This white paper describes the premises and policies for the Honoring Families Initiative (HFI). The goal of the paper and, more broadly, of HFI’s projects, is to offer new models of service delivery in order to… MORE
The Quality Judges Initiative's recommendations for reviewing written opinions as part of a performance evaluation program for appellate judges were featured in Trends in State Courts 2013, an annual publication of the National Center for… MORE
The U.S. bankruptcy courts have 351 authorized bankruptcy judgeships, along with an additional 37 retired-recalled bankruptcy judges. Despite the number of cases processed in these high-volume courts and their significance in the financial lives of… MORE
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 purpose of the study was not to compare… MORE
Cynthia Coffman’s legal career began 24 years ago as a courtroom attorney in the Georgia Attorney General’s Office. She then worked as a lawyer for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta first in Finance & Management Services, and later in… MORE
This Guide provides the tools for any interested federal judge to make a quick, initial assessment of the status of his or her civil case docket to measure how it compares to his or her colleagues, as well as to courts across the nation, with the… MORE
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… MORE
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… MORE
As one of our initial steps in developing recommended tools for evaluating the performance of appellate judges, we convened focus groups of judges and attorneys to identify the responsibilities of appellate judges that should be included in a… MORE
This report is a follow-up to IAALS’ 2010 publication of Surveys of the Colorado Bench & Bar on Colorado’s Simplified Pretrial Procedure for Civil Actions, focused on C.R.C.P. 16.1, a voluntary pretrial process for state court actions seeking $… MORE