Justice Index 2016 Finds States Need to Do More to Serve Self-Represented Litigants

News and Updates
The National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law School recently released the Justice Index 2016—an updated version of the 2014 Index. The Justice Index compiles data from state justice systems, comparing states' performance on four broad… MORE

Washington Removing Legalese from Family Law Court Forms

News and Updates
A recent Wall Street Journal article details how one of America’s foremost jurists has declared war on legal jargon. Judge Richard Posner, who sits on of the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, has launched an aggressive assault on… MORE

Ten Years of IAALS: Building Bridges for Better Judicial Performance Evaluation

News and Updates
IAALS is celebrating its 10th Anniversary in 2016. Throughout the year, we will be featuring guest posts from our colleagues and partners to recap our accomplishments and national impact—and look to the future ahead. The full series of posts will be… MORE

The Impact of Proportionality: Changing the Conversation

News and Updates
The federal rule amendments that went into effect on December 1, 2015, represent the culmination of years of effort dedicated to improving our civil justice system in the federal courts. While we recognize it took much hard work to… MORE

Quality Judges Award Honors Best of Judicial Performance Evaluations Process

News and Updates
The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) is proud to announce Joanne C. Slotnik, Former Executive Director of the Utah Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, as the inaugural recipient of IAALS’ Quality Judges… MORE

Latest IAALS Reports Give Voice to Growing Numbers of Self-Represented Litigants

News and Updates
"Cases Without Counsel: Experiences of Self-Representation in U.S. Family Court" Presents Panoramic View The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) today unveiled two new reports—one of which captures the… MORE

Kansans Gearing Up for Contentious, and Likely Costly, Judicial Retention Elections

News and Updates
This November, five of the seven justices on the Kansas Supreme Court are standing for retention, and many court watchers in Kansas and around the country are anticipating a no-holds-barred election battle. The supreme court on one side and the… MORE

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied: We Need More Timely Decisions from the Bench

News and Updates
Lawyers reach out to me from time to time to give me a dose of reality. Recently, a trial lawyer spoke to me of a few cases that had gone awry—and are examples of larger issues that plague our civil justice system. She did not give names, or case… MORE

Call for Papers – Journal of Experiential Learning

News and Updates
The Journal of Experiential Learning at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center (an ETL Consortium school) is looking for papers for the Fall/Winter 2016 volume. The topic is “Loosening the Walls of the Legal Academy: The Bench and the Bar as… MORE

Redefining Access to Justice: Kourlis and Schepard on Denver’s Divorce Alternative

News and Updates
For separating and divorcing families, access to justice can be hard to come by. Our traditional, court-driven model de-emphasizes parents’ (and children’s) long-term interests, fosters expensive legal fees, and lacks important services that can… MORE