News & Updates

Online dispute resolution platforms have existed for over two decades and have carved out an important and expanding role in the legal landscape. The 2019 International ODR Forum was held last month in Virginia, during which IAALS team members participated in discussions about the future of ODR.

We previously shared Judge Paul W. Grimm’s standard Discovery Order, which we recommend to state and federal court judges alike as a model and inspiration to manage the pretrial discovery process. Judge Grimm has made some revisions to his Order, including expanding the definition of proportionality and making reference to the possible use of Technology Assisted Review as a means to keep costs down. Download his new Order here.

A judge under indictment for soliciting a bribe from a judicial applicant (among other charges) resigned from the bench to avoid disciplinary proceedings regarding offensive comments he made about gay people.

In a recent op-ed, Joanne Slotnik, former executive director of the Utah Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, touts the state’s successful judicial selection system, which includes robust performance evaluation for judges and retention elections by the public.

HB 3380 would establish a judicial performance evaluation program for Oklahoma’s appellate and trial judges, and is remarkably similar to processes that already operate successfully in seven states where judges appear on the ballot, as they do in Oklahoma. The contemplated JPE program in Oklahoma is objective, broad-based, and apolitical, and an improvement on existing processes.

Former chief justice Roy Moore won a three-way Republican primary race for the chief justice spot and will run against the Democratic nominee in November. Moore was removed from the supreme court in 2003 for defying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments display from the state judicial building.

My recent experience with the civil justice system—even pre-COVID-19—has been frustrating, to say the least. Through it all, though, my journey through the system has given me a more personal perspective on the importance of our work at IAALS and helping the real users of our system—like me—have better and more efficient access to justice.

Celebrity couple Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin recently announced their intent to separate, and asked for privacy during their period of “conscious uncoupling.” The term has been embraced by some as a productive shift in the way couples conceptualize divorce. Conscious uncoupling refers to a process whereby couples take an intrinsic focus as to the reasons for their divorce, rather than externalizing blame and rancor toward their partner.

A state bar task force is considering a variety of judicial election reforms, including creating a response committee to identify false statements made in judicial campaigns, providing a voter guide with information about judicial candidates, and encouraging candidates to sign a “fair campaign” pledge.

On the heels of the third and final phase of the three-year project, this week the Family Justice Initiative is launching new web pages and an online report to support state courts’ efforts to develop and implement plans to improve justice for families.

Ending months of speculation, Governor Chris Christie re-nominated Chief Justice Stuart Rabner to the New Jersey Supreme Court. The move was part of a political compromise with senate leadership, which agreed in exchange to support the nomination of a Christie ally to the supreme court. The deal between Governor Christie, a Republican, and Democrats in the senate will fill one of two seats on a court that has had two vacancies since early 2012.

All eight candidates for the state’s appellate courts qualified for public financing, with supreme court candidates receiving $240,100 each and court of appeals candidates receiving $164,400. At least two outside groups are raising and spending funds in support of the Republican supreme court candidate.

Throughout the past ten months, our justice system has made giant strides in its use of technology, including video- and tele-conferencing, e-filing, remote jury trials, and online dispute resolution. The question now faced by many courts is: are these digital processes working like they’re supposed to?

We are pleased to announce the release of a new report on the judicial nominating commissions used to select supreme court justices in 30 states and Washington, D.C. With Choosing Judges, we examine why judicial nominating commissions are established in the first place, how their structure and operation differ across the nation, and what some of the best practices might be in building public trust in the process.

The general assembly opted not to elect a judicial candidate who would have been the state’s first openly gay judge. Opposition to his election focused on his positions on gay marriage and the military’s now-repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

We’re researchers who study legal services regulation and access to the civil justice system. We’ve been thrilled to watch groundbreaking announcements from the West ignite a wide-ranging national debate about how best to regulate legal training, services, and businesses—and we’ve been paying special attention to the role people who are not lawyers are playing in the process of legal re-regulation.

A family court in New York City recently allowed a father to serve his ex-wife with notice of a child support action via Facebook. The father first attempted to find and contact the mother through all of the traditional means, to no avail. The magistrate allowed the nontraditional service and noted that it was most likely the first of its kind in the country—when both parties are in the United States.

By a 4-3 vote, the supreme court declined to reappoint the chair of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, which recently found probable cause that Justice David Prosser violated three parts of the state’s code of judicial conduct and recommended a trial by a panel of three intermediate appellate court judges.

Recent data reflects dramatic changes in incoming state court cases and case processing since the pandemic’s onset, providing a unique perspective into the impact of the pandemic on people’s lives, their evolving justice needs, and the cases that are brought to our state courts for resolution. And, new civil filings data from IAALS is forthcoming.

Are law school graduates ready to enter the profession, engage in the practice, and serve clients? Many law schools have developed more robust experiential training in recent years. One such program is educating law students who are outperforming their colleagues in the field who have been licensed to practice law for up to two years, according to a study conducted by Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers.