News & Updates

Last year, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts dedicated his 2015 year-end report on the State of the Judiciary to extolling the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He noted the amendments serve as an important stride forward…

Denver Law alumni James “Jim” Mulligan (JD ’74) and Joan Burleson (JD ’85) made a $2.25 million endowment to the University of Denver Sturm College of Law's Mulligan Burleson Chair in Modern Learning, which will ensure experimental learning is integrated throughout the school's curriculum. This gift is augmented by IAALS's Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers advisory committee member, Doug Scrivner (JD ’77) and his wife, Mary.

IAALS board member Karen J. Mathis was among five women to receive the Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award. The Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, established in 1991, honors outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence in their area of specialty and have actively paved the way to success for others. 

In an article published earlier this month, Law Week Colorado covered the new roadmap for civil justice reform developed by IAALS and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC). The two organizations announced their "Roadmap for Implementation" in May, on the heels of the Conference of Chief Justice (CCJ)'s recommendations for increasing efficiency and effectiveness. IAALS will work with five jurisdictions to implement and test the roadmap, and IAALS and NCSC will provide guidance and support along the way, as they have throughout the CCJ Civil Justice Improvements project process.

Today, numerous pilot projects are in various stages of consideration and implementation around the country, with proportionality in discovery a key theme among projects. In his recent article “Proportionality: The key to reducing corporation e-discovery costs,” Philip Favro recognizes this common theme and notes that “several circuit and district courts have recently championed proportionality as a benchmark for decreasing e-discovery costs.”

Jordan Furlong, who writes often on the future of the legal profession, has turned his pen on law schools. In the article, he laments the current state of legal education, but cites a number of initiatives undertaken by legal educators to address this, including Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers.

A recent study conducted for Voices for Civil Justice, with support from the Public Welfare Foundation, found that voters strongly favor reform of the civil justice system. Overwhelming majorities of voters believe it is important to “ensure that everyone has access to the civil justice system” and “strongly support a wide range of services to enhance access.” Moreover, voters support increasing state funding to build a more accessible civil justice system. The survey highlights that equal justice under the law in our society is fundamental, with voters considering it a right, not a privilege.

Recently, Examiner.com reviewed a new mobile application called the Healthy Divorce App, designed to educate and advise users on how to get through the divorce process in an emotionally healthy way. The app was created with the intention of making professional mental health assistance more affordable and accessible to those unable or unwilling to see a professional in person.

As Gavel Grab reports, the United States Senate is not only at odds over the federal judicial nominees--it's also at odds over whether the delay in appointments is unreasonable.

The theme of the 2017 ETL conference, “Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers… to Serve Tomorrow’s Clients,” captures perfectly the attitude that I have used for many years to frame my teaching. This year’s Ignite presentations put that theme into practice a myriad of concrete programs, in the classroom, the law clinic, and courthouse. Tech developers were represented. Law librarians. Producers of extracurricular activities. That diversity is precisely what legal education and the legal profession need. Here’s why.

Legislatures in 17 states are considering whether to increase or eliminate their mandatory retirement age for judges. Mandatory retirement ages for state judges around the country range from 70 to 75. Pennsylvania’s supreme court recently agreed to hear a case challenging that state’s maximum age of 70 as discriminatory and in violation of the state constitution.

The late Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who served on the O'Connor Advisory Committee and was a recipient of the Transparent Courthouse® Award, is now being honored by the Ohio Supreme Court, which is naming the Ohio Judicial Center after the second-longest serving justice in Ohio's history.

In our previous blog, we explained that the 77 foundations survey respondents identified as being necessary for new lawyers immediately upon graduation from law school are consistent and definitive throughout the practice of law. The similarities we saw in responses across demographics, firm sizes, and practice-specific characteristics suggest that the findings can be employed with confidence by law schools, the profession, employers, and others to facilitate the development of crucial foundations needed by lawyers right out of law school. Nonetheless, there were a few notable practically significant differences that arose among the various practice settings we studied.

This September, IAALS and the National Judicial College will host an educational summit exclusively tailored for state court judges on all facets of the discovery of electronically stored information (ESI)—from preservation to production to eventual use at trial. The Summit will feature nationally renowned speakers and will provide both a core of basic training for judges on e-discovery and in-depth and interactive discussions on the more complex issues facing judges in state courts across the nation.

Seven in ten respondents to a recent poll favored or strongly favored adopting campaign contribution limits for judicial races. Just over half supported public financing of judicial elections.

The Journal of Legal Education’s latest issue focuses on the ABA’s new standards on assessments and the reaction of law schools who now need to understand best practices in designing student learning outcomes. Professor Sophie Sparrow’s article highlights IAALS’ Foundations for Practice project and the value of “soft skills” to a young lawyer.

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice highlights the unprecedented number of judicial vacancies in federal district courts across the United States. Approximately ten percent of federal trial court seats are currently vacant. These vacancies, largely the result of drawn-out nomination and confirmation processes, have an increasingly negative impact on the effectiveness of both the criminal and civil justice systems. The report makes three observations about these vacancies.

This opinion piece reviews the Citizens United v. FEC decision and predicts that it will have a detrimental effect on state judicial elections.

According to IAALS’ Foundations for Practice project, legal employers and current practitioners believe that, to be successful, new attorneys right out of law school must do much more than simply refine their legal skills—they must also possess the professional competencies and characteristics that will allow them to be thrive in today’s demanding market. Today, the question remains: How can law schools adapt to meet the needs of the modern legal profession?

Last week, Governor Brownback nominated his chief counsel, Caleb Stegall, to a newly created seat on Kansas' court of appeals, reigniting a war of words between his supporters and detractors. Now, in response to the charge that Brownback pushed for a change in the selection process in order to appoint Stegall to the bench, a member of the judicial nominating commission is speaking out.