News & Updates

In a recent article, The Miami Herald takes a closer look into the University of Miami's new dual medical-legal degree program, set to launch this fall. This program is an expansion of Miami's Health and Elder Law Medical Legal Partnership, designed to cross-train medical and law students in each other’s disciplines. The program lessens the time and tuition required if each degree was pursued separately.

IAALS has just released a research report entitled Family Law in Focus: A Retrospective Study of Colorado's Early Experiments with Proactive Case Processing. This report presents the results from an analysis of data from five pilot programs in four different Colorado courts that implemented proactive case management in family law cases. The data show that by providing active case management, assistance, and education to litigants, the likelihood of speedier case resolution is increased, which is the intent of CRCP 16.2.

The Honoring Families Initiative is pleased to announce a new addition to our national Advisory Committee—Gabrielle Davis. Davis is a Legal & Policy Advisor with the Battered Women’s Justice Project. We are delighted to see the new perspectives and ideas that Davis will bring to the Honoring Families Advisory Committee.

Malia Reddick, Director of the Quality Judges Initiative at IAALS, was recently interviewed about the Minnesota Bar's judicial selection policy, which may or may not be retained this summer. Reddick says that Minnesota’s system is good, and could be even better by strengthening it against against the intrusion of politics, special interests, and money. A system that emphasizes a judge’s qualifications, rather than how much money a judge can raise to get elected or their personal positions on hot-button issues, creates a more stable, open, and impartial judiciary.

Socially conservative legislators in Alaska have proposed a bill that would remove the judicial council’s authority to make recommendations regarding judges standing for retention. In Tennessee, legislators have proposed a bill that would allow them to reconstitute the nine-member performance evaluation commission with no judge members. It would also authorize the commission to rewrite existing evaluative criteria and to prevent judges who receive a recommendation “for replacement” from standing for retention.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed a bill calling for the state’s judicial nominating commissions to submit at least five names for each judicial vacancy. As IAALS Online reported last month, some question the constitutionality of the bill, since the state constitution allows commissions to send a minimum of three names to the governor.

While advancements in technology have made marrying over the internet a reality, they have made the divorce process easier as well. Technology-assisted divorce breaks the divorce process down into easily managed and discrete steps, designed to avoid messy court battles. For example, the service Wevorce walks a family through all the steps, including the legal, financial, and emotional components of the divorce process.

Legislatures in 17 states are considering whether to increase or eliminate their mandatory retirement age for judges. Mandatory retirement ages for state judges around the country range from 70 to 75. Pennsylvania’s supreme court recently agreed to hear a case challenging that state’s maximum age of 70 as discriminatory and in violation of the state constitution.

Public financing of judicial elections is currently seeing a mixed reception in a handful of states. North Carolina is considering discontinuing the public financing program for appellate races that the legislature established in 2002, while in Kentucky, the house of representatives has approved a bill establishing public financing for supreme court campaigns. Other states include West Virginia, New Mexico, and Wisconsin.

In a recent article, The Guardian discusses why mediation may be the quicker, cheaper, and less confrontational avenue for divorce in the United Kingdom. According to the article, non-mediated divorce takes nearly 450 days on average and costs an average of £7,000, while mediated divorce proceedings take an average of 110 days and cost only an average of £535.

In an article in the March edition of The Colorado Lawyer titled "'No Written Discovery Motions' Technique Reduces Delays, Costs, and Judges’ Workloads," Colorado attorney Richard P. Holme touts the “no written discovery motions” technique, whereby the court addresses all discovery disputes with an in-person or telephonic discovery hearing instead of a written motion, at least at the outset. This technique presents a number of advantages for the judge and the parties.

The New York Times has published a debate about prenups, with several commentators recommending prenuptial agreements for those "who have sizeable wealth, own a business or are entering into a second marriage with significant personal assets." However, other commentators suggested different solutions for protecting personal wealth and, as a recent case in New York demonstrates, prenups are not fail-safe.

Divorce filings in China have surged recently due to married couples’ desire to avoid the country's new 20 percent capital gains tax. Because the tax only applies to second home sales, many couples reasoned that a divorce would enable them to claim that each had only one home and evade paying the tax.

The Iowa Supreme Court is moving forward with implementation of a Business Specialty Court Pilot Project and will begin receiving cases on May 1, 2013. The Business Specialty Court Pilot Project grows out of the recommendations of Iowa’s Supreme Court Task Force for Civil Justice Reform. Among the recommendations was the establishment of a business court pilot project, one judge/one case and date certain for trial, adoption of the Federal Rules’ initial disclosure regime, and a two-tiered differentiated case management pilot project.

The New York Times reports more immigrant couples living in separate countries are now utilizing online video chat services to marry despite the distance. These internet marriages are a modern form of proxy marriages that date back centuries and allow a couple to wed even without the presence of one or both spouses.

IAALS’ new publication, A Roadmap for Review: Guide for Appraisal and Improvement of Caseflow Management in Civil Cases in U.S. District Courts, provides the tools for any interested federal judge to make a quick, initial assessment of the status of his or her civil case docket to measure how it compares to his or her colleagues as well as to courts across the nation. If further analysis and appraisal are deemed appropriate or desirable, this Guide provides the user with the tools to do so and recommendations for better practices.

Consistent with the promise made in its mission statement to “blend practical skills training with legal theory throughout the curriculum,” Golden Gate University School of Law integrates skills training and professional development across its curriculum, preparing students to be critical thinkers, problem solvers, and leaders in the legal profession. This commitment to experiential learning and fostering professional identity within law students makes GGU Law an ideal partner within the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Consortium.

Facing sentencing for a corruption conviction and a house resolution calling for her impeachment, Justice Joan Orie Melvin announced her resignation, effective May 1. Supporters of judicial selection reform are optimistic that these developments will lend momentum to efforts to move to merit selection of the state’s appellate judges.

The divorce rate among baby boomers has reached an all-time high of 25 percent, with many more newly single 50-somethings experiencing difficulties planning and saving for retirement. USA Today reports that it will cost "at least 50% more to retire for boomers who divorce," as there is much less time to make up any economic losses before retirement.

In a recent article, The Huffington Post offers advice on how families with teens can better cope with divorce. Divorce can particularly stress family relationships involving teenagers; teens are already struggling to establish their identity, separate from each parent, and divorce compounds these issues.