ISBA News

ISBA attended Chicago-Kent College of Law's student organization fair yesterday, August 29, to speak with current law students about the benefits of membership. Law students can become student members of ISBA for free for up to four years of law school, which includes access to Fastcase, E-Clips, the Illinois Bar Journal, and more.

With law schools ramping up for the fall semester, ISBA will be visiting other Chicago-area law schools in the upcoming weeks.

ISBA joined Chicago-based lawyer organizations to condemn acts of racism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination yesterday, August 22, at a press conference held at the Chicago Loop Synagogue.

The press conference was held in response to recent violent events throughout the United States targeting racial and ethnic minorities. Recognizing that acts of hatred existed long before last week's protests in Charlottesville and present an ongoing challenge as the country moves forward, yesterday's press conference was an effort to unite the Illinois legal community and encouraged others to stand together against acts of violence and intimidation. 

Bar leaders took to the stage to speak about historical and present-day systematic racism, and the need to confront this problem together as a society. They spoke to the role lawyers and professional associations play in upholding the rule of law and ensuring all individuals receive the right to protection under the law, and called upon national, state, and local leaders to take decisive action against all such acts of hatred and racism.

President Hon. Russell Hartigan represented the ISBA at the event.

The press conference was hosted by the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, the Cook County Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association, and the Black Women Lawyers Association. ISBA was a co-sponsor, along with several other bar groups. 

We recently launched our new member benefit, Practice HQ. Organized by the lifecycle of a law practice, this one-stop microsite houses together high-quality practice information in one place.

Once you've opened your firm, developed a marketing and retention strategy to build your client base, learned the ins and outs of managing and protecting, the final stage of your firm's lifecycle is to ethically wind down. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to succession planning because practices close for many different reasons; sometimes it is planned while other times the circumstances are outside of our control. As a result, the Practice HQ resources geared toward winding down your practice are valuable to members at all stages of their career, whether you're nearing retirement or simply want to prepare for the future. After all, the planning for eventual succession takes place long before any transactions.

Jeanne Bigham Heaton, ISBA’s Director of CLE, became the president of ACLEA last Tuesday at the association’s annual meeting in Montreal. The gavel was ceremoniously passed to Heaton after she previously served terms as ACLEA’s treasurer and secretary. She will serve as president until August of 2018. Heaton is the first ISBA staff member to rise to the presidency of this preeminent association for continuing legal education professionals.

Heaton joined the ISBA as the director of continuing legal education in November 2006.  As director, she supervises and coordinates the planning, implementation, and delivery of CLE programs for the association.  Before joining the ISBA, she worked as an environmental law attorney with the firm of Hodge Dwyer Zeman in Springfield, where she specialized in regulatory and administrative law issues. 

Prior to private practice, Heaton served as assistant counsel and then acting chief counsel for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.  She graduated, cum laude, from Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, completing her last year of law school as a visiting student at the American University Washington College of Law.

ACLEA, which was established in 1964, is an international association for CLE professionals.  While its members are primarily from the United States and Canada, they also hail from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Mexico. CLE administrators, trainers, managers, educators, publishers, programmers, and meeting professionals make up the membership of ACLEA.