News & Updates

By now, anyone who is familiar with the Foundations for Practice study knows that the data provides a gold mine of information for law schools, the legal profession (especially legal employers), and law students/recent grads.  What makes the list so surprising is not necessarily each individual item, but rather the fact that the things lawyers believe we aspiring attorneys need in the short term are all (mostly) completely within our own control.

A University of Michigan research project looked at the effects of divorce on women's health insurance rates and coverage and found that women are less likely to be insured following a divorce. It is estimated that 115,000 women lose health insurance coverage following a divorce and that 65,000 women become uninsured in the months following the divorce.

A new report conducted by Ecorys UK, Experiences of consumers who may be vulnerable in family law, explores the impacts of personal and situational vulnerabilities for people seeking legal assistance with family law matters. Specifically, the study explored access, cost, and quality of legal representation in the modern-day legal market—a market with increasingly more options for people contemplating or experiencing involvement in the legal system.

It's hard to believe it's been less than three months since we officially launched IAALS Online. We hope you've been enjoying it as much as we have. We'll be taking a short break for the holidays—IAALS and the University of Denver are closed from December 25 through January 1—but we look forward to logging on January 2.

Some law schools, including City University of New York (CUNY), are offering "solo incubators" to support recent graduates who are launching solo practices. CUNY's program offers office space and access to experienced solo practitioners. Click here…

IAALS is expanding: both in terms of our capacity for impact and in the literal expansion of our ranks. Specifically, we are delighted to announce that Managers Nathaniel Baca and Zack DeMeola and Research Assistant James Swearingen joined our organization in June. Already, they are broadening and deepening our work.

A new poll—this one commissioned by the Kansas Policy Institute—shows that Kansans see no need to change the process for selecting the state’s appellate judges. According to the recent poll, 54 percent of Kansans believe it is “in citizens’ best interests to have judges recommended for appointment to the Kansas Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals by a majority-attorney panel,” while 39 percent disagree.

A supreme (trial) court administrative judge issued a written reprimand to candidates for four open seats in his district, citing a number of complaints about their campaign activities. The candidates had been provided with a copy of a judicial campaign ethics handbook and required to attend an educational program on the ethical boundaries of campaign conduct.

When law school applications took a downturn around 2011, some law schools redesigned their curricula to add more experiential learning opportunities. Aimed at ensuring that their students were prepared for practice after graduation—and improving their graduates' chances of getting hired—schools hoped the refocused offerings might attract more applicants. In the midst of this shift, David Thomson and Stephen Daniels planned a three-year study of students at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. The results were published recently in an article titled, "If You Build it, They Will Come: What Students Say About Experiential Learning."

In its Winter 2013 edition, The Arkansas Lawyer makes the case for a more efficient option for trial by jury in civil cases, and does so by introducing and reprinting an excerpt from A Return to Trials: Implementing Effective Short, Summary, and Expedited Civil Action Programs. The article highlights the diminishing civil jury trial and its impacts on Arkansas and the rest of country, and calls for action to protect this fundamental right.

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 part of the University of Denver’s Engaging Ideas series, IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis was interviewed about the importance of an independent judiciary—and IAALS’ model for sustaining it. In the video, titled “Judging the Judges,” Kourlis discusses how IAALS is helping improve state court systems through the O’Connor Judicial Selection Plan. “Public trust in the judiciary is central to its legitimacy and to its capacity to enforce its orders. Retaining that impartiality, independence, and integrity of the judicial branch, I think in this day and age, is more critical than perhaps it’s ever been.”

In the wake of a very public fee dispute involving one of the world’s largest law firms, Professor Benjamin Madison, an Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Fellow, recommends that law schools turn it into a learning opportunity "to better prepare law students and to make them more attentive to ethical concerns." By teaching students more about billing, such as the importance of careful time-keeping and ethical billing practices, they will learn valuable skills that may strengthen the lawyer-client relationship.

Governor Rick Perry has made more appointments to the supreme court than any other Texas governor. While he has been praised for diversifying the court, his appointees have been characterized as business-friendly and results-oriented. Since 2000, defendants such as oil companies, insurance firms, and other big businesses have won 75% of cases brought by consumers.

Tony is one of a kind. He sees the big picture and can envision unique solutions to old problems. His enthusiasm and ideas are boundless, and he knits them all together and is able to see causes and effects. And, of course, he is incredibly tech-savvy. He is connected, internationally, to the innovators in law and delivery of legal services. With Tony in our midst, we can expand the reach and possibilities of IAALS’ impact exponentially.

In a recent article by Judge Kevin Burke, a member of the IAALS Board of Advisors, and Babak Armajani, they discuss several key areas in which courts are failing to meet the needs of the public, and a few states that are taking steps in the right direction. In states where careful consideration of problems and measurement of remedies is taking place, positive and dramatic changes can begin to take hold in the culture and operations of our courts.

Educating Lawyers, often referred to in legal circles as the “Carnegie Report,” has found its way into a number of articles and blog posts lately. Just Monday, it was cited by Professor Benjamin Spencer of Washington and Lee School of Law in his Washington Post guest post urging that we reform legal education, rather than deregulate it.

Although the idea of equal protection under the law has long been at the heart of the American legal system, equal access to justice is still not a reality for many people. Former American Bar Association President Robert J. Grey Jr. discusses this equal justice gap in a recent piece for the ABA Journal.

We are happy to introduce our newly published textbook, Negotiating Business Transactions: An Extended Simulations Course. The textbook accompanies our transactional law and practical skills course, International Business Negotiations, which has been adopted by nine law schools. The textbook is the first book designed to facilitate the adoption of an extended transactional simulation course using experiential learning and collaborative teaching pedagogy.

The commission on judicial conduct recommended that a New York City civil court judge be admonished for circulating misleading materials in her 2006 campaign. Admonishment is the least severe punishment for judicial misconduct.