News & Updates

The January 2017 edition of Family Court Review is dedicated to the Honoring Families Initiative’s Family Bar Summit: Shaping the System for the Families We Serve. The Summit, held in November 2015, brought together national thought leaders from diverse professional organizations to identify obstacles to serving children and families in separation and divorce matters and explore opportunities for meaningful change.

iCivics, an organization founded by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and dedicated to increasing civic knowledge and participation, has created the jury service game, We the Jury. In this game, students play the role of jury members who must deliberate to reach a fair and impartial verdict.

IAALS co-founder and board member John Moye has been honored as one of Colorado’s 10 “Lawyers of the Decade,” a special award from Law Week Colorado, one of the state’s leading legal publications.

In a recent commentary in The Federal Lawyer, Judge Jack Zouhary analogized being a judge working to implement the new Federal Civil Rules to being a baseball team manager. He wrote that “[t]he team manager tries to make the right in-game decisions, but also to have a winning season.” He then defines a winning season for a judge as shepherding cases to a successful conclusion, “whether that conclusion be a trial, a decision on a dispositive motion, or a settlement.” Few judges or attorneys have embraced the call for reform with such passion, intelligence, creativity, and integrity as Judge Zouhary.

An informal Senate agreement on the rules of filibusters has the potential to accelerate confirmations of federal district court judges. The agreement reduces the amount of time required to overcome a filibuster and force a vote.

Law schools saw a decrease in applications this year and some believe prospective students are becoming more skeptical about the value of a law degree. Click here to read the article.

Bill has been involved with IAALS since 2012, when we launched the Honoring Families Initiative Advisory Committee on which he serves. We have worked together on our original vision-paper, on the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce, the Family Bar Summit, The Modern Family Court Judge, and now our online dispute resolution project called Court Compass. At every turn, every phone call, every email, Bill has been a generous, responsive, and wise partner.

On Monday, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon directed that local rule amendments that had previously been proposed and submitted for public comment take effect March 1, 2013. The amendments include adoption of two pilot projects that are being implemented around the country to focus and streamline discovery. The District of Oregon’s adoption of both projects reflects its commitment to finding solutions to unnecessary cost and delay in the litigation process.

Intervention in judicial campaigns by special interest groups was an issue in a debate between two superior court candidates. One candidate was prepared to renounce all such activity by third-party groups, while the other candidate preferred to make that decision if questionable activity took place. (The superior court is one of the state’s two intermediate appellate courts.)

On the very day when the Colorado Supreme Court Justices convened for an annual holiday luncheon, which includes all former Justices, a new Justice was added to the Court. Former Chief Justices Bender and Mullarkey, former Justices Kirschbaum, Dubofsky, Hobbs, Martinez, Eid, and yours truly; and sitting Chief Justice Rice and Justices Hood, Boatright, Coats, Marquez, and Gabriel all met to share some holiday cheer and some Court administrative updates. The tradition has been ongoing since before I joined the Court—and it is a wonderful one. We all get a chance to catch up, and to feel part of an institution that is profound and meaningful.

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.

Two law professors suggest that preparing students for their first couple years fo practice is hardly enough--law schools must strive to prepare students for "for a lifetime of successful, ethical, and personally rewarding practice."

Greg and I have known one another for over thirty years. He was a new associate at Gibson Dunn during a period in my career when I was working with Gibson Dunn, primarily on water and oil and gas matters. Back then, Greg was green, and I was just a little less so. But, we overlapped for only a short time. I next encountered Greg primarily through his mother, who lived at the time in our neighborhood and rode her bike everywhere. We would see one another at the grocery store or on the street, and she would tell me about Greg’s career and about her other children as well. The Kerwin family is an extraordinary family.

It has been an eventful week judicial selection-wise in the Kansas legislature. On Monday, the chairman of the senate judiciary committee announced the details of a compromise selection reform proposal for the state’s appellate judges, which the Kansas Bar Association's board of governors rejected on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, the house judiciary committee chair introduced three new proposals aimed at the appellate court.

Responding to questions from lawmakers regarding his record of judicial appointments, Governor Scott said that he will not appoint judges who think differently from him in order to achieve diversity. Of the thirty-six judicial appointments Scott has made, only two have been black.

Tom Clarke is a gift. He is brilliant, collaborative, good-natured, and visionary. So many of the good ideas that are bubbling through the court systems in the United States today can be traced back to Tom. As a community of court geeks, court reformers, and court lovers, we owe a great deal to him.

Following an 18-month study, a Wisconsin state bar task force proposed that supreme court justices serve a single 16-year term. Justices currently serve 10-year terms and may stand for reelection. Though term limits would not stem the tide of candidate and special interest spending in the state's judicial elections, supporters believe term limits could help restore the public's trust in a court that has been plagued in recent years by alleged ethics violations and interpersonal conflicts.

The December 2011 edition of the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers newsletter is now available. Sign up for this and other IAALS newsletters here.

The percentage of self-represented litigants in many state family courts is substantial. According to a new post by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP), these self-represented parties often feel like outsiders in a court system that appears to them as a private club. 

Effective July 1, 2013, two current IAALS managers stepped up to lead their respective divisions. Corina Gerety has assumed the role of Director of Research and Brittany Kauffman is now Director of the Rule One Initiative. The IAALS Research Department supports all substantive initiative areas as needed, providing a broad range of research assistance. The Rule One Initiative serves to advance empirically informed models for court processes and procedures that provide greater accessibility, efficiency, and accountability in the civil justice system.