Family Justice Initiative

The National Self-Represented Litigants Project has released its 2018/2019 report on the demographics of SRLs in Canada, including their income, education level, party status, and experience with legal services. While some of the results may come as no surprise, others are more eyebrow-raising.

Eldercaring Coordination is an innovative dispute resolution process for high-conflict cases, providing an alternative to the traditional adversarial court process. By directly focusing on elders and their legally authorized decisionmakers, Eldercaring Coordination helps families work together to regain harmony and...

In late September, the Indiana Supreme Court announced the creation of the Indiana Innovation Initiative. One of the initiative’s two subgroups, the Family Law Taskforce, will consider the Family Justice Initiative Principles supported by IAALS in order to improve the way Indiana’s courts handle domestic relations...

In partnership with national experts, IAALS has developed three new guides to support real change in state courts. Stemming from our work on the Civil Justice Initiative and Family Justice Initiative, the guides are designed to assist in creating effective self-help information for those who need it, developing...

In an important step toward making family courts more user-friendly and less adversarial, the Conference of Chief Justices has adopted new guidelines to help courts be more responsive to the needs of families.

A first of its kind study, this landscape report brings together national data from family cases that confirms what we have long known at IAALS: family courts must do more to focus on problem solving rather than rely on the traditional structure framed around an adversarial approach.