writing instruction, while also integrating problem solving, practical simulations, self-reflection, and feedback from professors, peers, and practitioners.

Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers announces a newly expanded and integrated collection of online legal education resources. These innovative teaching tools give law schools and professors the means to reevaluate classes and curriculum from the ground up, and are designed to help law schools ensure that their students are prepared for the demands of an evolving profession.

Recently, the Civil Rules Advisory Committee held the first of three hearings on the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In an effort to provide input and offer comments with a fresh perspective, IAALS is hosting A Forum for Understanding and Comment on the Proposed Federal Rules Amendments in Denver, Colorado on December 5-6, 2013 for a small group of stakeholders from around the country.

A couple years ago, Milbank Tweed announced Milbank@Harvard, billed as a "groundbreaking multi-year training program for Milbank associates" to give them broader context for the commercial matters they handle for clients everyday. This month, David Wolfson, a Milbank partner, talked more about the program with Lee Pacchia of Bloomberg.

Studies on predictors of divorce abound. Among the more recent is a study exploring a connection between the intensity of one’s smile—as memorialized in a yearbook picture—and the likelihood of divorce. Individuals who smiled the least in their photos were five times more likely to divorce when compared with those who smiled the most intensely.

The ETL survey found that many law schools have been making changes in their curricula, and among the prominent areas of change are the curricula in the second and third years of law school and the introduction or expansion of course work focused on practical skills (especially the creation of new clinics and certificate programs). We need research that looks at such programs in detail to see what difference, if any, that they make.

Recent studies are shedding new light on the impact of divorce on society and the individual. According one study, based on data collected beginning in 1948, divorce may be “contagious" and that having a friend who is divorced dramatically increases one's chances of divorce. And, another study found that divorced people were two times more likely to die from the most-preventable causes of accidents than their married counterparts.