News & Updates

According to news reports, a state district judge in Oklahoma agreed to resign following a petition describing numerous acts of misconduct. The case illustrates several aspects of state judicial discipline highlighted in a recent IAALS report.

The State of Oregon continues to blaze a trail in civil justice reform. A new report from the Oregon Judicial Department, released at the end of June, contains recommendations to improve civil justice in the state, and it provides a master class for other states looking to reform their own systems.

Law Week Colorado recently highlighted IAALS’ new report on the landscape of summary judgment motions practice. The report is intended to serve as a foundation for conversations about current practices and eventual improvements, and recognizes that motions practice—as much as discovery—has a role to play in civil justice reform.

IAALS offers this new report for legal practitioners, service providers, and other access to justice advocates, which details the themes, recommendations, and strategic plans that emerged from our Better Access through Unbundling Conference—with takeaways for every jurisdiction, whether or not they have embraced unbundling to this point.

IAALS’ recent report, Redefining Case Management, is an important update on the work being done in civil justice innovation and is a critical read for all. The report succinctly summarizes new insights that have been brought to the world of case management—along with charting the path that got us here.

Many law school staff, administration, and faculty members have reached out to IAALS to learn more about how the foundations we have identified can improve their own programs, or to share with us how they use the foundations to inform their teaching models—and we are going to continue the conversation in an upcoming webinar.

​IAALS has long focused on increasing access to justice by helping courts develop policies and procedures to make civil litigation more efficient and less expensive. But it’s not just courts and judges that can improve access to justice—attorneys too can take steps to refine their practices to help bridge the justice gap.

Last year, we were in a bind. Our Foundations for Practice project was speeding along but we needed to develop a set of learning outcomes from our survey’s results. To do that, we needed to hire a consultant who really understood learning outcomes. Elizabeth has brought a level of expertise and thoughtfulness that gives us and our partners great confidence in the work we are doing.

Since 2015, the amicable app has been helping couples in the United Kingdom facilitate their divorces. “At amicable, we believe that once a couple has made the difficult decision to separate, whatever the reasons, the emphasis should be on separating in the least painful way possible and, if children are involved, putting them first," said app co-founder Kate Daly.

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.

The IAALS Court Compass project is exploring streamlined and simplified solutions that help people through the divorce and separation process. IAALS is partnering with the North Carolina Judicial Branch and the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission to bring a design sprint workshop to Raleigh on August 11, 2018.

Public trust and confidence in our judiciary, and our judges, is vital. Yet, over the last several decades, that trust has been eroded. For people to trust judges again, we must ensure a series of pillars are in place: improved ways of selecting judges; improved ways of evaluating judges’ performance; and improved systems for disciplining judges who abuse their power—which is the subject of a new IAALS report.

The issue of how to provide litigants with equal access to legal services, regardless of the litigant’s financial status, has plagued the legal community for some time now. One solution that is gaining popularity is unbundled legal services, where lawyers work on and charge clients for only those tasks that they agree to in advance.

We have never been busier at IAALS, with projects and convenings ramping up across all of our focus areas. To help facilitate this work and expand our impact nationwide, we are pleased to welcome three new staff members to our ranks. Jonna Perlinger joined IAALS in March as a legal assistant, and Michael Houlberg and Jason Zolle joined IAALS in June as managers.

For litigants without the help of an attorney, the American civil justice system can be difficult to understand—let alone navigate. In a recent piece for the ABA Journal, Chancellor Professor of Law Frederic I. Lederer proposed several technological advancements that can help improve access to legal resources and litigant understanding of the process.

Alternative dispute resolution processes, especially in the area of family law, are finally starting to become more common—yet still not common enough. IAALS piloted the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce (COCD) in Denver, and other programs, like the Hampshire Family Resolutions Specialty Court in Massachusetts, are also taking shape across the country.

Bill came to IAALS as a representative of the American Association for Justice. I think initially he was a bit skeptical about our work and our mission. Over time, Bill has become a friend and a trusted colleague. He is entrepreneurial, visionary, and practical. We thank Bill for his artful purpose and for his collegiality.

As part of our three-year project to support the modernization and transformation of civil litigation in our state courts, IAALS has helped facilitate a series of regional strategic planning summits to help states develop an action plan for reform or other activities in their respective jurisdictions.

A recent study revealed that a high percentage of women still leave major financial and investment decisions to their spouse. This trend is becoming a problem for widowed and divorced women, 59 percent of whom wish they had taken a bigger role in financial planning when they were in a couple. Because the divorce rate has doubled for those over 50 in the last few decades, and because women have longer life expectancies than men, the lack of financial planning awareness can hurt older women more as they separate from their spouses.

The National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP) recently published a paper that looks at costs awards to self-represented litigants (SRLs) in Canadian courts. The paper notes the leading Canadian cases in which SRLs have been ordered costs awards and analyzes the development of these principles in family law matters. Generally, the report concludes that Canadian courts have broadened SRLs’ ability to obtain costs.