News & Updates

This year marks the 10th anniversary of IAALS’ work to continuously improve America’s legal system and reestablish it as the aspirational model for justice globally. To mark this milestone, IAALS celebrates both its accomplishments and its bright future, all while tackling the most critical issues of the day. Having a trusted and trustworthy legal system is essential to our democracy, our economy, and our freedom. IAALS staff, founders, partners, sponsors, and advisors all recognize that to earn that trust, the legal system must be just, impartial, and responsive.

Those who attended the 4th Annual Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference were among the first to learn about initial results from our national Foundations for Practice study. We will be sharing detailed results over the next several months, but here is a glimpse of what we already know.

For the last ten years, IAALS—the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System—has worked to rebuild the civil justice system. After much work, and through collaboration with some of the very best minds in the country, we are finally reaching a critical goalpost in that mission.

We’re incredibly excited to share the first results of our Foundations for Practice project and help build on what we’ve learned at this year’s Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference. Foundations for Practice is a first-of-its-kind effort to identify the foundations entry-level lawyers need to succeed in practice.

Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Director Alli Gerkman was invited to speak on “The Changing Legal Landscape” at the opening plenary session for the National Conference of Bar Presidents in July. In a prepared presentation (below), she said that…

On the occasion of his retirement, John Lande, now Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law and ETL Fellow, collected his advice to law students and lawyers in an essay entitled “My Last Lecture: More Unsolicited Advice for Future and Current Lawyers.”

Can the 20th Century model of legal services delivery rise to the challenges and opportunities created by changes in society and the legal industry? And, can clients get the access to justice they deserve through the traditional models of legal…

Congratulations to Professor JoNel Newman, University of Miami School of Law, on her selection for the AALS Section on Clinical Legal Education’s M. Shanara Gilbert Award.

A year ago, we launched Foundations for Practice and kicked off a study to achieve the project’s first objective: to identify the foundations entry-level lawyers need to practice law. In late 2014, we began distributing a survey to lawyers across the country to do just that.

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.

“Big dreams, hard work, and serendipity” are the words Judge Christine M. Arguello would use to describe how she achieved her professional successes as a lawyer and judge. But, she also acknowledges the help of various mentors and the support of academic institutions throughout her career. In order to help the next generation, Judge Arguello founded Law School - Si Se Puede, a pipeline program that advances inclusiveness in the legal profession.

Law Week Colorado recently published an article detailing the launch of Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers' Foundations for Practice project. The goal of the project is to give law schools more information about the skills, competencies, characteristics, and traits—referred to as "foundations"—that real-world practitioners say graduates need to be successful. Once these foundations are identified, law schools can then incorporate them more fully.

A recently published a paper, entitled “A Primer on Professionalism for Doctrinal Professors,” discusses how and why doctrinal professors should incorporate attorney professionalism into their curriculum. Professor Schaefer offers guidance in developing course outcomes that connect legal subject matter with issues of professionalism and methods for doing so.

Rocket Lawyer, founded in 2008, is an alternative, online legal service provider that many see as a first wave in a tidal shift in how legal services are delivered to the public. They recently published an article on their blog that spoke to the uncertain and shifting state of legal education, and the profession as a whole, and some of the efforts that are being made to spearhead the best way forward, including those being made by Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers.

Douglas O. Linder and Nancy Levit have compiled a handbook outlining what it takes to be a good lawyer. Drawing upon recent social science research and the experience of excellent practicing attorneys, Linder and Levit suggest that good lawyers must develop their practice beyond simply having the intellectual ability to understand the law. In The Good Lawyer: Seeking Quality in the Practice of Law, they outline crucial qualities to lawyering.

IAALS is pleased to announce a $50,000 gift from El Pomar Foundation in support of a groundbreaking series of national conversations. Dubbed “DIAALOGUES,” the project allows IAALS to do what it does best—bring together the best minds in the country to forge solutions to the most pressing issues facing the American legal system.

IAALS is pleased to announce "Foundations for Practice." Led by Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers, this ambitious project focuses on improving legal education and closing the gap between how students are being taught in law school and the knowledge and skills legal professionals say new graduates need to succeed.

Last week, Bill Sullivan, lead author of Educating Lawyers and the founding director of Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers, did an interview with Insight Labs on the future of law, discussing legal education (and reform history), the Carnegie Report, experiential education, teaching judgment, the role of the profession, and the importance of law in society. It's worth reading in full, but here's a glimpse.

One of my primary responsibilities as Counsel to the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court is to start and maintain dialogue among Colorado's law schools, bench, and bar in an effort to find and promote commonality among their efforts to improve our state's legal profession. Naturally, then, I was interested in attending the 2013 Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers conference, which sought to connect the legal academy and members of the legal profession.

Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers announces its second annual conference, which will focus on connecting the profession and the academy to ensure that law graduates are prepared to begin a career of service to clients, service to the legal system, and service to society. Conference participants will focus on how to design and deliver a modern legal education that educates lawyers to the highest standards of competence and professionalism.