• headshot of Jordan Furlong
    Jordan Furlong
August 17, 2021
Lawyer development is a single continuum that starts even before the first day of law school, and continues past the point when a lawyer has become an independent, confident, and proficient professional. Until we recognize this fact, we will continue to struggle to develop lawyers properly.
  • Image of Logan Cornett
    Logan Cornett
  • Image of Zachariah DeMeola
    Zachariah DeMeola
August 2, 2021
The goal of any licensure process should be to make sure the public is protected from incompetence without serving as an artificial barrier to people entering the legal profession. Indeed, this is precisely what the bar exam purports to do. But does the bar exam actually do those things?
  • headshot of Anna Carpenter
    Anna Carpenter
  • headshot of Alyx Mark
    Alyx Mark
July 20, 2021
We’re researchers who study legal services regulation and access to the civil justice system. We’ve been thrilled to watch groundbreaking announcements from the West ignite a wide-ranging national debate about how best to regulate legal training, services, and businesses—and we’ve been paying special attention to the role people who are not lawyers are playing in the process of legal re-regulation.
  • Image of Kathryn A. Reilly
    Kathryn A. Reilly
  • headshot of Andrew Unthank
    Andrew Unthank
July 15, 2021
At Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell, we’ve been fortunate to have a front-row seat to the outcomes and transformation that IAALS has achieved through Foundations for Practice. We collaborated with IAALS to survey our partners on the characteristics that they viewed as most essential for new associates to be successful at WTO, and the outcomes for retention and diversity have been exciting and encouraging.
  • Michele Pistone
    Michele Pistone
June 21, 2021
As I’ve learned from many years practicing and advocating for innovative design changes in legal education, teaching online does not and should not involve doing what professors have always done—lecturing, leading discussions, and delivering exams—just through internet-enabled platforms. Instead, law professors should implement design principles to their courses for delivery in any modality: classroom, online, or blended.
  • Image of Jordan M. Singer
    Jordan M. Singer
June 8, 2021
In a recent national survey asking about the importance of 12 characteristics of judges, survey respondents indicated that the public prizes a judge's professional qualities above all others, including political qualities—preferences that have obvious relevance for methods of judicial selection.
  • Image of Brittany Kauffman
    Brittany Kauffman
May 28, 2021
Throughout the past year, our courts have been engaged in informal pilot projects—they’ve tried out different technologies and processes, all in an effort to continue the administration of justice amid the pandemic. Now, we have the opportunity to learn from this experience and chart a path forward long term.
  • Image of Jack Zouhary
    Jack Zouhary
April 27, 2021
Civil jury trials have been few since the pandemic began. Cases stalled and slowed, phone conferences and Zoom replaced in-person hearings, and deadlines were extended. How did courts handle the tension between civil rules and procedure on the one hand, and the fundamental right to a jury trial on the other? And, what will stick?
  • Kristen L. Mix
    Kristen L. Mix
March 30, 2021
Since 2018, the Colorado Bar Association Federal Pro Se Clinic has been helping people navigate the overwhelming process of filing and pursuing a lawsuit in federal court without a lawyer. Use of the clinic has increased substantially in the time it has been in operation, and all signs point to increasing demand for pro se assistance.
  • Image of Logan Cornett
    Logan Cornett
  • Image of Zachariah DeMeola
    Zachariah DeMeola
February 24, 2021
The pandemic’s disruption to the status quo brought with it a critical view of the bar exam, how it is administered, and whether it actually tests what it purports to. The status quo—and tinkering around its edges—is not good enough. It is time we had the courage and will to look beyond the assumptions that underpin the current bar exam and towards outcomes and purpose for a new era.
  • Image of Logan Cornett
    Logan Cornett
February 17, 2021
Throughout the past ten months, our justice system has made giant strides in its use of technology, including video- and tele-conferencing, e-filing, remote jury trials, and online dispute resolution. The question now faced by many courts is: are these digital processes working like they’re supposed to?
  • Image of John M. Greacen
    John M. Greacen
February 8, 2021
The pandemic has affected our civil justice system in many ways, yet perhaps the most important role access to justice entities can play in the near future is to advocate for the retention of remote access systems for court appearances as well as for the delivery of legal and self-help services.