2024 Impact Recap: From Inspiring Leaders to Innovation in Action

As we begin 2025, IAALS is poised to make our biggest gains to date as we work to bring better access to our justice system for everyone. We have laid the groundwork for innovations across many states and sectors of our system—due in large part to people like you, our partners and colleagues. Together, we are creating transformative change to how people experience civil justice. In the last year, you have helped make many successes possible.

Among our key initiatives in 2024, we co-hosted a national summit on judicial leadership and innovation, gathering together judicial leaders from state and federal courts across the country to explore practical strategies for driving innovation and bringing change to their courts and communities. The summit empowered these judges to be robust and resilient leaders who can spearhead critical reforms and employ collaborative problem-solving and community-building to foster improved civil justice. Following the summit, these judges have already begun to launch their own innovations, and these lessons have infused everything we are working on at IAALS as well.

Our publications in 2024 reflect the breadth of our work across the system, as well as our collaboration with partners and individuals to drive system change:

• Paths to Justice: The Bold Steps We Need to Reform Civil Justice (February 1)
• JPE 2.0: National Perspectives on Judicial Performance Evaluation (July 1)—with new, national recommendations for JPE programs coming in the next few months.
• Unlocking Legal Regulation: Lessons Learned and Recommendations for the Future (August 30)

Our impact reverberated in national publications. Our experts were sought for comment and insight across our areas of work, covering legal licensure in Reuters, addressing the justice gap and expanding legal services in The American Lawyer, and what it takes to be a successful lawyer in Law360. Our expertise on judicial selection, retention, and performance evaluation was sought by state legislatures and the Colorado Public Radio, and the Above the Line Network was featured broadly across national and local media, including Law360, ABA Journal, and ABC Denver7.

Our Board of Advisors has been strengthened by the addition of four distinguished individuals, each contributing diverse perspectives and expertise that will guide and shape our future endeavors. In tandem, IAALS has hosted dozens of meetings, gatherings, and convenings, attracting thought leaders and stakeholders from diverse sectors and industries to bring broad perspective to our work. We held convenings on artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of legal services, as well as reciprocity across allied legal professional programs. Together, we have built innovative solutions to address the most pressing challenges facing our justice system and the people who need it.

Our team provided expertise and support to national partner committees, task forces, commissions, and working groups around the country. Their thought leadership was highlighted in national speaking engagements and published reports, but also in our recurring Expert Opinions series covering timely topics in the realm of civil justice reform.

• Michael Houlberg, our Director of Special Projects, discusses the importance of self-help materials and ensuring they better empower people with information and understanding in “Creating Self-Help Materials that Are Actually Helpful.” 
• Danielle Kalil, our Director of Civil Justice and the Judiciary, discusses the strong leadership needed to respond to existing challenges and design a better system that anticipates future needs in “Innovating from the Bench: Judges as Agents of Change.”
• And I delve into “The Implications of Generative AI: From the Delivery of Legal Services to the Delivery of Justice,” emphasizing our great opportunity to harness this technology to improve the administration of justice.

We also launched new projects that we are excited to continue moving forward in 2025:

• The Above the Line Network (ATLN), a joint project of IAALS and The Chicago Bar Foundation, is a community of leaders from across the United States, Canada, and beyond working together to transform the delivery of legal services for the underserved middle class.
• People-Centered Legal Regulation: Grassroots Engagement with the Public, a pathbreaking project aimed at understanding and incorporating public perspectives on regulatory reform in the legal profession.
• Foundations for Practice 2.0, a project in partnership with the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), aims to survey thousands of practicing lawyers in every field of law and every geographic and demographic sector, to identify the key skills needed in today’s legal profession.

As we look back on 2024 and forward into this new year, IAALS remains steadfast in our dedication to transformative change. As our work over the last year reflects, our approach is grounded in purposeful research, deep collaboration, and diversity of perspective, followed by evidence-based recommendations that take hold in courts and legal institutions across the country. In 2025, we will continue to make this the north star in our work to reexamine how the American civil justice system can better serve the needs of us all.