As IAALS celebrates its tenth year, the Denver Business Journal sat down with Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis to recap her motivation for leaving the Colorado Supreme Court and founding IAALS, and the impacts made over the last decade.

This week, the Denver Post published an article highlighting Denver’s new Center for Out-of-Court Divorce, which provides a child-focused, less-adversarial, and potentially less-costly approach for families when parents are separating.

In 2012, when I first started researching Splitopia, my book on today’s good divorce, I assumed there were dearth of good ideas around for helping families transition out of marriage smoothly. It would be my job, I decided, to develop new thinking for the age-old problem of marriage’s end. Upon further investigation, I discovered that many legal professionals, reformers, and mental health practitioners did have good ideas for helping adults and children navigate this difficult transition, but they weren’t communicating them adequately between disciplines and across states, let alone to divorcing families. I would start a national divorce communication program, perhaps affiliating with a think tank in Washington, D.C.!

On April 21, IAALS—the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver—will hold its annual Rebuilding Justice Award Dinner. The award recognizes individuals who exemplify the spirit of innovation and leadership that IAALS champions across all of our work toward building a legal system that is fair, accessible, reliable, efficient, and accountable.

Inspired in part by the work of the Conference of Chief Justice’s Civil Justice Improvements Committee, Chief Justice Scott Bales of the Arizona Supreme Court issued an Order at the end of last year establishing a new initiative for the Arizona Courts, creating a 24-member committee of judges, lawyers, and stakeholders to address ways in which civil litigation can be made more efficient and less expensive.

It’s that time of year again, when state legislatures are in session and lawmakers who are dissatisfied with the judiciary and some of its decisions are proposing changes in how judges are selected. This is nothing new: the O’Connor Judicial Selection Plan, which calls for commission-based appointment of judges, has been under attack in a number of states, and there seems to be a pattern to the attacks.

I spent half my legal career as a civil trial lawyer in New Hampshire trying all manner of cases in state and federal court and sometimes trying or preparing to try cases in other states and jurisdictions. I learned from some great lawyers and mentors over those years. They viewed a jury trial not as a failure of the system but as an integral part of American justice. They tried many of their cases with four or five depositions, twenty key exhibits, an expert or two, and a theory of the case. Justice was almost always served. The lawyers I admired understood the probing value of focused, incisive cross examination, the transformative power of a witness's solemn oath, the value of the courtroom's sterile unfamiliarity in a search for the truth, and the capacity and integrity of juries to render fair verdicts. They viewed trial lawyering as a craft with a noble purpose and never viewed discovery as an end it itself.

As is true in many jurisdictions, Arizona courts are finding that self-represented parties are heavily concentrated in family law matters, like divorce, child support, and custody. With little or no legal experience, litigants are navigating these complex processes by themselves—with many citing lawyer costs as prohibitive. .

Toward the end of last year when I first read IAALS’ report, Change the Culture, Change the System: Top 10 Cultural Shifts Needed to Create the Courts of Tomorrow, I had feelings of both trepidation and hope. It said a lot of things I have often thought about, but have not always spoken up about.

Last month, MSN released a ranking of the best and worst states (including D.C.) for getting a low-cost divorce, based on a survey conducted by...

Millions of cases pass through state courts every year, which is why it is imperative that the judges handling them are objective and accountable. While many judges are selected through political contests that threaten these important values, others are chosen through merit selection processes that strengthen these goals and our courts. Yet, even this method can be improved upon. To help ensure that merit selection procedures are open, fair, and inspire public trust, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System today announced the release of its Model Code of Conduct for Judicial Nominating Commissioners.

I recently attended IAALS’ Fourth Civil Justice Reform Summit and served as a faculty member on several panels. It never fails that I come away from these gatherings with more ideas. I began to take notes on this question—what can we do to effect the changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure?