With Indiana already incorporating two components from the Uniform Bar Examination into its own attorney admittance test, a study commission recommends transitioning completely to the UBE. In Indiana Lawyer’s annual Year in Review, the top stories of 2019 were driven by scandal, but we also found lawyers doing remarkable things.
A national task force has released recommendations about what courts should do as they fight the opioid crisis. Meanwhile, Indianapolis-area attorneys were trained to administer a life-saving overdose reversal drug. And as the Indiana General Assembly prepares for the 2020 session, juvenile justice advocates are preparing to fight legislation they say could harm young offenders.
Three Indianapolis attorneys recently left their former law firm to establish their own practice, doing so with an entrepreneurial spirit and thinking like a startup. A groundbreaking settlement in a rent-to-own housing lawsuit came at a cost for the nonprofit that pursued the litigation as well as the defendants who aggressively countersued. A recent civic health survey found Hoosiers are engaged but not voting as much as those in other states, and a veteran Indianapolis attorney is proposing one possible solution.
What's it like to practice law with your family by your side? Five sets of Hoosier family practitioners share their experiences. The lawyer population is growing nationwide and in Indiana, but there might not be enough room for everyone. And Hoosiers facing foreclosure now have another avenue for help thanks to the Indiana Supreme Court and the Indiana Bar Foundation.
Over four days of sometimes contentious testimony, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill and four women who accuse him of sexual misconduct took the stand in an extraordinary attorney discipline hearing. The more than 275 new lawyers who took the oath earlier this month got there with a little help from family and friends. And a new law is giving new hope to moms and dads behind bars who formerly faced the presumption of termination of their parental rights.
The largest law firm in the world has entered the Indianapolis market, and IL details how the deal came about. Disciplinary charges against three judges involved in an Indianapolis shooting detail a night of conference-eve bar-hopping that led to a violent confrontation. In the 1970s, women law students were few. A tight-knit group of IU McKinney trailblazers has reunited annually, this year marking their 40th reunion. And a Taft lawyer who took on a toxic polluter and won is getting the star treatment in the upcoming major motion picture “Dark Waters”.
The announcement that Terry Curry was stepping down to tend to his health was followed by another surprise from the Marion County Prosecutor's Office: the end of low-level marijuana prosecutions in Indianapolis. Meanwhile, counties statewide also are gearing up for big changes beginning next year, when new rules governing pretrial release in criminal cases take effect.
The Taft Stettinius & Hollister merger with a big Minneapolis firm is the latest and largest in a flurry of deals involving Hoosier law firms. A Clark Circuit judge will serve no jail time and receive no probation for his misdemeanor plea in a confrontation in which he and a colleague were shot, but the Commission on Judicial Qualifications continues to investigate the shooting. And a harassment guilty plea in a case involving a Facebook post was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, but a dissenting judge wrote that the harassment statute itself should be thrown out.
Indiana Lawyer staff members each spent a day in a rural county, returning with photos and stories of small town law. Chief Justice Loretta Rush recently was affirmed to a second term, wherein she expects to build on initiatives from her first five years. And under direction from the General Assembly, Indiana water resources are getting a thorough assessment.
Law schools are tweaking and innovating their admissions processes as the number of first-year students rebounds. Changes in law enforcement staffing and technology are among the factors accounting for a reduction in wiretaps. And a collaboration between a major law firm and the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence is giving survivors rare pro bono representation at the appellate level.