News & Updates

In 2012, IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis was named an Honorary Diplomate of ABOTA—the American Board of Trial Advocates. She received the award last month in Austin, Texas, when she presented at the ABOTA National Jury Summit 2013. Since 1958, ABOTA has acknowledged only 26 individuals as Honorary Diplomates for their tireless work in furtherance of the American Justice System and the civil jury system.

Harvard Law School's “Case Studies Blog” recently featured the University of Denver Sturm College of Law's Lawyering Process Program as one that helps students begin to develop their identities as lawyers in the first year of law school. Lawyering Process retains all of the traditional research and writing instruction, while also integrating problem solving, practical simulations, self-reflection, and feedback from professors, peers, and practitioners.

IAALS is extremely grateful for the unwavering generosity of the Gates Frontiers Fund. Entirely supported by gifts and grants, IAALS values support at every level. They have been with us from the beginning—investing in our practical, comprehensive, non-partisan process and partnering with us at every step. While their financial support is significant, their belief in us is truly priceless. Thank you to all of our donors.

Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers announces a newly expanded and integrated collection of online legal education resources. These innovative teaching tools give law schools and professors the means to reevaluate classes and curriculum from the ground up, and are designed to help law schools ensure that their students are prepared for the demands of an evolving profession.

Recently, the Civil Rules Advisory Committee held the first of three hearings on the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. In an effort to provide input and offer comments with a fresh perspective, IAALS is hosting A Forum for Understanding and Comment on the Proposed Federal Rules Amendments in Denver, Colorado on December 5-6, 2013 for a small group of stakeholders from around the country.

A couple years ago, Milbank Tweed announced Milbank@Harvard, billed as a "groundbreaking multi-year training program for Milbank associates" to give them broader context for the commercial matters they handle for clients everyday. This month, David Wolfson, a Milbank partner, talked more about the program with Lee Pacchia of Bloomberg.

Studies on predictors of divorce abound. Among the more recent is a study exploring a connection between the intensity of one’s smile—as memorialized in a yearbook picture—and the likelihood of divorce. Individuals who smiled the least in their photos were five times more likely to divorce when compared with those who smiled the most intensely.

The ETL survey found that many law schools have been making changes in their curricula, and among the prominent areas of change are the curricula in the second and third years of law school and the introduction or expansion of course work focused on practical skills (especially the creation of new clinics and certificate programs). We need research that looks at such programs in detail to see what difference, if any, that they make.

Recent studies are shedding new light on the impact of divorce on society and the individual. According one study, based on data collected beginning in 1948, divorce may be “contagious" and that having a friend who is divorced dramatically increases one's chances of divorce. And, another study found that divorced people were two times more likely to die from the most-preventable causes of accidents than their married counterparts.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill calling for a move to merit selection for judges of Pennsylvania's appellate courts. The proposed constitutional amendment would replace partisan elections with a commission-based gubernatorial appointment and senate confirmation process. And, the time may be right for selection reform in the state, according to a recent survey.

Recent statistics from the United Kingdom show a drop in family mediation referrals, which have fallen an average of 26 percent from April to June 2013, compared to the same period last year. A number of possible reasons have been given to account for this drop, including a cut in legal aid funding for family law cases, following which courts have reported a substantial increase in cases filed.

Drawing attention to the costs of high-end divorce, Justice Matthew Cooper of the New York Supreme Court recently refused to go along with longstanding legal precedent that assigns responsibility for attorneys’ fees in divorce cases to the party with the most assets. Justice Cooper made his ruling in the three-year divorce case of hedge fund manager George Sykes, which has accumulated approximately $1 million in legal fees to-date.

As the public comment period continues on the proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Senate Judiciary Committee joined in the discussion this week by holding a hearing on the proposals. The hearing provided another opportunity for comment on the proposed rules and their potential impact. There was a consistent message from the hearing that empirical research plays an important role in our analysis of these issues.

Pennsylvania is one of at least four states that holds judicial elections in off-years. This November, two candidates competed for a seat on the superior court (an intermediate appellate court) and four appellate judges, including two supreme court justices, stood for retention. Additionally, in New York, voters considered a proposed constitutional amendment that would have raised the mandatory retirement age for judges on the state's highest court and major trials courts.

We all know the story here: law graduates are having difficulty getting jobs after spending a good chunk of money on tuition. So, what are we to do? We must change the nature of teaching and the programs taught to address two key issues: (a) the standard methodology of law school instruction is failing (the Socratic method); and (b) whatever is being taught at law schools does not interest employers post-graduation.

Appellate judges in 38 states stand for election. But how much do we know about them? Are they fair? Do they write opinions that parties can understand? Are they doing a good job? With only a fraction of states providing such information about appellate judges, very few voters have what they need to make an informed and responsible decision at the ballot box. We at IAALS are working to change that with our newest publication.

IAALS is thrilled by the news that Judge Russell Carparelli of the Colorado Court of Appeals will take the helm at the American Judicature Society (AJS) as of January 1, 2014. IAALS has partnered with AJS on a handful of projects and we look forward to strengthening our collaborative relationship under his leadership. And Judge Carparelli is also a friend of IAALS in both the professional and personal sense, engaged actively in our Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers and Quality Judges Initiatives.

In a recent article for The Recorder, Rachel Van Cleave, dean of Golden Gate University School of Law, an Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Consortium School, champions the efforts of ETL and its collaborative approach to changing legal education. Dean Van Cleave suggests that experiential learning opportunities, like clinics and simulation courses, can be expanded even further to give students a more well-rounded education that exposes them to broader skill sets that are sought by law firms.

This short update on the Colorado Civil Access Pilot Project evaluation provides information on the specifics and timing of the evaluation that IAALS is conducting in Colorado. We hope this information will provide some reassurance to the Colorado legal community on what to expect in the coming year, while also providing some insight into other evaluation processes that are going on around the country.

According to a new poll, nearly nine in ten voters believe that judicial campaign support—whether in the form of direct contributions or independent spending—influences judicial decisions. This figure is a sharp increase from similar polls conducted over the last decade. These heightened concerns could be a reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United or to a marked rise in judicial election spending, particularly by outside groups, in recent years.