News & Updates

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unique challenges to lawyers and law students alike. For many students enrolled in live-client clinics, the challenges of meeting their clients' needs in a transitional environment are particularly demanding. Yet these law students in clinical programs have a unique opportunity to rise to the occasion.

Over at the Talent Code, Daniel Coyle talks about a trauma surgeon who described the best training session he ever witnessed: an unexpected, staged accident, complete with chaos, fake blood, and hidden victims. In law school there might not be much use for fake blood, but there are educators asking students to role play.

Lawyers who have already filed suit against 14 law schools for misrepresenting job placement numbers say they plan to target 20 more by Memorial Day.

Studies show that up to 80 percent of Americans’ civil legal needs go unmet—and that will likely grow due to the pandemic. Change cannot wait any longer. It is time for us to reimagine the ways in which legal services in our country are delivered, and leaders across the profession are calling for immediate action.

Speaker of the Senate and Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, a Republican, is leading the charge against three supreme court justices standing for retention in August. (All appellate judges in Tennessee stand for retention at the same time every eight years, but two justices on the five-member court are retiring this summer.)

The Spring 2012 edition of Transparent Courthouse® Quarterly is now available. Transparent Courthouse® Quarterly is a quarterly newsletter reporting highlights from all IAALS initiatives. Sign up for Transparent Courthouse® Quarterly and other IAALS…

On October 27, IAALS and the University of Denver Sturm College of Law co-hosted a virtual discussion featuring Crispin Passmore, Will Morrison, and Abigail Moy—moderated by David Lat—who addressed how legal regulations in other countries have allowed for greater accessibility to the justice system and increased innovation among service providers.

The Center for Families, Children and the Courts recently released a report stemming from the Families Matter Symposium, which focused on this question: how do we radically transform a family court system from one that disrupts and tears apart families to one that helps heal them? The report details the suggestions that emerged from the Symposium.

The newly minted Stanford Journal of Complex Litigation launches this Fall. The SJCL will cover topics like aggregate litigation, rules of civil procedure, mass torts, jurisdictional disputes, complex litigation reform, actions by private attorneys…

Over the past year, we have processed three wrenching national experiences. At IAALS, we have imagined the experiences as tests. Because we aspire to advance the American legal system, we have sought to answer these tests together—and for the sake of our shared mission.

Earlier this month, Law Week Colorado published an article highlighting IAALS' report Choosing Judges: Judicial Nominating Commissions and the Selection of Supreme Court Justices. An outgrowth of the O’Connor Judicial Selection Plan, the report examines why judicial nominating commissions are established in the first place, how their structure and operation differ across the nation, and what some of the best practices might be in building public trust in the process.

Today, Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet announced the formation of a bipartisan, 11-member advisory committee that will implement an open process to recommend highly qualified applicants to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in Colorado. Rebecca Love Kourlis, Executive Director of IAALS, is a co-chair of the committee.

Throughout 2020, we saw just about every aspect of the legal profession move from in-person to virtual services. There have been a number of horror stories but also plenty of success stories, in which technology helped decrease court backlogs and increased access to the courts. So where does this leave us, and how do we move forward?

In 2014, we have continued to see a rise in the number of, and interest in, alternative processes designed to provide a more streamlined approach to the pretrial and trial process. While these programs are known by many different names, they all focus on increasing access to our civil justice system. Given the number of programs that have been implemented nationwide, and their diversity, we have updated our chart of these programs, which catalogs their unique elements.

Governor Scott asked a state law enforcement agency to decide if an investigation is warranted into whether the three justices standing for retention in November violated state law by seeking assistance from court staff in filing election-related paperwork, and two citizens filed a lawsuit asking the secretary of state to remove the three justices from the ballot.

A growing number of states are exploring the permanent implementation of alternative licensure approaches that would allow law school graduates to obtain their license through nontraditional avenues that run adjacent to—or bypass entirely—the bar exam.

The Quality Judges Initiative believes that court systems should reflect the social makeup of their communities, and therefore should be diverse among many demographics. As March is Women's History Month, we recognize the many great women who have laid a foundation for inclusion in the federal judiciary. The U.S. Courts have recognized several women this month, to which we add one more.

Previously, we have drawn from the Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers’ survey to describe the 23 ETL Consortium schools, explore the kinds of curricular innovations in which they may be engaged, and see how they compare to law schools more generally. This post continues our description by looking at support for faculty engagement in the improvement of teaching and learning among the ETL Consortium schools.

Over the course of its history, IAALS has sparked undeniable momentum to change the status quo. Read more about our work to reshape our justice system in our 2022 Annual Report.

The League of Women Voters of Colorado is recognizing IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis with its 2015 Leader of Democracy Award on June 17. I can't think of a more appropriate recipient of this award than Becky. The LWV is a national, nonpartisan political organization that has fought since 1920 to improve our systems of government—something that Becky has also been working toward her entire career.