Honoring Families recently convened a diverse cross-section of the national family law bar, with the goal of identifying and discussing improvements to the system that would allow all practitioners to better serve clients and children. The Family Bar Summit: Shaping the System for the Families We Serve challenged participants to shed preconceived notions about the system and engage in forward-thinking discussion on various aspects of the family justice system.

Our collective view of litigation is a bit like the old New Yorker map, which shows New York City magnified, and then skips most of the rest of the country, landing on the west coast. Thomas Clarke, Vice President of Research & Technology for the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), recently made that comparison, and he is right.

November 2015 is the 75th anniversary of the Missouri Plan, an innovative approach to selecting state judges intended to preserve their impartiality while holding them publicly accountable for their performance on the bench. First adopted by Missouri voters in 1940, this process is now used to select at least some judges in two-thirds of the states.

The ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services has published an issue paper exploring the development of new categories of judicially-authorized...

Lawyers, judges, and litigants alike have all come to the conclusion that the system is too expensive, complex, and time-consuming. If we are serious about having civil justice that is indeed just, speedy, and cost-effective, we have to make changes. Big changes.

We are excited to open registration for IAALS’ Fourth Civil Justice Reform Summit, which will be held in Denver, February 25-26, 2016. The Summit will feature nationally renowned faculty discussing the challenges of implementing change and engaging in a dialogue with participants regarding the necessary next steps for creating the just, speedy, and inexpensive courts of tomorrow.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet has announced the formation of a bipartisan screening committee to consider potential nominees for an upcoming vacancy...

In a recent amicus brief to the Alaska Supreme Court, the American Bar Association (ABA) argues that the Alaskan Constitution requires appointment of counsel to an indigent parent in a child custody case when a private lawyer represents the other party.

The New York Times is running a series of articles on consumer-business arbitration. The writers observe that arbitration takes away transparency, due process, the right of appeal, and assurance of an impartial decision maker—all of the attributes of a court system. In exchange, it offers a speedier, cheaper process.

Those who attended the 4th Annual Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference were among the first to learn about initial results from our national Foundations for Practice study. We will be sharing detailed results over the next several months, but here is a glimpse of what we already know.

In response to record-breaking judicial election spending, and an unprecedented series of scandals involving supreme court justices, reform-minded folks in Pennsylvania are making historic strides toward change.

Multiple states have recently amended their divorce laws in order to expedite the process and facilitate better, more cooperative outcomes for couples...