Announcements

Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers is pleased to announce Law Jobs: By the Numbers™, an interactive online tool that gives prospective law students the most transparent and complete law school employment rate information available. Law Jobs empowers prospective students to build, analyze, and compare rates among law schools based on 2011 and 2012 data released by the American Bar Association, all with just a few clicks of a mouse. Users can “choose their own” formulas to tailor employment rates and prioritize the jobs that are valuable to them.

Numbers matter. As we take on some of the biggest challenges facing the civil justice system, our work depends on the number of stakeholders we bring to the table, our ability to facilitate implementation of our recommended models in numerous instances, and, of course, our careful measurement of the outcomes produced. Our 2012 Annual Report commemorates our commitment to Strength in Numbers.

IAALS has just released a research report entitled Family Law in Focus: A Retrospective Study of Colorado's Early Experiments with Proactive Case Processing. This report presents the results from an analysis of data from five pilot programs in four different Colorado courts that implemented proactive case management in family law cases. The data show that by providing active case management, assistance, and education to litigants, the likelihood of speedier case resolution is increased, which is the intent of CRCP 16.2.

IAALS’ new publication, A Roadmap for Review: Guide for Appraisal and Improvement of Caseflow Management in Civil Cases in U.S. District Courts, 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. If further analysis and appraisal are deemed appropriate or desirable, this Guide provides the user with the tools to do so and recommendations for better practices.

In September 2012, 21 law schools sent representatives to Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers’ first conference, which sought collaboration among schools to identify best practices for forming professional identity, encouraged schools to share examples of programs and curricula that support professional development, and fostered new ideas and approaches that representatives could take back to their schools. Out of this meeting comes the Report on the 2012 Conference.

IAALS is privileged to benefit from the expertise of a diverse board of advisors that includes judges, practitioners, and others committed to our mission: the continuous improvement of the civil justice system. At the close of 2012, we said farewell to two board members: Justice Patricio Serna and Sue Dosal. And, on January 1, 2013, we welcomed three new board members: Judge Lee Rosenthal, Alan Carlson, and Sheila Slocum Hollis.

David Thomson, Lawyering Process Professor and Director of the Lawyering Process Program at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, will be the first IAALS Visiting Scholar for the spring semester of 2013. Thomson will be spending parts of his sabbatical here with us, working on several projects. Thomson is a longtime friend of IAALS and we look forward to working more closely with him over the coming months.

This month, IAALS launched the first edition of IAALS Report, our new monthly newsletter. It’s a great way to keep up with news and progress in all four of our initiatives: Quality Judges, Rule One, Honoring Families, and Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers. We believe IAALS Report will be a convenient way to keep you even more informed about issues affecting the civil justice system as we move into 2013.

IAALS has just released a Rule One Initiative research report entitled Measuring Rule 16.1: Colorado’s Simplified Procedure Experiment. In 2004, the Colorado Supreme Court put in place Rule 16.1, a voluntary pretrial process for smaller dollar-volume civil cases, with the hope of providing a more efficient path to resolution. This new reports sets forth the results of an empirical study of Rule 16.1, including its role and impact.

Divorce and resolution of child custody issues take a toll. They take a toll on families, they take a toll on the courts and they take a toll on a variety of other impacted communities, and it's not clear that the current system is working. Which is why we’re formally launching our Honoring Families Initiative. Aligned with the greater mission of IAALS, Honoring Families is dedicated to advancing empirically informed models to ensure greater accessibility, efficiency, and fairness in divorce and child custody matters.