News & Updates

As described in an earlier post, Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers initiated a unique, far-reaching survey of 210 U.S. and Canadian law schools. Now completed, the survey has a 58% response rate. Before presenting the findings in a series of future posts, we face a key prior task – describing the responding schools and seeing how closely they resemble all schools and the non-responding schools.

It is common knowledge that many lawyers and law students struggle with high stress as well as high rates of depression and substance abuse. Now, the American Bar Association’s National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being is suggesting that these characteristics interfere with the legal profession's dedication to serving clients and dependence on the public’s trust.

By a vote of 28-12, the senate gave final approval to a bill that ends the role of the nominating commission in appointing court of appeals judges and requires senate confirmation of such appointments. The house of representatives passed the bill earlier this month. The constitution need not be amended to accomplish the change.

A new clinic for victims of domestic violence at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law will be named the Ruth V. McGregor Family Protection Clinic in honor of retired Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth V. McGregor. Justice McGregor chairs the Advisory Committee for the O'Connor Judicial Selection Project.

Talking about civil justice reform only gets us so far. The key to change is taking concrete steps on the ground and implementing practical solutions. IAALS’ own Rebecca Love Kourlis and Brittany Kauffman authored a piece for the Corporate Counsel Business Journal’s Civil Justice Playbook that dives into this discussion and highlights ways IAALS is working with judges and courts to make that change a reality in the realm of discovery.

If there's one thing the people in the room at the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education can agree on today, it's that something has to give. But just what has to give? That still seems to be up for debate. In the opening session, opinions ranged nearly as wide as the topics, which included the deregulation of the profession, the deregulation of law schools, online education, US News, faculty scholarship, student expectations, consumer expectations, access to justice, and curriculum.

Larry Ribstein comments on changes in corporate legal services, which find companies first doing away with the law firms as middle men and the then restructuring internal legal teams and “embedding” lawyers throughout the organization.

We are pleased to announce the next "phase" of IAALS, in recognition that continuous improvement is not only vital for our legal system—it is vital within IAALS. Over the last year, we have been working to reshape and restructure IAALS to allow us to be as nimble, visible, and impactful as possible. To that end, we have bolstered our leadership, changed our organization, and launched our new website.

According to new data from the Center for Public Integrity, outside interest groups spent more than $11.7 million in ten states on supreme court elections—both contested and retention—in 2012 and 2013. Forty percent of this spending came from out-of-state organizations. The Center's data also show that 75 percent of the outside spending in 2012 and 2013 stemmed from the ongoing battle between trial attorneys and business groups.

A trial court judge was censured and suspended without pay for six months for living outside her district and misleading investigators about it. The constitution requires judges to live in the district in which they serve at the time of their selection and throughout their term.

Since publishing the results of our Foundations for Practice survey, we have been using those results in the second phase of the project to work with select law schools to develop a set of learning outcomes, assessments, instructional designs, and hiring tools to instill and identify desired characteristics, competencies, and skills in future lawyers. 

Ann Roan, State Training Director for the Colorado Public Defender's Office, advocates for more practical skills education within law school classrooms in order to ease the transition into the high stakes environment of the courtroom. In her Voices from the Field interview, Roan suggests recalibrating the instructional emphasis between doctrine and practice in a way that allows students to actually apply what they learn. Underscoring the importance of balancing doctrinal and experiential learning, Roan believes “You have to know the rules of the game before you can excel in the skills of the game.”

The March 2012 Republican primary could determine who the next chief justice will be. Three Republicans are vying for the seat, but no Democratic challengers have emerged.

Next month IAALS will participate in an American Bar Association webinar, titled Hurricanes, Floods, and Fires, Oh My!: How to Improve Discovery in a Flood of Post-Disaster Property Insurance Lawsuits, which will also feature IAALS' initial discovery protocols for first-party insurance cases arising from disasters. 

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor spent a few days last week with us here at IAALS, where we held a meeting of the O'Connor Advisory Committee to the Quality Judges Initiative. Justice O'Connor also engaged in a "fireside chat" under the rubric of the John Paul Stevens Lecture about her life and career. Former Arizona Chief Justice Ruth McGregor and I joined her for the conversation, but it was Justice O'Connor who stole the show.

The article (subscription required) reviews the Model Order on E-Discovery in Patent Cases and commends the work of the Federal Circuit Advisory Council's E-Discovery Committee and Judge Randall Rader, who unveiled the order at the Eastern District…

Based on IAALS' model for out-of-court divorce, the Family Resolutions Specialty Court in Massachusetts helps parents of minor children work through issues related to divorce, separation, paternity, and more—and keeps the focus on the best interests of the child.

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.

The latest edition of Rule One Review is now available. Rule One Review is a quarterly newsletter that shares information about pilot projects and other civil rules projects being monitored by the Rule One Initiative. Sign up for Rule One Review and…

Last month, Australia’s Attorney-General announced he would continue with a plan to merge the specialist Family Court of Australia with the lower-level Federal Circuit Court, with the aim to improve efficiency, but not everyone is convinced.