Expert Opinion

In her final post as Executive Director, Rebecca Love Kourlis discusses the public’s low trust and confidence in the American legal system. IAALS will be rolling out the results of its research in the area over the next few months, and begins with three papers, which together kick off a part of the conversation IAALS calls “Are We at a Boiling Point?”

Based on IAALS' model for out-of-court divorce, the Family Resolutions Specialty Court in Massachusetts helps parents of minor children work through issues related to divorce, separation, paternity, and more—and keeps the focus on the best interests of the child.

Innovations in the delivery of legal services can also be laboratories for testing innovations in legal education. Many innovations in education spring from the IAALS out-of-court divorce model and had an effect on the law students who participated in the on-campus center that provided the services.

Nevada, which directly elects nearly all of its state judges, has never implemented an official judicial performance evaluation program. Instead, between 1992 and 2013, the state’s largest newspaper conducted its own surveys of attorneys in Clark County regarding judges seeking reelection until their survey methodology came under sharp criticism. Now the surveys are set to return, with some significant retooling.

In April 2019, the California State Auditor filed her report on an investigation into the Commission on Judicial Performance, the state's judicial conduct body. There is growing interest nationally in judicial misconduct and the entities in each state (and federally) that investigate complaints, and in 2018, IAALS prepared its own Recommendations for Judicial Discipline Systems.

It is no secret that divorce poses significant problems for those who go through the legal process. The adversarial nature of the legal process can put people at odds with one another and the courts are not well-positioned to provide emotional and future-planning support. IAALS has released a new report detailing the evaluation of our out-of-court model aimed at addressing these challenges for families with children.

As state courts around the country have been responding to the Conference of Chief Justices' 2016 Call to Action for civil justice reform, IAALS, NCSC, and NCJFCJ also have been focused on developing companion recommendations for evaluating and improving the way courts handle domestic relations cases, which have just been released.

Done right, summary judgment expedites the just resolution of a case—that’s the whole reason we have Rule 56. Our challenge as judges and lawyers is to make dispositive motion practice advance that purpose. While lawyers have traditionally filed such motions if, when, and as often as they pleased, this is a recipe for excess or—worse—abuse. Dispositive motions work best when they are part of a plan for moving the case toward resolution.

Today, IAALS announces the release of a new resource, Listen > Learn > Lead: A Guide to Improving Court Services through User-Centered Design, on how best to solicit feedback from self-represented litigants and other court stakeholders. The tools provided in this guide come from the knowledge IAALS gained through the Court Compass Project design sprint workshops.

In the past several years, design thinking has gained traction in the legal field as a method for involving litigants and other stakeholders in developing improvements to the legal system. IAALS has taken design thinking one step further in applying a structured qualitative research approach to the process.