Winding up your solo practice? Moving to a new firm? A career change might be the last thing you want. Or it could be just what you need. Or both.
In any event, you don't want to make a costly legal-ethics blunder in the bargain. And that's not hard to do, given the continuing obligations you owe your former clients and law firm and the other details you need to manage.
If you think your career might take a new direction, you should consult the Selling, Winding Up or Leaving a Law Firm section of ISBA's Practice Resource Center. We've pulled information on the topic from various places and put it under one roof. There's even guidance from the ISBA legal department on that ultimate transition: what to do when a lawyer dies.
Practice News
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January 12, 2010 |
Practice News
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January 12, 2010 |
ISBA News | Practice News
Since Illinois voters have the responsibility to elect judges, the Illinois State Bar Association feels it has an obligation to share with the public information about qualifications of judicial candidates. The lawyers who practice alongside candidates for judicial office are in a unique position to assess the professional qualities that are necessary for good judges. Here are the ISBA's ratings and poll results on judicial candidates: Download the ISBA Voters Guide for Cook County Judicial Candidates Download the ISBA Voters Guide for Judicial Candidates for all counties outside of Cook Methods ISBA uses to rate candidates For most judicial offices, ISBA will provide either an evaluation or a poll rating; in the case of Supreme and Appellate court candidates outside of Cook County, ISBA will provide both an evaluation rating and poll results. NOTE: Evaluation ratings, which are the result of an in-depth review of candidates, are the opinion of the Illinois State Bar Association; the Judicial Advisory Poll ratings do not reflect the opinion of ISBA, but rather the opinion of those attorneys who participated in the poll. Find out more about how it works
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January 12, 2010 |
Practice News
After you have run a keyword search, use Fastcase to find the case cited most often in other cases containing your search terms. Follow these steps to speed up your research: 1. Go to the "Advanced Caselaw Search" page. Enter your search terms. For example: search and car 2. Next, move to the bottom of the Advanced Caselaw Search page. Under "Authority Check," check the box next to "Show Number of Citations in Search Results." 3. Click "Search." 4. On the Results page, under "Authority Check," click on "These Results." This will resort your search results according to how often each case has been cited in other cases containing your search terms. 5. Now, the first case in the list is the case most frequently cited in other cases discussing your issue. Questions? Call us at 1-866-773-2782 (7AM-7PM Central Mon-Fri) or e-mail support@fastcase.com.
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January 11, 2010 |
Practice News
Not surprisingly, our friends in the Fourth Estate have a keen interest in the newly effective changes to Illinois' FOIA law and related statutes, as their writing about the topic shows. Here are just a few of the articles I've seen in the last week or so, all of which do a good job of hitting the highlights. New Illinois FOIA charged with stressing 'transparency,' Peoria Journal Star County gears up to answer information act requests, Springfield State Journal-Register FOIA changes make requests easier, denials harder, Champaign News-Gazette Some officials leery of FOIA alterations, Champaign News-Gazette
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January 11, 2010 |
Practice News
The DuPage County Bar Association has issued recommendations on the candidates in the February 2, 2010 Primary Election for Judge in the 18th Judicial Circuit, which encompasses DuPage County, and for Judge in the 2nd Appellate District, which encompasses northern Illinois with the exception of Cook County. The names and ratings of each candidate for Circuit Judge are as follows:
- Dorothy F. French -- Highly Recommended
- Daniel P. Guerin -- Highly Recommended
- Brian R. McKillip -- Highly Recommended
- Ronald D. Sutter -- Highly Recommended
- Ann B. Jorgensen -- Highly Recommended
- Donna Kathryn Kelly -- Insufficient information to make recommendation
- Kenneth Moy -- Not presently recommended
- Mary S. Schostok -- Highly Recommended
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January 11, 2010 |
Practice News
EITC Due Diligence - Know the Law. Ask the Right Questions. Get the Facts. Presented by Stakeholder Liaison Small Business/Self-Employed Division Date: January 13, 2010 (archived* for later viewing) This FREE webinar is for:
- Tax Professionals
- Tax Practitioners
- Enrolled Agents
- CPAs
- Due Diligence - What does it mean? Getting Comfortable with Due Diligence Where to Learn More about Due Diligence
- Enrolled agents receive one CPE credit for participating for a minimum of 50 minutes from the start of the webinar.
- Other tax professionals may receive credit if the webinar meets your organization's or state's CPE requirements.
- To receive credit, you must attend one of the three presentations offered on January 13, 2010. Register for the webinar using your e-mail address, and use the same e-mail address to log in to attend. This will confirm your attendance and generate your Certificate of Completion.
- *Only January 13, 2010 participants will receive certificates. If you do not need a certificate to obtain CPE credit, you may choose to view the archived version of the webinar after January 13, 2010.
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January 8, 2010 |
Practice News
The Kane County Bar Association recently completed its evaluation of the 18 candidates for the seven circuit judge vacancies in the 16th Judicial Circuit. The Sixteenth Judicial Circuit includes Kane, Kendall and DeKalb Counties. The findings of the Bar Association's Judicial Evaluation Committee, reported to the Chief Judge of the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit, are as follows: CIRCUIT COURT, SIXTEENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT (To fill the vacancy of the Hon. Robert Peter Grometer)
- Fred M. Morelli, Republican Recommended
- Kevin T. Busch, Republican Highly Recommended
- Richard D. Larson, Republican Not Recommended
- Thomas L. Doherty, Republican Recommended
- T. Jordan Gallagher, Democrat Highly Recommended
- Thomas Patrick Rice, Republican Recommended
- Robert L. Janes, Republican Highly Recommended
- D.J. Tegeler, Republican Recommended
- Leonard J. Wojtecki, Republican Not Presently Recommended
- David R. Akemann, Republican Highly Recommended
- John G. Dalton, Democrat Not Presently Recommended
- Michael C. Funkey, Democrat Recommended
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January 8, 2010 |
Practice News
Let’s talk about four kinds of formatting used and misused in legal documents: all-caps, typefaces, boldface, and underlining. (1) Underlining was used for years for case names and for emphasis because of typewriter limitations. I’m still surprised by the number of lawyers who still underline cases instead of italicizing them. Italics may also be used for emphasis but don’t overdo it. (2) Typefaces (fonts) affect the readability of your work. The consensus is that you should use serif fonts for text and sans-serif fonts for headings. Serif has the little squiggles such as the y in happy. Sans-serif is more block-like. The Seventh Circuit’s seven-page Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers recommends any serif font for text that has the word “book” in it. (This is a great overview of document design and may be found at http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/.) I use Bookman Old Style, Century Schoolbook, and Book Antigua all of which were included in Word for Mac. Many writers simply default to Times New Roman because that is their default font in their word-processing program. Times New Roman is a newspaper font that is shorter and more difficult to read in longer documents. Remember, most of your readers are older and may have difficulty reading. Make it easy for them. (3) All-caps for emphasis or for titles and headings in legal documents is another hangover from typewriters. Two problems: it’s harder to read and IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING AT YOUR READER. Ray Ward has a great suggestion for briefs and legal documents.
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January 6, 2010 |
Practice News
Lawsuits, estate planning and housing the most common legal issues One in five Americans faced a legal issue in the last year that could have involved hiring an attorney, according to a new national survey by FindLaw.com. Twenty-two percent of American adults say they had a legal issue in the last year that potentially warranted hiring an attorney. More than one out of every 10 Americans (12 percent) say they did hire a lawyer in the last year. Eleven percent said they could have hired a lawyer to handle their legal issue but elected not to. And 5 percent said they tackled the issue by representing themselves and appearing in court without a lawyer. The most common legal issues faced by people in the last year were:
- Lawsuit or civil law: 25%
- Estate planning or wills: 22%
- Housing: 20%
- Personal injury: 15%
- Traffic violation or DUI: 12%
- Bankruptcy or financial: 10%
- Criminal: 9%
- Employment: 8%
- Divorce: 7%
- Discrimination: 5%
- Other: 25%
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January 6, 2010 |
Practice News
Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. I am one of the founding partners in a 25 attorney law firm in the northeast. We have three equity partners, six non-equity partners and sixteen associates working in the firm. We focus totally on litigation. Each of us three equity partners have equal ownership percentages and since day one (20 years) have divided firm profits equally along those lines (1/3, 1/3, 1/3). We each put in the same amount of effort and work - but since I am managing partner - my fee collections are much lower than those of the other two equity partners and I am concerned that they may feel that I am not carrying my weight since my fee collections are lower. How should this be handled in our compensation system? A. This is a common question that we hear often. It sounds like you are still allocating income in the same manner that you did when the firm first started. Often when a firm grows the partner compensation system needs to be re-examined when and if partner roles or contributions change. As the firm has grown I suspect that your time spent on management activities has grown as well. I, as well as many other legal management consultants, believe that firm management (running the business) is as important as generating client fees and should be so considered in partner compensation systems. We have numerous law firm clients where at least one or more of the equity partners "run the business" and do not provide billable client services at all. Management time should not be used as a non-billable time category (excuse) to simply "dump" time.