Hosted by IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, and sponsored by DISH Network L.L.C. On June 22, 2012, IAALS is hosting eDiscovery Summit 2012, an educational summit in Denver, Colorado, that will bring together…
On December 8, 2011, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware adopted a new Default Standard for Discovery, Including Discovery of Electronically Stored Information (ESI). This new standard announces the expectation that parties reach cooperative agreements regarding discovery, but applies limited default standards in the absence of such an agreement or court order.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has incorporated a Model Order Regarding E-Discovery In Patent Cases into its Local Rules as Appendix P.
Confirmation of judicial nominees has been a contentious issue this year, and on May 7, 2012, lawyers, legal experts, and advocacy groups met with the White House to discuss judicial vacancies and the confirmation process.
The Obama administration’s efforts to diversify the federal judiciary continue. Nancy Torresen, the first female judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, was formally sworn into office on May 3, 2012.
Frank Bowman guest blogs on Concurring Opinions and offers some thoughts on how law schools outside the top 30 can sustain themselves while meeting the needs of their students. His suggestions? Reverse the trend toward competing for faculty by…
The newly minted Stanford Journal of Complex Litigation launches this Fall. The SJCL will cover topics like aggregate litigation, rules of civil procedure, mass torts, jurisdictional disputes, complex litigation reform, actions by private attorneys…
The senate approved a bill that would alter the process for nominating appellate judges. The judge member of the appellate judicial commission would be replaced by a gubernatorial appointee.
As of mid-April, the three supreme court justices standing for retention in November had each raised between $156,000 and $160,000 for their retention effort, most of which came from lawyers and law firms. Committees handle the justices’ campaign finances, as the code of judicial conduct bars them from personally soliciting contributions.
In the context of retention opposition campaigns against three supreme court justices, the Florida Bar, the American Bar Association, and the League of Women Voters of Florida launched a “The Vote’s in Your Court” public education campaign.
An effort to impose seven-year term limits on judges failed to pass the house and is dead for this legislative session. New Hampshire is one of three states where judges serve for life, or to a mandatory retirement age of 70.
Of the races on the ballot in the May Democratic primary elections, the two supreme court races are the most expensive so far, with the six candidates having spent $1.4 million.
Professor Ben Madison explores how students develop their “professional identities,” –as recommended by the Carnegie report—through journaling assignments. Journals, he observes, help students appreciate the need for mentorship, experience the…
A key feature of the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers initiative is the Consortium of 23 law schools committed to innovation in the spirit of the Carnegie Report. What are these schools like compared to law schools as a whole? This post will take up this question, looking at three issues: 1. What are the ETL consortium schools like as to the types of institution they represent, their tier in school rankings, and where are they located? 2. What kinds of innovation are they engaged in, particularly in the area of curriculum? 3. How do they look on these measures when compared to other schools?
The California bar’s task force is set to issue recommendations in December 2013 regarding whether to impose a practical skills training requirement on lawyers applying for admission. Whether the country’s largest bar decides to adopt hands-on…
The University of California Hastings College announced that it will reduce enrollment by 20% over the next three years. "The critics of legal education are right," Dean Frank Wu said in a telephone interview on April 30. "There are too many law…
The governor asked a judicial nominating commission to submit the name of more than one candidate for a district court judgeship for which only four attorneys applied. All four applicants—two Republicans and two Democrats—are also running for the seat in November. The commission responded by soliciting additional applicants but did not promise to nominate more candidates.
Despite an earlier agreement to move forward with Senate confirmation of judicial nominees, Senator Al Franken and others report that the process remains acrimonious. Nearly one in 10 seats on the federal bench are currently empty.
A judicial selection task force made seven recommendations and offered draft legislation to improve the process for selecting supreme court justices. Recommendations including nominating candidates in open primaries rather than through party conventions, full disclosure of campaign spending, and the use of a vacancy nominating commission to fill judicial vacancies between elections.
The senate approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to appoint appellate judges with legislative confirmation. The proposal would give the general assembly sixty days to act on a nomination or it would automatically be confirmed. The house later approved the same measure. If approved by a two-thirds vote of the general assembly in 2013, the proposal will go before the voters in 2014.
