This week, former New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, was presented with the first-ever Mary C. McQueen Award for Excellence and Leadership in Justice System Improvement as part of the annual joint conference of the Conference of Chief Justices and Conference of State Court Administrators.

As a pro se (or self-represented) litigant, imagine being faced with an overwhelming system of protocol, etiquette, deadlines, rules, and legalese. You are expected to navigate this foreign world to keep everything you care about from breaking as it spins to the ground. This system is one that takes attorneys years to understand.

Our Foundations for Practice survey set out to define what new lawyers are lacking. After working with state bar organizations to distribute the survey across the country, we are sitting on more than 24,000 responses from lawyers in all 50 states. Today, we are releasing two exciting outcomes from the survey.

Today, aspiring lawyers across the country will sit for a bar examination that is intended to test their preparation for practice and will determine whether they will join the ranks of the legal profession this fall. While the bar examination has long been the measurement of what law graduates need in order to enter the profession, the profession and legal employers have nonetheless questioned its efficacy and the efficacy of legal education as a whole in actually preparing new lawyers. Many believe that American law schools are graduating lawyers unprepared to meet the demands of modern practice. Yet knowing what new lawyers need to succeed, and how they can acquire it effectively, was elusive until now.

In Maryland, the creation of special family divisions in the state’s five largest jurisdictions has transformed the way courts handle family law cases. A recent article in the National Center for State Courts’ 2016 Trends in State Courts explains how the creation of these special family divisions can provide a model for improving the way such cases are treated across the country.

Last summer, the Washington State Bar Association held its first round of exams in a new Limited License Legal Technician program (LLLT) aimed at bridging the access to justice gap by allowing non-lawyers to provide legal advice and assistance in limited areas, like domestic relations/family law. Now, a recent article provides an update how the LLLT program is progressing in the state.

In a recent article, Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Fellow John Lande breaks down the results of a creative session held at the American Bar Association’s Section on Dispute Resolution Conference earlier this year. The session (and article) borrows its message from hockey great Wayne Gretzky, who said he always tried to skate “where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

The National Center for State Courts’ 2016 Trends in State Courts includes an article focused on the impact that high-volume cases, such as consumer...

The National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP) recently released Canadian data on case outcomes for self-represented litigants (SRLs). These new figures come shortly after NSRLP published research showing that in cases where a self-represented litigant faces a motion for summary judgment brought by a represented party, 95% of SRLs will have their cases dismissed.

We live in a time of cynicism and dissatisfaction with government—a dissatisfaction that includes the judicial branch. Gallup surveys of satisfaction with the way the nation is being governed have been stuck for the past few years at levels not seen since the days of President Richard Nixon and Watergate. Approval of the United States Supreme Court, which historically stayed safely in positive territory, has been close to 50-50 in recent years—and was negative (50% disapproving, 45% approving) at the start of the Court’s term last October.

As law schools across the country strive to produce lawyers who can hit the ground running—and as we gear up to launch our Foundations for Practice findings—Alli Gerkman, Director of Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, has been hitting the road around the country to explain how legal educators and employers can work together to shape the future of legal education.

Updates to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and a rising crop of tech savvy attorneys have Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola (Ret.) of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia optimistic about the future of e-discovery.