News & Updates

The commission on judicial qualifications admonished a judge for an “injudicious” flyer used in her 2010 campaign. According to the commission, the flyer “likely gave the impression…that the judge’s rulings could be influenced by campaign contributions.”

Laura Storovich, a participant in our Colorado design sprint, shares her experience going through divorce as a self-represented litigant and her thoughts on our design sprint process.

The Honoring Families Initiative has released a white paper on the role of courts and communities in separation and divorce. Designed to spark national conversation and encourage collaboration between different disciplines, the paper sets the stage for our work in the years to come. Central to the premise of the paper is that the needs of children and families effected by divorce or separation have changed drastically, the system has not been able to keep pace, and the needs of children and families are increasingly not being met.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal released its annual report on attorney ratings of supreme court justices and trial judges in Clark County. Reelection support for individual supreme court justices ranged from 56% to 83%.

A number of new smartphone apps aim to make the divorce process more collaborative and less adversarial. These apps encourage teamwork around parenting plans and help to keeps things civil by building stronger communication around important issues like events with children, scheduled appointments, childcare costs, and court dates.

Much of the work on core competencies for entry-level lawyers has focused on large firms, often because it has been harder to collect this information from small firms. This is a challenge because small and medium firms continue to be major destinations for law school graduates. Today, in an open letter to law schools, longtime solo, Carolyn Elefant, demanded that law schools teach students to be employable by solos and small firms.

In another follow-up to this month's Association of American Law Schools meeting, this article questions whether the current efforts of law schools and professors to change legal education go far enough.

In late September, the Indiana Supreme Court announced the creation of the Indiana Innovation Initiative. One of the initiative’s two subgroups, the Family Law Taskforce, will consider the Family Justice Initiative Principles supported by IAALS in order to improve the way Indiana’s courts handle domestic relations cases.

O'Connor Advisory Committee member and former Texas chief justice Wallace Jefferson recently appeared on MSNBC's Craig Melvin show. That segment of the program focused on the findings of the latest New Politics of Judicial Elections report. In his remarks, Jefferson acknowledged the value of judicial accountability but suggested that voters do not have enough information about judges and judicial candidates to cast votes based on merit.

A Democratic legislator's resolution to remove Justice Michael Gableman from the court for alleged violation of state law and the code of judicial conduct has received little support, attracting only four co-sponsors.

People look to our legal system for help in matters that affect their rights, their families, their businesses, and the most intimate aspects of their lives. But, for too long and for too many, the courthouse doors seem closed—and justice out of reach. IAALS is changing that. We are proud to present you with our 2019 Annual Report, which highlights our work and accomplishments toward ensuring that everyone has access to justice we can believe in.

There are several anticipated efforts in 2014 to alter processes for selecting state court judges, particularly in states with commission-based gubernatorial appointment of appellate judges. In Kansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, as in Arizona and Florida in recent years, legislative proposals are aimed at directly or indirectly expanding the governor's appointing authority.

This collection of articles takes a look at changing career outlooks and expectations for law graduates interested in pursuing a career in NLJ 250 firms.

IAALS has launched a new project to help courts more quickly resolve the anticipated wave of business interruption insurance cases stemming from COVID-19-related closures and losses. The project will develop pattern discovery protocols specific to these cases, in an effort to reduce conflict and cost and to help both businesses and insurers alike reach a quick resolution.

The Agenda Book for the upcoming meeting of the federal Advisory Committee on Civil Rules (April 10-11, 2014) is now available online. The Agenda Book includes reports from the Duke and Discovery Subcommittees, along with the Subcommittees' current proposed rule amendments and Committee Notes, taking into account the public hearing testimony and over 2000 comments submitted during the public comment period.

The house judiciary committee approved by a 9-6 vote a measure that would constitutionalize the Tennessee Plan for selecting judges.

Dedicated judges, attorneys, and court administrators have the power to establish justice in our modern time. By gathering the input of those who use the court system, who rely on it to decide some of the most important issues in our lives—like divorce and child custody—we help ensure that the courts function in a way that serves all of us.

The University of Denver Sturm College of Law, one of ETL's Consortium schools, now offers a Live Client Guarantee. The Guarantee ensures that every student can receive hands-on client interactions outside of the classroom. The University of Denver is one of only 16 law schools that have such a guarantee, including three other ETL Consortium schools.

Republican Allen Loughry, who is running for the supreme court of appeals, is the only one of eight candidates to seek public campaign financing through the state’s pilot program. The public financing program provides $50,000 to uncontested primary candidates, minus what they raised to qualify, and $350,000 for the general election.

2020 revealed that most of us are swimming naked when it comes to our ability to meaningfully access our justice system. 2020 certainly exacerbated issues, but its true effect and power was revealing our society’s not-so-secret dirty secrets: systemic racism, growing income inequality, the failing U.S. healthcare system, and a justice system that only serves a small minority of Americans.