Mo Weiland, a recent graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, an Educating Tomrrow’s Lawyers consortium school, recalls her first volunteer case as both unexpectedly challenging and very informative for her developing career. Weiland sees such volunteer opportunities as a way to get more experience as a young attorney while also providing a valuable public service.

Quality Judges has just released A Credit to the Courts: The Selection, Appointment, and Reappointment Process for Bankruptcy Judges. This study provides the first in-depth examination of the process for selecting U.S. bankruptcy judges, highlighting the similarities and differences among the regional circuits. Despite the number of cases processed in these high-volume courts, and their significance in the financial lives of individuals and businesses alike, very little was known about how the judges who preside over these courts come to be on the bench, until now.

On Sunday, June 23, 2013, former IAALS Board Member and Justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court Patricio M. Serna will be honored as a Santa Fe Living Treasure. Justice Serna graciously served on the IAALS Board of Advisors from our very beginning in 2006 until just last year. Our gratitude for his guidance over the years continues, and we congratulate Justice Serna on this exciting and deserved recognition. A living treasure indeed.

Judge Kevin Burke, a Minnesota trial judge and member of the IAALS Board of Advisors, seconded Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor's call for selection reform in her state. According to Judge Burke, selection reform in Ohio is needed for three reasons: judicial elections may negatively impact public perceptions of judges and courts, not enough voters participate in judicial elections, and more can be done to educate judicial voters.

According to new data from the Center for Public Integrity, outside interest groups spent more than $11.7 million in ten states on supreme court elections—both contested and retention—in 2012 and 2013. Forty percent of this spending came from out-of-state organizations. The Center's data also show that 75 percent of the outside spending in 2012 and 2013 stemmed from the ongoing battle between trial attorneys and business groups.

Governor Tom Corbett nominated superior court judge Correale F. Stevens to fill the supreme court vacancy created by former justice Joan Orie Melvin's resignation following her criminal conviction. At the same time, a sitting supreme court justice is now the subject of an FBI investigation. The investigation is focusing on whether Justice Seamus McCaffery and his wife, who serves as his chief aide, violated the state Ethics Act when she received fees for referring clients to personal-injury law firms.

Increasingly, law firms, corporate employers, public interest organizations, government entities, and other organizations that employ lawyers are relying on core competencies when hiring, assessing, and promoting new lawyers. We want to better understand how the legal profession defines entry-level core competencies. Do you and your organization use core competencies for entry-level lawyers? Are you willing to share them?

You may have noticed a new voice in our Honoring Families blog posts. Natalie Knowlton has been with IAALS since 2006 and joined the staff full time in 2008, working first as a Research Analyst across initiatives and then as Manager of the Quality Judges Initiative. Now, she will make significant contributions to our Honoring Families Initiative as its Director.

This month we are welcoming a new contributor to our ranks. Katherine Kirk will replace Cindy Pham, who served as our first student contributor and helped us get IAALS Online off the ground. Like Pham, Kirk will highlight news and articles related to IAALS' four initiative areas. Kirk is a 3L at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

Less than a week after the supreme court struck down a civil justice reform measure known as the Comprehensive Lawsuit Reform Act of 2009, some state legislators called for a study of term limits for appellate judges. According to House Speaker T.W. Shannon, it is lawmakers' duty to monitor the government's balance of power, but other legislators described the study as retaliation for the recent decision and other unpopular rulings.

The Tennessee legislature opted not to renew the state’s judicial nominating commission, and it is set to expire on June 30. Three appellate judges announced last week that they will not stand for retention in August 2014, with the expectation that the commission could screen applicants and nominate candidates to fill their vacancies before it ceases to exist in a few weeks. At least one legislator is concerned about setting the judicial selection process in motion more than a year before the vacancies occur.

A one-day divorce program that launched this spring in the Sacramento Superior Court is streamlining the process for self-represented litigants who have filed a dissolution of marriage case before the Court and are ready for a final judgment. According to the court, law students are playing “a vital role” in the success of the program, meeting with litigants and gathering intake data; the program is also benefiting from the assistance of volunteer attorneys who serve as Judges Pro Tem.