Publications

In September 2012, 21 law schools sent representatives to Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers’ first conference. With the understanding that collaboration is at the heart of rich and effective teaching, the report represents the starting point of a shared dialogue among Consortium schools.

This report presents the results from an analysis of data from five pilot programs instituted from 2000 to 2002 in four different Colorado courts implementing proactive case management in family law cases. The data shows that proactive case management in family law cases provides substantial benefits for the litigants.

In this article we explore the history of recent efforts to improve the civil justice system in the United States, beginning first with the efforts of IAALS and the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and Civil Justice, which culminated in a Final Report that proposed twenty-nine Principles containing broad ideas to improve the civil justice system.

During the ABA’s 2013 mid-year meeting, the Task Force on the Future of Legal Education heard testimony from individuals about opportunities to improve legal education. Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers took this opportunity to submit a comment focused on aligning legal education with the needs of an evolving profession. The comment had six main recommendations.

This report summarizes what IAALS learned through focus groups of judges and attorneys, which then provided the foundation for developing our model surveys and recommendations for reviewing written opinions of appellate judges.

This report, containing a docket analysis complemented by in-depth interviews, examines the Colorado experience to provide insight to jurisdictions around the country interested in streamlined pretrial procedures, case differentiation, and voluntary processes.

This collects recommendations for jurisdictions around the country that are considering implementing short, summary, or expedited trial program, as well as those seeking to improve their current programs. The recommendations "are meant to serve as a flexible roadmap for reform, with the details of each program to be determined at the local level."

Published in conjunction with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), this report evaluates the cost and delays of litigation from a new perspective: that of financial experts. The report offers five recommendations to maximize both the effectiveness of financial experts and efficiency of their use in the civil pretrial process.

This article examines the ways in which familial distress surrounding separation and divorce can affect individual employee productivity and negatively impact a business' bottom line. This article further outlines some improvements that are being implemented or considered in various jurisdictions.

While electronic discovery continues to pose challenges for the civil justice system, the judge who understands e-discovery may be uniquely positioned to guide the litigation in a way that works better for all litigants—and for the court itself. In this Second Edition, IAALS provides an updated manual for state court judges and anyone who needs a basic resource on e-discovery.

This publication couples the desired attributes for court systems and individual judges identified by participants in the IAALS Roundtable on Judicial Selection with principles (or “cornerstones”) for judicial selection processes that are most likely to produce court systems and judges with these attributes.

In response to the need for an impartial, efficient, and meaningful method for evaluating appellate opinions as part of the JPE process, IAALS developed this report containing broad recommendations, and model criteria and questionnaires.

IAALS developed a set of goals to pursue and principles to follow in the selection, composition, and operation of judicial nominating commissions. Rather than constituting a “one size fits all” prescription, these goals and principles offer a framework within which to establish a commission-based gubernatorial appointment process tailored to individual states.

IAALS administered a survey of appellate judges and justices in eight of the eleven states that have official appellate JPE processes. Drawing from these survey results, conference materials, and participant dialogue, this post-conference report discusses the various approaches currently in place for evaluating appellate judges and justices, and identifies themes, recommendations, and areas for future work in appellate JPE.

This report describes the committees in place and their significant variations in membership, appointment process, and, to the degree possible, operations. It suggests why senators and their staffs might consider using a committee, outlines decisions they might face in structuring and appointing a committee, and identifies issues they and committee members might encounter in operating a committee.

This publication synthesizes the results of four recent studies exploring how attorneys and trial judges across the nation view the civil justice system. Survey respondents overwhelmingly agreed that cost is a concern; delay increases cost; and discovery is responsible for unnecessary cost and delay. Respondents also embraced the need for creative solutions and experimentation.

This survey asked state and federal judges questions about the civil legal system, and in particular, some of the civil process reforms advanced by IAALS and the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and Civil Justice.

Colorado’s voluntary simplified pretrial procedure for actions seeking $100,000 or less from any one party was set up to reduce the time to disposition and reduce costs for litigants. But our survey shows use of the rules is relatively infrequent and not widely promoted by responding attorneys and judges.

This report sets forth the results of our civil litigation survey of Chief Legal Officers and General Counsel belonging to the Association of Corporate Counsel.

Pleadings are the gateway to the American civil justice system. Parties must be able to afford to stay in the system long enough to narrow their disputed issues and collect relevant evidence for presentation to a judge or jury.