News & Updates

In Maryland, the creation of special family divisions in the state’s five largest jurisdictions has transformed the way courts handle family law cases. A recent article in the National Center for State Courts’ 2016 Trends in State Courts explains how the creation of these special family divisions can provide a model for improving the way such cases are treated across the country.

Because the exhausting and emotional impact of divorce extends often extends into the work environment, the Huffington Post suggests businesses should actively take a part to improve how courts handle divorce and custody issues. The Huffington Post relies on IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis' article, "It's Just Good Business: The Case for Supporting Reform in Divorce Court," in which she states that if the family court system "can be improved -- such that they cost less money, take less time, and are less adversarial and inflamed -- not only will employees benefit, but so will their employers.

With our publication Judges Aren’t Sexy: Engaging and Educating Voters in a Crowded World, we offered a range of practical recommendations—including communications strategies and assets for social media and a messaging platform—for communicating with judicial voters. A handful of states have put our recommendations into practice for this election cycle.

Judicial campaign spending amounts across the nation skyrocketed in the recent election cycle, threatening public perceptions of the independence, fairness, and impartiality of the courts. Driven by the desire to tilt the political balance on the court or to remove a judge from the bench because of unpopular rulings, political parties and outside groups spent vast amounts of unregulated money toward retaining or defeating a particular judge.

Debtor’s prisons have been illegal in the United States for nearly 200 years, and in 1983 the United State Supreme Court’s ruling in Bearden v. Georgia again made it clear that judges cannot send people to jail simply because they do not have the…

How would you feel if you owned a business with your spouse and you decided to divorce? A recent article from The New York Times provides a refreshing example of how one couple was able to maintain their business relationship while going through the divorce process.

Chairman Emeritus of Duane Morris recently asked how, if tables were turned, students might grade their law schools. He ends with five suggestions for schools to improve, including a two-year plan, a three-year plan with advanced classes in a second…

In January, I had the opportunity to present the results of IAALS’ Foundations for Practice study at the Association of American Law Schools’ Annual Meeting as part of the President’s Program. As always, I began my talk by framing the problems we are trying to fix through our work, and among the problems we simply cannot ignore are the lackluster employment rates for new law school graduates.

Once again, law schools have found themselves the subject of a New York Times front-page article about the sharp decline in law school applications. According to the article, law schools are responding by cutting faculty, taking a closer look at affordability, and adding clinics and in-the-field training. But perhaps more interesting is the story the article doesn’t tell—the story of law schools across the country that are already in front of this wave by offering students a better education.

In the first blog for Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, Bill Sullivan argued that legal education is more than meritocracy – that while academic merit is essential in the training of lawyers as professionals it is not enough. It is necessary, but not alone sufficient for professional excellence.

The U.S. legal system is already hard to navigate and understand, but even more so in the aftermath of a natural disaster. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and in preparation for Hurricane Irma, the legal community is coming together in different ways to make legal aid more accessible to people in affected areas.

Over the last two months, the IAALS board of advisers has welcomed several distinguished members to the fold, all of whom are committed to the missions of our Initiatives and the continuous improvement of the civil justice system. We are pleased to add Kenneth R. Thompson II to their ranks.

Ray Suarez interviewed Rebecca Love Kourlis about Rebuilding Justice and the problems and potential solutions it identifies for civil courts in the United States.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed a bill calling for the state’s judicial nominating commissions to submit at least five names for each judicial vacancy. As IAALS Online reported last month, some question the constitutionality of the bill, since the state constitution allows commissions to send a minimum of three names to the governor.

During a series of panels that comprised a Defending Iowa’s Courts event, the executive director of the state ACLU chapter described an organized national effort to dismantle judicial merit selection processes. The panel also discussed legislative attacks on Iowa’s courts in the wake of the Varnum v. Brien decision and expectations that the other supreme court justices who joined the unanimous opinion in the case would see retention challenges in 2012 and 2016.

In the last blog, we explained that the 77 foundations survey respondents identified as being necessary for new lawyers in the short term are largely consistent and definitive across respondents. Still, there were a few differences that highlight foundations some practice settings emphasize over others. Similarly, when we focused on private practice, we discovered only slight variations among different law firm sizes. In this blog, we explore the foundations that make up the whole lawyer for each private practice firm size category, and the differences as compared with one another and the whole lawyer overall.

The Minnesota Supreme Court continues to implement rule changes stemming from the recommendations of its Civil Justice Reform Task Force. On May 7, 2013, the Court adopted an Order authorizing the creation of a Pilot Expedited Civil Litigation Track "to promote efficiency in the processing of certain civil cases," reduce costs, and provide a quick and reduced-cost process for obtaining a jury trial when civil actions cannot be resolved by judicial decision or by settlement.

Proposals to move to merit selection for appellate judges are under consideration in both the house and senate. Supporters of the proposals believe that judges should be selected based on qualifications rather than name recognition.

IAALS’ recent publication, Redefining Case Management, provides an updated set of civil case management guidelines. Notably, the discussion surrounding strong case management by the court is not focused on the overall pace of litigation; the goals are “fair, efficient, and accountable” case management, not just faster litigation.