News & Updates

Following Gingrich’s lead, other Republican presidential candidates chimed in with charges of judicial activism and proposals to limit the federal judiciary.

Two new laws will require more online information about judges standing for retention in 2012. Under this legislation, the commission on judicial performance review will post a listing of cases in which judges ruled on the constitutionality of statutes, a short biography of each judge, and the full text of their decisions during the current term.

In an address devoted to the importance of pro bono to the legal profession and to the society it serves, ABA President Wm. T. (Bill) Robinson III stressed the importance of an independent judiciary and legal profession. Click here to read the…

Economist and Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford Winston has co-authored a new book that has created conversation around its premise, which is evident in its title: First Thing We Do, Let's Deregulate All the Lawyers. In this New York Times op-ed about the legal profession, he asks: "What if the barriers to entry were simply done away with?"

Two law professors suggest that preparing students for their first couple years fo practice is hardly enough--law schools must strive to prepare students for "for a lifetime of successful, ethical, and personally rewarding practice."

IAALS board member Russell Wheeler was interviewed for this article, which focused on a federal judicial selection process in which President Obama has been slow to nominate and the Senate has been slow to confirm federal judges.

The New York times reviewed the legal profession's failure to put women in leadership and judicial positions in the thirty years since Sandra Day O'Connor heard her first Supreme Court case.

The Final Report by IAALS and ACTL was cited in Lee v. Max International, LLC, a Tenth Circuit decision written by Judge Neil Gorsuch. Click here to read the article.

The Final Report by IAALS and ACTL was cited in this article, which discusses the implications technology may have on document review. Over the past 10 years, courts and commentators have struggled with this issue. Some, such as the American College…

Three federal judge vacancies in Atlanta, which have been declared "emergencies," face continued delays due to partisan gridlock. Larry Thompson, an Advisory Committee member for the O'Connor Judicial Selection Project, was interviewed for the story.

Presidential Newt Gingrich brought national focus to an issue state courts were already facing: legislators and politicians around the country are taking aim at the third branch of government. Click here to read the article.

There may be as many as 175 judicial elections—both contested and retention—on the 2012 general election ballot. Two of these races are at the supreme court level, with one justice expected to stand for retention and one justice who was appointed to the bench competing against several challengers to keep her seat.

Intervention in judicial campaigns by special interest groups was an issue in a debate between two superior court candidates. One candidate was prepared to renounce all such activity by third-party groups, while the other candidate preferred to make that decision if questionable activity took place. (The superior court is one of the state’s two intermediate appellate courts.)

Early this month, Rebecca Love Kourlis sat down with LawWeek reporter Matt Masich to discuss the purpose of her new book, Rebuilding Justice, and the current state of civil courts in the United States.

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning and North Carolina Central School of Law are co-hosting a conference on March 3, 2012, which will focus on the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning in and out of the classroom. They announced…

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.

Judge Kevin Burke holds Newt Gingrich's claim that "President Thomas Jefferson abolished over half the federal judgeships" to historical scrutiny.

The American Bar Association's Standards Review Committee will hold a public forum in Chicago on November 11 to allow for comments on proposed changes to the standards. Among the requirements that have drawn concerns are "student learning outcomes," or "requirements that law schools lay out what they want students to learn and design ways to assess whether they are meeting those goals."

The online legal community was abuzz Monday with the news that corporate clients don’t want to foot the bill for new lawyer training thanks to a Wall Street Journal article that asks: “First-Year Associates: Are They Worth It?” We’ve been talking to in-house counsel for months about gaps in legal education and the skills they would like law schools to develop in their students.

The chair of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has directed the Standards Review Committee draft a new standard that provides for "specific and severe penalties for the intentional misreporting of placement data, including…