This month, IAALS will hold its annual Rebuilding Justice Award Dinner and honor the members of the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and Civil Justice. The Task Force began its work with IAALS in 2008, with goal of generating a nationwide discussion about the state of our civil justice system and promoting active consideration of proposed changes to make the system more accessible, affordable, efficient, and just.

The West Virginia legislature has passed, and the governor has signed, a bill that makes elections for the state's judges nonpartisan. Despite the new legislation, it is not possible to remove all traces of partisanship from judicial races. An additional consequence of the new law is that it effectively ends straight-ticket voting for judges.

The Texas Lawyer recently reported on Texas’ downward trend in civil lawsuits, which have dropped 17 percent over the last 10 years. The change in numbers presents many questions, with different perspectives as to the cause on all sides. Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht has said that the state’s judiciary must delve further into the statistics to find answers.

The Women's Legal Centre ACT (Australian Capital Territory), in the Australian capital of Canberra, has opened a divorce clinic for women from diverse cultural backgrounds. The clinic provides free legal advice and representation to women in troubled marriages who may encounter issues navigating the Australian legal system.

In a recent blog post, Richard Zorza shares some thoughts on improving services for self-represented litigants in the United States. He believes that the legal system needs an aspirational goal to address access to justice, which can ultimately move the system in the direction of meaningful change.

Mark your calendars! The 4th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference will take place October 1-3, 2015, in Denver, Colorado, and will center on our Foundations for Practice project. We will debut the results of our national study to participants and look to them to help us shape the lessons, recommendations, and next steps that will turn the results into action.

The Colorado Supreme Court has requested comments on proposed amendments to the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure. The changes are focused on improving access to the civil justice system by making pretrial case management more efficient, thereby decreasing cost and delay, without sacrificing justice. The proposals seek to take the best of Colorado’s Civil Access Pilot Project (CAPP) and implement them broadly for all civil cases across the state.

The ABA Section of Dispute Resolution has awarded IAALS and the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families the 2015 Lawyer as Problem Solver Award. This honor is bestowed upon individuals and organizations that employ their problem-solving skills to forge creative solutions.

Jeffrey Thaler, Visiting Professor and University Counsel at the University of Maine, recently published a paper on Meeting Law Students' Experiential Needs in the Classroom: Building an Administrative Law Practicum Implementing the Revised ABA Standards. Thaler hopes others can use this approach to help students be ready to practice beyond the world of judges and juries.

In a recent article, Professor Clare Huntington argues for family law reforms that address the “seismic shift” occurring in American families. Today, more and more children are born to unmarried parents. To date, the legal system has not been responsive in adapting to this shift and fostering more beneficial co-parenting partnerships.

Whether law students are practice-ready after graduation depends greatly upon whom you ask. In BARBRI's first “State of the Legal Field Survey,” 70% of third-year law students thought they possessed “sufficient practice skills” and 76% believed they were ready to practice law “right now.” However, practitioners thought quite differently on the matter. Alli Gerkman weighs in on the discrepancies.

In a recent Politico piece, the former chief justice of Alabama's supreme court offered a firsthand perspective on the relationship between electing judges and maintaining impartial courts and judges, and other judges have shared similar sentiments. In 2012, Chief Justice Cobb participated in an IAALS roundtable, which reached consensus on several "cornerstones" for contested judicial elections.