Practice News

In their July 2021 Illinois Bar Journal column, The Resolution, Dr. Mary L. Milano and Kenya A. Jenkins-Wright, provide an update on the ISBA’s Steering Committee on Racial Inequality, which seeks to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion based on the ISBA’s equal justice resolution and to move collaboratively toward the resolution’s goals through a variety of means. To date, Milano and Jenkins-Wright note, the committee has undertaken public education in areas such as: claim rights in our property tax system; standards of nursing homes, particularly in minority areas; lending practices; and disciplinary practices in education that impact students of color disproportionately. The committee also spearheaded continuing legal education programming on addressing areas of unequal justice and practices resulting from bias, whether conscious or unconscious. “Our education for the public subcommittee continues to educate the public on how issues of diversity, bias, and equity affect all communities in various social, economic, and ethnic ways,” the authors say. “The future is beckoning. Lawyers need to be at the forefront of its framing and its becoming. It is all worth the risk and it all demands our commitment.”

The Illinois Supreme Court today issued two new orders which will resume statutory time restrictions for speedy trials on October 1 and relax social distancing requirements in courthouses. Both orders are effective immediately.

2021-2022 ISBA President Anna Krolikowska’s journey to the legal world began at age 13 when her family came to the U.S. from Poland and she enrolled in Chicago Public Schools. “We were studying for a Constitution test. I got hooked on the idea of the rule of law, and how the Constitution works in the United States,” she says. “That interest stayed with me. I didn’t have anyone in my family who was a lawyer. We didn’t know any lawyers when I was in grammar school.” But that didn’t stop Krolikowska from becoming a lawyer and going on to achieve much more. Read about her remarkable path to the ISBA presidency, and her vision for her term, in July’s Illinois Bar Journal.

Earlier this year, Terry Mueller, of the Law Office of Steven A Lihosit, represented the defense in Illinois’ first remote civil jury trial, Renata Raskin v. Alexander Mitchell in Lake County’s 19th Judicial Circuit Court. Mueller writes about the prep work, attention to detail, and lessons learned from the trial as he and the other attorneys in the case navigated new procedures created by the Illinois Supreme Court to strike a balance between the Seventh Amendment’s guaranteed right to a trial by jury and public health guidelines for preventing the spread of the contagious coronavirus in close quarters like court facilities. Mueller especially highlights the most impactful provisions of Illinois Supreme Court Rule 45 and shares how COVID-19 has changed the legal landscape of remote jury selection.