Nicole Bradick is a lawyer, Chief Strategy Officer at CuroLegal, and an advocate for expanding access to justice. As she writes in a recent post at Lawyerist, she was a federal court litigator for eight years and had some exposure to state court pro bono cases, but her observational visit to an eviction court this summer was the first time she ever observed such a court from the self-represented litigant’s perspective. Her verdict? “Eviction court really, really sucks.” Bradick writes that she was dismayed by the treatment of the litigants and an environment that fosters imbalance, and that she was “[e]mbarrassed because in all my time practicing law, I never bothered to sit in court and feel what it’s like in the shoes of a self-represented litigant.” She is, of course, not the only one.

Despite having some of the longest judicial terms in the country, Maryland does not have a program in place to evaluate the performance of its state judges. Coupled with recent allegations of misconduct and misapplication of law coming out of the state's courts, state watchdogs are sounding the alarm regarding the need to establish such a program. The Baltimore Sun is following the situation and including IAALS’ work in its coverage.

On January 18-19, 2018, in Phoenix, Arizona, the National Center for State Courts and the Maricopa County Superior Court will host a Civil Justice Initiative Implementation Workshop on the Nuts and Bolts of Civil Justice Reform. This workshop is part of the three-year implementation effort that follows the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ) and Conference of State Court Administrators (COSCA) endorsement of 13 recommendations designed to transform the civil justice system in our state courts.

John Moye is one of a kind: brilliant and indomitable. IAALS itself was the result of alchemy—a coalition between John, Dan Ritchie, Charlie Gates, and me—and it began over a dinner at a Denver restaurant in the spring of 2005. John and I started talking about “what if.” John, like the other IAALS founders, has never heard the words “it cannot be done,” and IAALS was no exception.

While a significant focus of civil justice reform has been on the cost and delay of discovery, IAALS has heard the call for reform in the area of motions practice as well, which can similarly result in great cost and delay to the parties. In response, IAALS hosted a convening earlier this month at the Penrose House in Colorado Springs, Colorado, devoted to addressing the current challenges in dispositive motions practice.

Princeton Review released their 2018 law school rankings at the end of October—top 10 lists with categories like “Best Classroom Experience,” “Most Competitive Students,” and “Best Career Prospects.” Many of the rankings are based on student feedback; in fact, 10 of the 11 categories either feature or are based entirely on responses to a student survey (“Toughest to Get Into” is the only category based wholly on institutional data). The surveys asked students about professors’ teaching ability and accessibility, number of hours spent studying, diversity, sense of community, and opportunities for externships, internships, and clerkships, among many other topics.

In a society where only 26 percent of adults can name all three branches of the federal government and a third cannot even name one, Colorado's judicial branch has sought to improve its citizens’ civics knowledge through Our Courts Colorado. The nonpartisan program provides civics education presentations in both English and Spanish for adults in their communities across the state, many given by state and federal judges.

It is common knowledge that many lawyers and law students struggle with high stress as well as high rates of depression and substance abuse. Now, the American Bar Association’s National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being is suggesting that these characteristics interfere with the legal profession's dedication to serving clients and dependence on the public’s trust.

For young legal practitioners, integrating limited scope representation into law school curriculums is a giant step toward increasing awareness and mastery of modern legal practice. This was the position of the “Unbundling for the Next Generation” panel at the IAALS/ABA Better Access through Unbundling conference on the University of Denver campus last month. Professors Andrew Schepard, Danielle Hirsch and Luz Herrerra presented on the benefits of integrating limited scope representation into clinics and experiential classes, law school incubators, and bar events that target young lawyers, as well as educating court staff to promote referral panels.

The Civil Jury Project at NYU School of Law, whose Executive Director is Steve Susman, is organizing a Jury Improvement Lunch for the Colorado bench and bar this Thursday, November 2. The goal of the lunch is to honor jurors who have recently served by inviting them to attend a lunch with judges and lawyers in the community to share their experiences and to learn from them about what can be done to improve civil trials. These education programs, dubbed “Jury Improvement Lunches,” began in Texas and have been held in Houston, Dallas, and Corpus Christi. In addition to Denver, the project is now organizing similar lunches in Boston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Kansas City, Seattle, Oklahoma City, and Cleveland.

This week, the North Carolina Senate created the new Senate Select Committee on Judicial Reform and Redistricting to consider various options for how the state selects judges. The committee’s formation comes after the North Carolina legislature took several steps recently to shake up the state's judicial system. Back in March, the legislature voted to override the governor’s veto of House Bill 100, which requires North Carolina Superior Court and District Court judges to identify their party affiliation on ballots. Proponents of the bill say voters want to know everything they can about judicial candidates when they vote. Opponents, like the governor, argue the bill politicizes the courts.

From her 5’3” frame, Sheila Hollis has cast a long shadow in the law, as a trailblazer, innovator, and international leader. She is Colorado grown and educated, and now has deep roots in our nation’s capital, where she brokers with the best of them. I had an initial “taste” of that at our very first dinner together in Washington, D.C., at a restaurant that she frequents often, where she knows the menu, the wine list, the staff, and many of the patrons. I felt like I was getting a peek at the in-crowd.