News & Updates

IAALS is awarding Rohan Pavuluri, CEO and co-founder of Upsolve, the second annual Alli Gerkman Legal Visionary Award. “IAALS is thrilled to present Rohan with this award, recognizing his efforts to shake up the status quo and push the boundaries of our justice system,” said David Yellen, CEO of IAALS.

Last month, a bill was introduced in the Colorado Senate that would make text-message reminders to criminal and juvenile defendants required by law. More and more, courts are embracing technology as a way of keeping people navigating the justice system up to date.

After a year of collaboration and innovation, IAALS Board of Advisors member Andrew Arruda has completed his term as our first entrepreneur-in-residence. We are deeply grateful to Arruda for his tireless work and invaluable expertise over this past year—and for everything he’s done to move our mission forward.

In December, IAALS and its partners continued the Redesigning Legal Speaker Series with a panel exploring the opportunities being created by regulatory innovation for legal education.

Lawmakers in California recently spoke out against the state bar's exploration of regulatory reform as a means to address the access-to-justice crisis. However, the need for efficient and affordable legal services is growing exponentially—and data suggests that legal services innovation could a key part of the solution.

As America continues to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, some lawyers are noting an increase in divorce cases. Courts should be prepared to deal with these cases as quickly and efficiently as possible—and something that could aid their efforts is technology.

IAALS submitted this comment to the Michigan Supreme Court and the Lessons Learned Committee in response to the state’s preliminary report, Michigan Trial Courts: Lessons Learned from the Pandemic of 2020-21, Preliminary Findings, Best Practices, and Recommendations. The report highlights the common experiences that shaped the Michigan justice system throughout the pandemic.

Under many states’ current regulatory framework, a lawyer is the only option when it comes to addressing legal issues. Fortunately, however, a number of states are looking beyond lawyers—to limited licensed paraprofessionals, lay advocates, court navigators, and other types of allied legal professionals—in order to close the justice gap. And that number is growing.  

The first two Paths to Justice convenings and webinars, focused on the pandemic, brought together diverse perspectives and partners to brainstorm lessons learned, identify continuing challenges, and inspire additional research. Out of those events, IAALS has published two issue papers highlighting outcomes and key takeaways.

In October, the Indiana Supreme Court published the Family Law Taskforce's final recommendations on how to make courts more efficient, less expensive, and easier to navigate in family law matters, with an emphasis in problem-solving, triage, training and stakeholder partnerships, and technology.

Throughout 2020, we saw just about every aspect of the legal profession move from in-person to virtual services. There have been a number of horror stories but also plenty of success stories, in which technology helped decrease court backlogs and increased access to the courts. So where does this leave us, and how do we move forward?

From conversations with legal reformers in many states, the idea of establishing a regulatory sandbox seems extreme. The reality is, though, that these initiatives are not as aggressive as they might seem—and in fact, state courts have been using similar reform tools for a very long time. 

In August, IAALS and its partners continued the Redesigning Legal Speaker Series with a panel exploring how lawyers and other legal professionals can help to solve access-to-justice problems using new advances in technology—while building sustainable practices at the same time.

Our data from the US Justice Needs project draws from more than 10,000 surveyed individuals and illuminates the contours of the justice crisis in America—revealing that, while certain groups are disproportionately impacted by justice issues, no socio-demographic group is untouched.

IAALS and HiiL have released the results of our US Justice Needs study, providing data on the justice problems Americans experience and the ways they seek to resolve them. Now that we know what people need help with most, we can begin to chart a new path forward to improve our justice system nationwide.

IAALS and HiiL have completed the first nationwide survey of its size to measure how Americans across a broad range of socio-demographic groups experience and resolve their legal problems. The full US Justice Needs report with the survey results will be released on September 1, with two live webinars presenting the data, reporting on the outcomes, and suggesting solutions.

In May, the Colorado Judicial Branch announced that a pilot program allowing documents in family court cases to be filed online will expand. Many courts in the last year have implemented or bolstered their e-filing systems in order to keep the legal system moving amidst courthouse closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

This month, IAALS and its partners kicked off the Redesigning Legal Speaker Series with a panel exploring how judicial leadership can play a critical role in expanding access to legal services and access to justice. The panelists discussed the status of regulatory innovation, how courts and others are seeking to address the problems, and why state supreme courts and the organized bar must start forging solutions now.

In May, the National Center for Access to Justice published the latest iteration of the Justice Index, a national survey of state civil justice policies. Based on an examination of policies across four civil justice areas—attorney access, support for self-represented litigants, language access, and disability access—the index assigns a score to each state.