The latest IAALS report offers insights for legal employers and aims to close the employment gap. Many legal employers still rely on criteria like class rank, law school prestige, and law review participation to inform hiring decisions, but how effective are those criteria in making good hires? A study released today by IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, finds that when it comes to hiring “the whole lawyer,” experience matters. IAALS’ latest report, Hiring the Whole Lawyer: Experience Matters, continues to share insights from a study of more than 24,000 lawyers that promises to inform the way new lawyers are educated and hired.

Our Foundations for Practice project has permeated the profession as law schools and legal employers seek to bridge the gap between ensuring students learn the right skills and competencies to be successful in practice and ensuring legal employers have the best hiring criteria to secure the right candidates.

Daniel Ritchie, and his longtime assistant, Carolyn Foster, are moving into offices here at IAALS this week. They left campus eleven years ago when Dan stepped down as Chancellor of the University of Denver. But, throughout his various stints in the interim—the most recent of which was at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts—Dan has always said he wanted to return to campus at some point.

At a point when public mistrust of the government seems to be at an all-time high, a recent survey conducted by the National Center for State Courts...

IAALS is pleased to welcome Dona Playton as its new Director of the Honoring Families Initiative effective December 23, 2016. Dona comes to IAALS from...

We are reaching out to encourage you—as a supporter of our work—to vote! Recently, the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce, together with IAALS at the University of Denver, was honored to be a nominee for the 2017 American Bar Association Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access.

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) released a Request for Proposals to identify potential participants in a pilot project for implementing access to...

There is an exciting movement toward practical legal education in U.S. law schools. There are many good reasons for this movement, including demand from students and potential students, as well as demand from the employers and clients that will hire those students. Additionally, a plethora of compelling studies strongly suggest that adults learn best through practical, contextual, experiential education.

IAALS works extensively with partners from around the country as we take on the toughest problems in the legal system. Our Business Leadership Network...

Reporter Haley Cohen of The Economist recently toured the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce (COCD) in Denver and wrote about her experience in a December article titled Disruptive Innovation: A spate of start-ups offer alternatives to traditional divorce. We’re delighted to see the COCD attract international media attention because its innovative model for separating and divorcing families deserves the exposure.

By now, anyone who is familiar with the Foundations for Practice study knows that the data provides a gold mine of information for law schools, the legal profession (especially legal employers), and law students/recent grads. What makes the list so surprising is not necessarily each individual item, but rather the fact that the things lawyers believe we aspiring attorneys need in the short term are all (mostly) completely within our own control.

One year ago today, the long awaited amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect. The “package” of amendments included changes across a number of rules and focused on increasing cooperation, achieving proportionality in discovery, and encouraging early case management by judges. A new Rule 37(e) was added addressing sanctions for the failure to preserve electronically stored information.