News & Updates

Many courts across the country struggle with overburdened staff and inefficient processes. However,  those within the judiciary are now turning to technology to make their courts more efficient and narrow the equal justice gap. 

At IAALS, much of our work centers around increasing access to civil justice—especially for those who are navigating our legal system without the assistance of a lawyer. As more and more litigants represent themselves, by choice or necessity, the need for a broader infrastructure to support them is essential, both inside and outside the court. IAALS’ Court Compass project is leading the charge in that arena.

State courts, where 95 percent of all cases are filed, are powerful. Their decisions can have profound effects on our rights and our lives—from whether Massachusetts officials can detain people based on a request from federal immigration authorities to whether a Michigan voter-initiated redistricting proposal could appear on the ballot.

More and more law schools and legal educators are embracing the fact that legal theory and skill aren’t enough to satisfy today’s legal employers. In response to this new reality, R. Lisle Baker, Professor of Law at Suffolk University in Boston, has created a course on Positive Psychology for law students.

On November 6, Coconino County became the first rural county in Arizona to voluntarily change from a partisan-popular election of superior court judges to a merit selection-judicial retention election.

For years, law school graduates have struggled to find full-time employment, facing a highly saturated, fiercely competitive job market. There continues to be a gap between what law schools teach and what legal employers expect from new graduates—and not enough traditional law firm positions to hire them all. 

Although the idea of equal protection under the law has long been at the heart of the American legal system, equal access to justice is still not a reality for many people. Former American Bar Association President Robert J. Grey Jr. discusses this equal justice gap in a recent piece for the ABA Journal.

This week IAALS is cohosting the first in a series of webinars with NCSC focused on providing practical information and guidance on implementing civil justice reform. The webinars are part of our three-year Civil Justice Initiative implementation project focused on providing support for on-the-ground reform.

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. 

Camille was recommended to us as a star in legal academia—an innovator and a visionary. She has the capacity to open minds and eyes to a different perspective, while still finding common ground. We are so lucky to have her amongst us.

Courts are—to a great extent—in the business of customer service. A new IAALS report, Eighteen Ways Courts Should Use Technology to Better Serve Their Customers, provides a path forward to help courts use existing technologies to improve the user experience, particularly for those people who choose to represent themselves.

The family justice system was built on the assumption that litigants would be represented by lawyers, but that assumption no longer holds true. It is no secret among lawyers, court staff, and judges—if not the general population itself—that more and more people are representing themselves through their divorce process, instead of hiring an attorney.

Karen Mathis is leaving IAALS at the end of this month. Karen has been the Associate Executive Director of IAALS since 2012, and prior to that, she served on IAALS’ Board of Advisors. Under her guidance, IAALS has come of age.

A first of its kind study, this landscape report brings together national data from family cases that confirms what we have long known at IAALS: family courts must do more to focus on problem solving rather than rely on the traditional structure framed around an adversarial approach.

The road to recovery is arduous for disaster victims. For the increasing numbers of those victims who end up in court in an effort to recover damages, the process can be protracted and complex. Courts are quickly overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of the cases and these challenges quickly frustrate victims already struggling to rebuild. But even with a documented upswing in both the number and severity of natural disasters, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Legal services consumers want greater access to law and justice, and teaching unbundling—or limited scope representation—in law schools is necessary for new lawyers to develop the skills they need to operate in today’s changing legal services market.

The IAALS Court Compass project is exploring streamlined and simplified solutions that help people through the divorce and separation process. After holding successful design sprints in Boston, Des Moines, and Raleigh, the Court Compass team is planning another design sprint in the Denver metro area.

More and more states are focused on civil justice reform in an effort to ensure their courts are accessible, efficient, and relevant to all. Arizona has been a long time leader in civil justice reform, and issued a series of rule changes that recently took effect July 1, 2018.

Sam is one of the most genuine, committed people I know. He looks for ways to advance humanity—with humility and grace. Helping hands, opening doors, caring about the world beyond our personal borders is what gives life purpose. He fits right into our mission here at IAALS, and we all benefit greatly from his contributions.

IAALS’ recent report describes a large but relatively unknown group of executive branch adjudicators who are not "Administrative Law Judges" (ALJs) governed by the Administrative Procedure Act. The report describes principal Non-ALJ characteristics, giving special attention to the degree to which agencies that employ them seek to protect their impartiality.