Press Release

Much has been done over the past five years to address the cost and delay in the civil justice process, and much of that work has focused on discovery. Recognizing that there are equal challenges and opportunities for improvement in the area of motions practice, IAALS has focused on understanding the current motions landscape and issuing recommendations for improvement. In this effort, IAALS has released a new report intended to spark a national conversation about the current challenges of summary judgment.

What do clients want from their attorneys? The answers to that question would seem to be key to understanding how to improve the quality and diversity of legal services. Identifying what clients value in their lawyers has been a challenge because clients are difficult to identify and survey. But, now we have a source of precisely the information we need. IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, is partnering with Avvo, an online legal services marketplace, on a new project: “Think Like a Client.” This first-of-its-kind effort was announced today from the 6th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference.

Questions about when judges should recuse themselves from hearing cases—usually because a party perceives their ability to be impartial to be in doubt—have drawn renewed attention recently due to high-profile cases and closely divided U.S. Supreme Court decisions. For example, the high court ruled last year in Williams v. Pennsylvania that a defendant was denied a fair hearing in a capital case when the state’s chief justice did not recuse himself, because decades earlier the justice had prosecuted the case as then district attorney.

In three quarters of all civil cases, at least one party is going to court without an attorney and navigating a legal system not designed for the layperson’s use. To help potential litigants, some courts are leveraging technology and developing websites and portals that offer a vast amount of information and resources. However, these offerings vary widely in courthouses across the country. With the goal of helping bridge what has become an access-to-justice gap, IAALS today announced the release of Court Compass: Mapping the Future of User Access Through Technology, a compendium and analysis of court-offered solutions for self-represented litigants (SRLs), along with maturity models to guide the development of integrated solutions in courts nationwide.

The effort to create a 21st Century system of justice is advancing. Today, IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, and the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) announced the release of a new Roadmap to guide states as they implement sweeping changes to make state courts more efficient and effective—and that five jurisdictions will serve as demonstration pilots as they follow the roadmap and implement civil justice reform. An additional three states have also received grants to support their efforts to have also been selected as demonstration pilots around the country as they work to reduce cost and delay in the legal system. These efforts are part of three-year $1 million strategic response to the call to action sounded by the Conference of Chief Justices, and supported by the State Justice Institute.

The latest IAALS report offers insights for legal employers and aims to close the employment gap. Many legal employers still rely on criteria like class rank, law school prestige, and law review participation to inform hiring decisions, but how effective are those criteria in making good hires? A study released today by IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, finds that when it comes to hiring “the whole lawyer,” experience matters. IAALS’ latest report, Hiring the Whole Lawyer: Experience Matters, continues to share insights from a study of more than 24,000 lawyers that promises to inform the way new lawyers are educated and hired.

Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers honored Martin “Marty” J. Katz, former Dean of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law with the 2016 Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers (ETL) Award. Katz served as Dean of Sturm College of Law from 2009 to 2016 and led its development and implementation of a major strategic plan, which included significant initiatives in experiential learning. He is a founding board member of Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers, a national consortium of law schools that are leading efforts to improve legal education. In addition, Katz serves as a member of IAALS’ Board of Advisors.

A just-released report recommending concrete improvements in the American civil justice system has been endorsed by the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ), the country’s association of top state judicial leaders. The report—released last week at CCJ’s annual conference in Jackson, Wyoming—calls on state judicial leaders to implement 13 recommendations.

Today, aspiring lawyers across the country will sit for a bar examination that is intended to test their preparation for practice and will determine whether they will join the ranks of the legal profession this fall. While the bar examination has long been the measurement of what law graduates need in order to enter the profession, the profession and legal employers have nonetheless questioned its efficacy and the efficacy of legal education as a whole in actually preparing new lawyers. Many believe that American law schools are graduating lawyers unprepared to meet the demands of modern practice. Yet knowing what new lawyers need to succeed, and how they can acquire it effectively, was elusive until now.

Today, IAALS released a new report that finds family law attorneys, as stewards of the justice system, are uniquely positioned to best drive much needed change within the system. The Family Law Bar: Stewards of the System, Leaders of Change provides a blueprint for attorneys to help lead change in the system for their clients. It resulted from a groundbreaking summit that united a diverse group of national leaders around the shared goal of identifying obstacles and finding solutions that reshape the divorce and separation process so it better serves the needs of children and families.