Iaals In The News

The June edition of 5280 Magazine highlights the reality of self-representation in Colorado’s civil courts. Referencing the first-hand experience of a litigant who navigated her way through the family court process without an attorney, the article discusses how more and more Coloradoans are without legal representation in their civil case.

In a recent Colorado Public Radio/Colorado Matters story, the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce was featured as a promising alternative to the traditional lengthy, expensive, and often contentious in-court divorce.

As IAALS celebrates its tenth year, the Denver Business Journal sat down with Executive Director Rebecca Love Kourlis to recap her motivation for leaving the Colorado Supreme Court and founding IAALS, and the impacts made over the last decade.

This week, the Denver Post published an article highlighting Denver’s new Center for Out-of-Court Divorce, which provides a child-focused, less-adversarial, and potentially less-costly approach for families when parents are separating.

In January, Law Week Colorado covered Denver’s new Center for Out-of-Court Divorce. The Center, based on IAALS’ recommended model for child- and family-centric divorce and separation services, grew out of our pilot project at the University of Denver, known as the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families.

IAALS and the American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force on Discovery and Civil Justice’s joint report, Reforming Our Civil Justice System: A Report on Progress & Promise, continues to garner attention at a national level. In its Civil Justice Playbook feature this month, Metropolitan Corporate Counsel features the work of theRule One Initiative and the Task Force.

In its effort to highlight the paradigm shift in how law is being practiced, the ABA Journal recently reported on the IAALS model for a less adversarial, out-of-court divorce process and the first implementation of this model at the University of Denver. While a comprehensive, three-year evaluation of the Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families is underway by IAALS, anecdotes from families who have proceeded through the process show that it is succeeding.

ETL is about to release its first major report—a study of the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program. The report is not even public yet, but it was already highlighted in the Wall Street Journal and criticized at Above the Law. Ultimately, if law schools are going to develop programs that better prepare students and if prospective students are going to rely on those programs, then legal employers must value them. And, we're working on ways to help ensure that happens.

A recent article in the Denver Bar Association’s The Docket reviewed the dilemma that surrounds how states select and retain judges. In the article, Colorado's merit selection system is highlighted as a nationally recognized model for ensuring a judiciary that is free from politics, while also affording citizen input. Colorado's process for choosing judges mirrors the four-part O'Connor Plan, IAALS' collaboration with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Earlier this month, Law Week Colorado published an article highlighting IAALS' report Choosing Judges: Judicial Nominating Commissions and the Selection of Supreme Court Justices. An outgrowth of the O’Connor Judicial Selection Plan, the report examines why judicial nominating commissions are established in the first place, how their structure and operation differ across the nation, and what some of the best practices might be in building public trust in the process.