News & Updates

Conservative candidates for the state senate defeated moderates in at least seven Republican primary contests, making it likely that conservatives will hold 27 of 32 GOP seats in the 40-member senate in 2013-14. One of their key policy priorities is expected to be moving from merit selection of appellate judges to gubernatorial appointment with senate confirmation.

The Texas Supreme Court is expanding access to justice by approving programs that allow professionals who aren't attorneys to provide limited legal services to low-income individuals. These new rules, crucial for those struggling to afford legal help, are expected to take effect on December 1.

At Denver Law, we are following the wisdom that counsels conducting assessment in small and discrete pieces. We will, each year, focus on parts of our JD program and assess learning in each using direct (student work product) and/or indirect (student self-reports) data. An example of the latter is our “Externship Program Professional Identity Formation Project.” At the start and upon completion of doing an Externship, Denver Law students rate themselves on ten items associated with professional identity and identity formation. From these responses, we compute a “Prof ID Formation Index” for each student, and we compare these measures before and after the Externship.

The establishment of a PAC for a supreme court race may undermine the public financing program and reintroduce partisanship in judicial races, according to the court of appeals judge who is challenging an incumbent justice. The legislature adopted public financing and nonpartisan ballots for appellate court elections in 2004.

The IAALS Alli Gerkman Legal Visionary Award recognizes innovators who have made significant impacts early in their legal careers toward making the American legal system work better for everyone. The nomination window for the 2026 award is now open.

I read my first legal blog in 2004 when, as a new lawyer, I saw Kevin O’Keefe present at a legal conference in Las Vegas. He talked about how lawyers could develop their practices through online tools, like blogs and LinkedIn. Over the last decade, I…

Professor Mary Lynch of Albany Law School recently reviewed IAALS’ three-day Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (ETL) Conference on her Best Practices for Legal Education blog. She wrote that the "energy, ideas and information being shared and built upon at the . . . Conference [gave her] hope and optimism about the way out of the 'crisis' in legal education."

The use of social media by jurors is a growing problem. In response, California passed a state law in 2011 making violations punishable by contempt. Since then, such misconduct has only increased as jurors become even more technologically savvy and connected via smartphones.

In 2006, IAALS opened its doors in a small adjunct office on campus at the University of Denver. With little more than a folding table and chairs, we embarked on a journey to improve the civil justice system. Today, we are a vibrant, national research center, and more committed than ever to continuous improvement of the civil justice system. That is why we decided to launch IAALS Online. We believe it will allow us to harness the power of national conversations to identify and improve solutions for a stronger system.

Today, aspiring lawyers across the country will sit for a bar examination that is intended to test their preparation for practice and will determine whether they will join the ranks of the legal profession this fall. While the bar examination has long been the measurement of what law graduates need in order to enter the profession, the profession and legal employers have nonetheless questioned its efficacy and the efficacy of legal education as a whole in actually preparing new lawyers. Many believe that American law schools are graduating lawyers unprepared to meet the demands of modern practice. Yet knowing what new lawyers need to succeed, and how they can acquire it effectively, was elusive until now.

While the last decade has seen a sort of "nationalization" of state high court races, coverage of election night results remains below that of congressional races. In 2010, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) attempted, thanks to advancements in reporting from the various secretaries of state as well as social media, to offer up election night coverage via Twitter (@StateCourts) and with a website dedicated to compiling the results. Coverage will be back again in 2012.

On October 5, 2016, I was honored to be a panelist at IAALS’ joint Law Firm Council and Business Leadership Network meeting. There were three panels at this plenary session: 1) a panel of corporate in-house counsel; 2) a panel of outside counsel; and 3) a panel of judges (from both the federal bench and the state bench).

The Northern District of California unveiled a new set of guidelines on Tuesday for the discovery of electronically stored information (ESI). The guidelines were developed by a bench-bar committee chaired by Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. LaPorte in partnership with the Rules Committee. In addition to the guidelines, the court has also adopted an ESI checklist for use during the Rule 26(f) meet and confer process and a model stipulated order.

Last September, we held our 5th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, where we welcomed approximately 100 legal educators and legal employers from around the country (and the world!) to discuss the measurement of meaningful learning outcomes and development of hiring criteria, focusing on the results of our Foundations for Practice project. It has become a tradition to kick off the first day of the conference with a series of Ignite presentations (snappy, 6 minute, auto-advancing) from ETL Consortium School faculty who want to share their projects, successes, and ideas. Presenters spoke on topics ranging from faculty resources to career development to simulations. You can find recordings of all of the 2016 Ignites below.

The National Center for State Courts and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government recently published a paper, "Keeping Courts Funded: Recommendations on How Courts Can Avoid the Budget Axe", which offers a perspective on how state courts can more effectively argue for sufficient funding by approaching the budgetary process proactively, effectively, and humbly.

This opinion piece by ALM's editor-in-chief argues that change in legal education won't be driven by universities, professors, students or employers, but rather by the client community and the organized bar (specifically, the American Bar Association…

This month the Northern District of Illinois launched a three-year pilot project, known as the Mandatory Initial Discovery Pilot Project (MIDP). The pilot project requires robust mandatory initial discovery with the goal of reducing cost and delay in civil litigation. Through a General Order, the court has ordered that the MIDP program be implemented in all civil cases filed on or after June 1, 2017, except as to those categories of cases that are exempted under the MIDP Standing Order.

Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Advisory Committee member Paul Lippe is speaking to the “Deans Workshop for ABA Approved Schools” on February 15. In a post at The New Normal, he asked “How would you shape the law school experience for the next generation?” He has 44 responses and counting.

In the wake of the defeat of three justices in the November 2010 retention elections, members of the Iowa Supreme Court have been more active in outreach efforts to educate the public about the role of the courts. One justice will stand for retention in 2012, and a challenge is anticipated.

At next month's Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference, we will spend Saturday morning in a Design Thinking workshop. It will be a hands-on way to learn what a design approach is, for you to use as an experiential teaching method or as a problem-solving process. When you hear the word “design,” you might assume this method is all about visuals, making things look nice, and choosing the best PowerPoint themes. Good visual design is important. But “Design Thinking” focuses not so much on visuals, as on solving problems in more human-centered and experimental ways. It's about understanding a challenge area from different stakeholders' perspectives, and then quickly building and testing new solutions to see which have the greatest promise.