News & Updates

The American Bar Association (ABA) weighed in on the federal judicial nominations that are languishing in the U.S. Senate. On June 20, ABA President Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III sent a letter on behalf of the ABA to Senate Majority and Minority Leaders expressing concern over judicial vacancies and urging the Senate to vote on those pending appellate court nominees who have strong bipartisan support. 

The ninth State of State Courts survey of one thousand registered voters gauged levels of public trust and confidence in our judiciary and broader institutions, with results revealing a decline across the board.

Our 24 Principles lay the foundation for achieving fundamental improvement of our system to help ensure that no one is shut out due to a lengthy and expensive process.

Daniel Girard, founder and managing partner of a San Francisco- and New York-based litigation firm and a member of the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Advisory Committee, recently sat down with ETL to discuss his insights into legal education and what he sees as a the most promising new teaching strategies being implemented by law schools and the qualities that new attorneys need to succeed in the practice of law.

Each state with an allied legal professional program has its own unique qualifications to become licensed, but one thing all programs share is that the requirements are robust. Data shows ALPs competently handle legal tasks and prioritize consumer protection, ultimately increasing access to justice.

Washington's inaugural class of limited license legal technicians (LLLTs) have taken their initial test to become the first of their kind. Seven of the nine who took the state's LLLT exam passed and now face the next steps toward becoming licensed…

Our two-day E-Discovery Summit, which was held June 22-23, 2012, was highlighted this week in a LawWeek Colorado article, along with the release of Navigating the Hazards of E-Discovery: A Manual for Judges in State Courts Across the Nation…

The community-based justice worker model is rapidly expanding within the civil justice ecosystem, showcasing diverse forms and significant impact. Here, we explore its evolution, approaches, and nationwide influence on improving access to justice.

How do you talk to children about divorce? And, do we realize just how far the effects of divorce can reach? In a recent article for Psychology Today, Splitopia author Wendy Paris discusses these questions and takes a hard look at the realities of…

Twenty-three past presidents of the Florida Bar signed a resolution denouncing the effort by Restore Justice 2012 to oust three supreme court justices standing for retention in November. The bar also released a poll of attorneys showing strong support for retaining the justices, whose average approval rating was 90 percent, and the 15 court of appeals judges on the ballot.

Following Utah's example, several other states and Canadian provinces are exploring regulatory sandboxes to address the access to justice crisis and create innovative services for people's unmet legal needs.

At Seattle University School of Law, our goal is to have a comprehensive, integrated skills curriculum. We feel good about our curriculum’s comprehensiveness; we have focused in recent years on integration. Our legal writing and clinical faculty in particular have collaborated extensively over the last several years, including holding a yearly joint retreat. We also collaborate on the Real Clients in the First Year Project, where our first-year legal writing students work on a slice of a pending clinical case or on a live issue from a legal nonprofit. 

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit blocked a Montana state law barring political party endorsements of judicial candidates.

As IAALS celebrates its tenth year, the Denver Business Journal sat down with Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis to recap her motivation for leaving the Colorado Supreme Court and founding IAALS, and the impacts made over the last decade.

Supporters of Amendment 3, which would alter the composition of the appellate judicial commission and require the commission to identify 4 (rather then 3) nominees for each vacancy, announced that they will not campaign for the amendment’s passage.

The Journal of Experiential Learning at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (an ETL Consortium school) is looking for papers for the Fall/Winter 2016 volume. The topic is “Loosening the Walls of the Legal Academy: The Bench and the Bar as Legal Educators.”

What began two years ago, with a group's successful ousting of three Iowa Supreme Court Justices who ruled in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, has escalated into a movement to rid state courts of justices who have made undesirable rulings. Instead of pushing to remove justices for misconduct or incompetence, groups are doing so because of disagreements over particular decisions.

The American Bar Association’s Commission on the Future of Legal Services recently released a report that identifies problems with the delivery of legal services along with suggested remedies. According to the report, despite persistent efforts to…

Divorce and resolution of child custody issues take a toll. They take a toll on families, they take a toll on the courts and they take a toll on a variety of other impacted communities, and it's not clear that the current system is working. Which is why we’re formally launching our Honoring Families Initiative. Aligned with the greater mission of IAALS, Honoring Families is dedicated to advancing empirically informed models to ensure greater accessibility, efficiency, and fairness in divorce and child custody matters.

One year ago today, the long awaited amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect. The “package” of amendments included changes across a number of rules and focused on increasing cooperation, achieving proportionality in discovery, and encouraging early case management by judges. A new Rule 37(e) was added addressing sanctions for the failure to preserve electronically stored information.