News & Updates

From three finalists named by the judicial nominating commission, Governor Daniels appointed county court judge Loretta Rush to the supreme court. This appointment leaves only two states (Idaho and Iowa) without a woman on the highest court.

IAALS has released Building Bridges: Guidelines for Creating Reciprocity between Allied Legal Professional Programs, a first-of-its-kind report offering detailed recommendations for how states can enable ALPs to transfer their credentials across state lines.

Over the last decade, it has been a great pleasure to work with IAALS on efforts to improve our legal process and to change our legal culture. Chief Justice John Roberts devoted his recent  “2015 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary” to a discussion of the groundbreaking amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The Chief Justice began with a description of the practice of dueling in the early 1800s and the public disgust with this means of dispute resolution that led to a wider use of the courts for resolving disputes. And, he alluded to a similar distaste for modern litigation practices characterized by “antagonistic tactics, wasteful procedural maneuvers, and teetering brinksmanship” for “wearing down opponents with creatively burdensome discovery requests or evading legitimate requests through dilatory tactics.” Clearly, there is growing recognition that we are ripe for a change in legal culture.

Dan Ritchie, IAALS board member and founder and former University of Denver chancellor, is often credited with bringing DU to the national stage of academia. And, as noted by the Denver Post, he can be credited further as laying the foundation for the university to host the first 2012 presidential debate.

The April edition of Court Manager—the monthly publication of the National Association for Court Management (NACM)—featured an article by Brittany Kauffman, Director of IAALS’ Rule One Initiative. Entitled “ Change the Culture, Change the System: A…

The judicial performance evaluation commission recommended retention of three appellate judges standing for retention in November, though one judge scored lower than his colleagues on timeliness of rulings and handling his ongoing workload.

The National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP) recently released Canadian data on case outcomes for self-represented litigants (SRLs). These new figures come shortly after NSRLP published research showing that in cases where a self-represented litigant faces a motion for summary judgment brought by a represented party, 95% of SRLs will have their cases dismissed. 

A Nationwide study reports that many married couples are opting for long-term separation because they cannot afford to divorce - especially if there are children involved. The study found that couples who remain separated are more disadvantaged than those who end up divorcing. In addition, those who separated without divorcing also tended to have more children than those who divorced.

The American Bar Association recently launched a free, new resource for income-eligible users with civil law-related questions. The virtual legal advice clinic— ABAFreeLegalAnswers.org—is an online version of the walk-in advice clinic model and…

With our publication Judges Aren’t Sexy: Engaging and Educating Voters in a Crowded World, we offered a range of practical recommendations—including communications strategies and assets for social media and a messaging platform—for communicating with judicial voters. A handful of states have put our recommendations into practice for this election cycle.

Judicial campaign spending amounts across the nation skyrocketed in the recent election cycle, threatening public perceptions of the independence, fairness, and impartiality of the courts. Driven by the desire to tilt the political balance on the court or to remove a judge from the bench because of unpopular rulings, political parties and outside groups spent vast amounts of unregulated money toward retaining or defeating a particular judge.

Debtor’s prisons have been illegal in the United States for nearly 200 years, and in 1983 the United State Supreme Court’s ruling in Bearden v. Georgia again made it clear that judges cannot send people to jail simply because they do not have the…

How would you feel if you owned a business with your spouse and you decided to divorce? A recent article from The New York Times provides a refreshing example of how one couple was able to maintain their business relationship while going through the divorce process.

Chairman Emeritus of Duane Morris recently asked how, if tables were turned, students might grade their law schools. He ends with five suggestions for schools to improve, including a two-year plan, a three-year plan with advanced classes in a second…

In January, I had the opportunity to present the results of IAALS’ Foundations for Practice study at the Association of American Law Schools’ Annual Meeting as part of the President’s Program. As always, I began my talk by framing the problems we are trying to fix through our work, and among the problems we simply cannot ignore are the lackluster employment rates for new law school graduates.

Once again, law schools have found themselves the subject of a New York Times front-page article about the sharp decline in law school applications. According to the article, law schools are responding by cutting faculty, taking a closer look at affordability, and adding clinics and in-the-field training. But perhaps more interesting is the story the article doesn’t tell—the story of law schools across the country that are already in front of this wave by offering students a better education.

In the first blog for Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, Bill Sullivan argued that legal education is more than meritocracy – that while academic merit is essential in the training of lawyers as professionals it is not enough. It is necessary, but not alone sufficient for professional excellence.

The U.S. legal system is already hard to navigate and understand, but even more so in the aftermath of a natural disaster. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and in preparation for Hurricane Irma, the legal community is coming together in different ways to make legal aid more accessible to people in affected areas.

Over the last two months, the IAALS board of advisers has welcomed several distinguished members to the fold, all of whom are committed to the missions of our Initiatives and the continuous improvement of the civil justice system. We are pleased to add Kenneth R. Thompson II to their ranks.

Ray Suarez interviewed Rebecca Love Kourlis about Rebuilding Justice and the problems and potential solutions it identifies for civil courts in the United States.