News & Updates

"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because, as has been said, 'it is the quality which guarantees all others.'" —Winston Churchill. I agree with Churchill—who knew a thing or two about courage—that it is the quality that permits us to exercise whatever other virtues we possess. This is true for everyone, but especially for judges. No one can be a great judge, or even a good one, without the courage to do what what the law demands, even in the face of tremendous pressure to do otherwise.

Rebecca Love Kourlis, Executive Director of IAALS, will speak about the organization’s work to improve the use of financial experts in litigation on December 5. She will discuss how civil pretrial processes involving financial experts might be streamlined to increase the experts’ effectiveness and reduce client costs, which is the focus of a recently published report, Another Voice: Financial Experts on Reducing Client Costs in Litigation.

The Legal Services Corporation (LSC) released a Request for Proposals to identify potential participants in a pilot project for implementing access to justice portals. The legal access portal concept emerged from the 2013 LSC Technology Summit as one…

Senate Republicans are questioning whether some recent court appointees changed their party affiliation so that they would be eligible for appointment, and they have proposed a constitutional amendment that would require judicial applicants to have held their party affiliation for at least two years.

"The ABA House of Delegates voted Tuesday to adopt a resolution to urge law schools to more adequately prepare law students for the real-life experience of practicing law and bolster CLE training to better bridge the gap between law school and actual…

During a recent gala in Denver, IAALS presented El Pomar Foundation, William J. Hybl, and Kyle H. Hybl with our highest honor, the Rebuilding Justice Award. El Pomar Foundation and the Hybls were recognized for their generous support of our DIAALOGUES series of convenings, which have helped expand our impact and the impact of our work on a national scale. These remarkable gatherings are a hallmark of IAALS' process and bring together key stakeholders to forge practical solutions to the most pressing challenges in today’s legal system.

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire entered an order last week amending the Superior Court Proportional Discovery/Automatic Disclosure Pilot Project Rules to implement the PAD Pilot Rules in all counties beginning March 1, 2013.

Doug Buttrey, executive director of Tennesseans for Economic Growth, lauded Tennessee for enacting civil justice reform but cautioned that its plan to make Tennessee the number one state in job creation and retention can't stop there. He urged Tennessee, which uses commission-based gubernatorial appointment for its Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and Court of Criminal Appeals, to keep its current system.

Late last week, tens of thousands of Polish citizens took to the streets—and citizens around the world took to social media—to protest three legislative proposals that would severely impair the independence of Poland’s judiciary and weaken the Rule of Law in the country. Protesters used the hashtag #wolnesady, or "free courts,” to mark their efforts.

The University of Denver has announced the award recipients for its Annual Founders Day Gala, and we are proud to announce that IAALS Associate Executive Director Karen J. Mathis is among them. Karen, a 1972 graduate of the University, will be honored with the Community Service Award, which she will accept at the Gala on March 7.

As described in an earlier post, Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers initiated a unique, far-reaching survey of 210 U.S. and Canadian law schools. Now completed, the survey has a 58% response rate. Before presenting the findings in a series of future posts, we face a key prior task – describing the responding schools and seeing how closely they resemble all schools and the non-responding schools.

In a segment on experiential legal education, the National Jurist featured the work of Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers and one of its consortium schools, Washington and Lee University.

For young legal practitioners, integrating limited scope representation into law school curriculums is a giant step toward increasing awareness and mastery of modern legal practice. This was the position of the “Unbundling for the Next Generation” panel at the IAALS/ABA Better Access through Unbundling conference on the University of Denver campus last month. Professors Andrew Schepard, Danielle Hirsch and Luz Herrerra presented on the benefits of integrating limited scope representation into clinics and experiential classes, law school incubators, and bar events that target young lawyers, as well as educating court staff to promote referral panels.

Four former Pennsylvania governors, including two Democrats and two Republicans, joined together in expressing support for a proposal to change the way the state’s appellate judges are selected. A bill introduced in the senate in January calls for appellate judges to be chosen through a merit selection process rather than in partisan elections.

Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor's one-minute video on the supreme court's website urging a “yes” vote on Issue 1 in the November election met with some criticism. Issue 1 would raise the retirement age for state judges from 70 to 76.

Walter is a man of many accomplishments, many firsts, many awards—none of which he ever mentions. Just to give a "flavor" (notice the food theme throughout) of some of them: graduation from high school at 16; first African American to become Student Body Vice President at the University of Denver; first African American to work for Tenneco Oil’s legal department and for Texas Instruments in Dallas, first to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas, first to head up the Environmental Protection Agency in Dallas; deputy Federal Highway Administrator in the Clinton administration and manager of Walmart’s Legal Department diversity initiatives. He has opened doors, opened minds, and led an extraordinarily distinguished career, including being President of the National Bar Association.

Governor Maggie Hassan signed an executive order establishing a judicial selection commission to advise her in filling vacancies on the state’s courts. Hassan is the third New Hampshire governor to create such an entity. The first was Governor Jeanne Shaheen in 2000, a response at least in part to the impeachment of a supreme court justice.

Supreme court presiding justice George C. Carlson, Jr. announced that he will not seek reelection in 2012. Carlson was first appointed to the bench in 2001 and won reelection in 2004.

​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.

Mo Weiland, a recent graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, an Educating Tomrrow’s Lawyers consortium school, recalls her first volunteer case as both unexpectedly challenging and very informative for her developing career. Weiland sees such volunteer opportunities as a way to get more experience as a young attorney while also providing a valuable public service.