Professor Neil W. Hamilton of the University of St. Thomas School of Law recently published an article that analyzes empirical research on the competencies that legal employers and clients are looking for in new lawyers. For the article, Professor Hamilton surveyed four types of employers: larger law firms, small firms, county attorneys, and legal aid offices. He found all four groups highly valued certain competencies, dubbing them "professional formation competencies."

IAALS provides an overview of the 2014 election outcomes that impacted state courts and judges, including a look at ballot measures, contestable elections, and retention elections.

This Thursday and Friday, November 6-7, 2014, the Law School Survey of Student Engagement's (LSSSE) “Data and Assessment in Legal Education: The Necessities, The Possibilities” symposium will be held at Saint Louis University School of Law. Alli Gerkman, Director of Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, will be presenting on a panel about “Using Data to Demonstrate and Improve the Value of Legal Education.”

New research out of the United Kingdom suggests that instead of facing the family court system without legal counsel, families are choosing to forgo the courts altogether. This problem is not novel to the UK, and self-represented litigants are on the rise in the United States as well. Our Cases Without Counsel project is conducting first-of-its-kind national research in the hopes of better understanding how the legal system can meet the needs of these families.

Discovery in the United States is much more broad than other common law countries. While such differences in approach pose challenges in terms of cross-border discovery, our recent report, Allocating the Costs of Discovery: Lessons Learned at Home and Abroad, highlights the lessons to be learned for those at home by looking to more reasonable and proportionate discovery methods used abroad.

A family court in New York City recently allowed a father to serve his ex-wife with notice of a child support action via Facebook. The father first attempted to find and contact the mother through all of the traditional means, to no avail. The magistrate allowed the nontraditional service and noted that it was most likely the first of its kind in the country—when both parties are in the United States.

Professor Debra Moss Curtis has published an article calling for legal educators to look at other programs in higher education, as well as experts who study education, as guidance when considering reform within legal education. The article outlines suggestions that “should be considered by every institution," many of which align with the mission, work, and recommendations of Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers.

CBS and Jerry Bruckheimer have teamed up to create a new television series based on Richard Gabriel's acclaimed book, Acquittal. Gabriel has previously worked with IAALS and the Rule One Initiative on jury trial issues, including our publication A Return to Trials. The TV series would dramatize high profile cases like those of O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector, and Heidi Fleiss, as well as Enron and Whitewater.

A new study from the American Constitution Society finds a correlation between the airing of TV ads in state supreme court races and justices' decisions in criminal cases. According to the study, the more ads that air in a state, the more likely justices on the state's high court are to vote against criminal defendants. The study also documents the effects of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

The call for cooperation in legal disputes is on its way to being enshrined within the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in a more meaningful way. Several years ago, the Sedona Conference®’s Cooperation Proclamation called for greater cooperation between litigants in dealing with discovery matters. The idea calls for attorneys not to compromise their duty to be zealous advocates, but to strive for balance with their other duty as an officer of the court.

Family court judges make significant decisions affecting our nation's families, yet these judges are often undervalued—even by their peers on the bench. And, there is insufficient acknowledgement of the broad expertise required to do the job well. A new IAALS publication aims to change this by drawing attention to the special knowledge, qualities, and skills that these judges need to be successful—and hopefully reprioritizing and revaluing their role in the legal system.

Courts in many countries have been striving to provide various services to help facilitate the increasing number of self-represented litigants who need their services—especially in family law cases. In Ontario, Canada, the National Self-Represented Litigants Project recently published An Open Letter to the Canadian Judiciary, meant to encourage a dialogue between self-represented litigants (SRLs) and judges, who may struggle at times to effectively assist SRLs in their courtrooms.