News & Updates

The national dialogue about changing legal education has proposed many ideas aimed at making the system better, one of which being the outright elimination of the third year of law school. In the wake of this consideration, Luke Bierman, the Associate Dean for Experiential Education at Northeastern University School of Law, offers Northeastern’s Cooperative Legal Education Program (co-op) as an effective, alternative model that makes better use of all three years spent in law school.

The online legal community was abuzz Monday with the news that corporate clients don’t want to foot the bill for new lawyer training thanks to a Wall Street Journal article that asks: “First-Year Associates: Are They Worth It?” We’ve been talking to in-house counsel for months about gaps in legal education and the skills they would like law schools to develop in their students.

Dan Ritchie has had a profound influence on IAALS. The idea of IAALS was born in his office one day in 2005 when he said to me, "Is there a think tank for the legal system somewhere—a think tank that would be collaborative and action-oriented? Does such a thing exist? No? Well, why don’t we start one. Why don’t you reach out to John Moye and see if he would be interested, too." Then, Dan raised the money, positioned IAALS for maximum impact, and helped me to pull together an initial team. And he has stuck with us, helping us shape our mission and our projects at every turn.

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.

President Obama nominated supreme court justice Andrew Hurwitz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. If Hurwitz is confirmed, Governor Brewer will have the opportunity to make her third appointment to the five-member court.

Law school clinics are often said to serve two goals. They are a place where law students can develop and practice their legal skills in a real setting, with the safety net of faculty supervision. They also aim to serve low and modest means clients whose legal needs might otherwise go unmet. And, according to a recent study, clinics are achieving these goals.

According to U.S. News, separating spouses should plan for the future education of their children together and, in the process, pay special attention to funds saved prior to the divorce settlement and the shape that funding such accounts will take into the future. The article highlights several options for doing so and emphasizes that both during and after a divorce, communication between parents is paramount.

According to the author, 12% of Canadian law school graduates are currently unable to secure an articling position. In light of this, the article urges Canadian law schools to look to legal education reform efforts in the United States that were inspired by the Carnegie Report.

IAALS’ recent report describes a large but relatively unknown group of executive branch adjudicators who are not "Administrative Law Judges" (ALJs) governed by the Administrative Procedure Act. The report describes principal Non-ALJ characteristics, giving special attention to the degree to which agencies that employ them seek to protect their impartiality.

The Colorado Civil Access Pilot Project (CAPP) has been extended by one year, now applying to relevant cases filed through December 31, 2014. Chief Justice Bender’s amended Directive states that the project’s extension will provide “more data and a detailed evaluation” and “give the court time to determine whether the rules as piloted achieved the stated goals." IAALS is conducting the CAPP evaluation at the request of the Colorado Supreme Court, and will issue a public report upon its completion.

Following this decision, the judicial selection commission revised its rules to allow for public disclosure of nominees. The commission recently announced the names of six nominees sent to Chief Justice Recktenwald for appointment to a district court vacancy.

This month, IAALS welcomes Lynnea Louison as our new Senior Director of Operations. We are so fortunate to have someone of her experience and caliber join our team, and we are excited for what the future holds. Welcome to the IAALS family, Lynnea!  

Part of what we do at IAALS is to convene people who have different viewpoints around a particular topic—in hopes that areas of consensus will emerge from the dialogue. We convened one such group last spring, comprised of ideologically and experientially diverse participants, on the subject of judicial selection and the attributes we want in our judges. Focused on a simple question, "What are the most important characteristics or qualities of a judge," there was remarkable unanimity around the room.

In upholding the state’s ban on direct corporate contributions to political candidates and parties, the supreme court noted that judicial elections are particularly vulnerable to anonymous spending by large corporations.

Technological advances in the legal field are growing around the world, but different countries are seeing that growth manifest at different speeds and in different ways. In Australia, legal technology is just beginning to explode, and very quickly.

Over the summer, the Tennessee legislature declined to renew the state's judicial nominating commission, which was used to recommend well-qualified candidates for appellate judgeships to the governor. Instead, lawmakers chose to let Tennesseans weigh in on the issue in 2014. The judicial selection process appeared to be in limbo in the interim, but Republican Governor Bill Haslam has acted to fill the gap, creating a screening panel by executive order.

The current standards for education of new lawyers are problematic, but we cannot fix legal education without addressing the challenges that face the legal system as a whole.

In partnership with national experts, IAALS has developed three new guides to support real change in state courts. Stemming from our work on the Civil Justice Initiative and Family Justice Initiative, the guides are designed to assist in creating effective self-help information for those who need it, developing problem-solving approaches for families in court, and providing insight for judges who interface with self-represented litigants.

In a recent opinion dissenting from the denial of certiorari in an Alabama death penalty case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned whether the pressures of partisan judicial elections influence judges' decisions in cases involving hot-button issues like capital punishment. Social scientists have examined the question before, and have come to similar conclusions.

Though they have been proponents of electing judges in the past, two justices are calling for moving to some form of merit selection for the state's supreme court. Justices Crooks and Bradley cited concerns about the surge in spending on supreme court races, as well as the lack of meaningful disclosure and recusal rules.