Practice News

The Illinois Supreme Court announced today an expansion of its judge mentoring program designed to aid judges in the performance of their judicial duties. The new Peer Judge Mentor Program is the continuation of an initiative announced 13 months ago by Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts under Director Cynthia Y. Cobbs to improve public confidence in the courts and ensure judicial independence by improving the skills and performance of the Illinois judiciary. "Judicial independence is necessarily dependent upon public confidence in the operation of our courts," said Chief Justice Fitzgerald. "The Peer Mentoring Program, along with prior judicial performance initiatives announced by the Court, are prompted by a desire to produce the highest quality judiciary for the citizens of this state. They are designed to make a very good judiciary even better." The new initiative will train and assign judicial mentors to Illinois judges who seek to enhance their skills or performance. A judge's self-referral might be prompted by participation in the Court's Judicial Performance Evaluation Program, which was made mandatory for Illinois judges in the Supreme Court's 2008 initiatives. In addition to providing for self-referral, the new initiative also vests in a chief circuit court judge discretion to assign a mentor to a judge who could benefit from a confidential one-on-one relationship. Training of a corps of judicial mentors and administration of the mentoring program will be modeled after the successes of the New Judge Mentoring Program which the Court and the Administrative Office have conducted since 1998. That program was first initiated by then Chief Justice Charles E. Freeman and is considered a crucial tool in the training and development of new judges.