Practice News

By Lisa Colpoys For members of the Illinois legal profession, pro bono practice support resources are as easy as a click away, at www.IllinoisProBono.org. That website, which is hosted by Illinois Legal Aid Online, now offers web pages with resources targeted at specific types of pro bono practitioners, including senior attorneys, federal government attorneys, corporate counsel, paralegals, and law students. Each homepage is customized for the target audience, and features video interviews with pro bono volunteers and articles specific to doing pro bono work. These homepages may be accessed via the internet at:

• http://seniorattorneys.illinoisprobono.org
• http://governmentattorneys.illinoisprobono.org
• http://corporatecounsel.illinoisprobono.org
• http://paralegals.illinoisprobono.org
• http://lawstudents.illinoisprobono.org

Illinois Legal Aid Online partnered with the Public Interest Law Initiative (PILI) to develop the homepages. The organizations designed the websites to further engage senior attorneys, government attorneys, corporate counsel, paralegals and law students in pro bono work. Jim Archer, one of the retired attorneys featured in the pro bono videos, states, "Everybody - but certainly lawyers in particular - have an obligation to give back somehow."

[A recent discussion about high-maintenance clients on the ISBA general listserver inspired Huntley lawyer and ISBA Assembly member TJ Thurston to draft the following policies, which he was kind enough to let us share.]

ATTORNEY-CLIENT RULES AND POLICIES

From the law clerk's point of view, that is. Newly minted lawyer and former clerk Crystal Sava offers great advice to lawyers who want to get the most from their clerks while treating them fairly. (That's what every lawyer wants, right?) Here's some representative advice from Ms. Sava: "DON’T underestimate your law clerk. In most cases, your law clerk is either still in law school or has just finished law school. Of course, this means the law is still fresh and memorable, and your clerk has learned (or is learning) to think like a lawyer and outside the box." Read more in the latest issue of The Catalyst.

In the latest ISBA Education Law newsletter, authors describe a pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases from last term in which students prevailed over their local school districts. In Forest Grove School District v. T.A., the high court held that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act lets parents recover the cost putting their child in private school even though the student didn't previously receive special ed through the public school. "It is now clear that whether or not a child has been identified as eligible for special education services, IDEA’s provisions can afford parents an opportunity to seek recovery of their costs in placing their child in a private school by claiming that the public school district failed to provide their child with a free, appropriate public education and that the private school is providing an appropriate specialized program and services," wrote Mary Kay Klimesh in her article about the case. And in Safford Unified School District v. Redding, the Court found that a strip search of a 13-year-old girl violated the Fourth Amendment. "The lesson here," writes Phil Milsk, "is that strip and body cavity searches in the schools should be used only in the rarest of occasions when there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a student is actually hiding contraband in their clothing or body cavities." Read his full summary and analysis.