By Hon. Barbara Crowder, Judge, Third Judicial Circuit When the Illinois Supreme Court Rule 756(f) was first amended to require lawyers to report any pro bono services intentionally provided and voluntary monetary donations to legal service providers, one would have thought it was a menacing Robert DeNiro asking for the information based upon the hue and cry raised by some attorneys. Lawyers were reminded that the primary goal was to address the unmet legal needs of those residents with limited income. Reporting pro bono hours is viewed as a way to increase the delivery of legal services provided directly to persons of limited means. Although the rule also asks about efforts that assist local communities and organizations along with time spent training others and any monetary contributions, the goal of the mandatory reporting requirement was proclaimed as a way to help lawyers remember to do pro bono directly. The comments suggest that those who are prohibited from providing direct services should donate money and their time to help train volunteer attorneys. Since the ARDC has issued the Annual Report of 2015, it seems an appropriate time to see how the lawyers of Illinois are doing.

After a false start in 2015, the Illinois legislature delivered and the governor signed a bill this year that gives fiduciaries the power to access email, social media, and other digital assets of a decedent. Last year, the General Assembly tabled SB 1376, sending it back to the Rules Committee -- the usual death knell for pending legislation. The bill would have adopted a version of the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, which was first published by the Uniform Law Commission in 2014. A revised version of the Digital Assets Act was proposed, passed by the General Assembly, and signed by the governor on August 12. It took effect immediately. The Act is designed to make it easier for a fiduciary to access the digital assets of a decedent. Digital assets cover a broad range of resources, including email, social media accounts, documents stored in the cloud, and more. As people increasingly organize their lives online, their families and heirs may need to access their online accounts for a sense of closure, to recover photographs, or to find information related to other assets belonging to the decedent. Access to an email account may reveal a bank account or retirement account for which no physical documents exist.  Find out how the Act paves the way for fiduciaries, family members and heirs in the September Illinois Bar Journal.

Fastcase is free for ISBA members and sponsored by ISBA Mutual Insurance Company. In downtown Chicago and need to do some legal research? ISBA members can stop by our Chicago office located at 20 S. Clark, Suite 900, Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and make themselves at home at our new 'Fastcase Kiosk'. Be sure to check in with the front desk receptionist upon arrival.

The Illinois Innocence Project (IIP) is dedicated to releasing innocent men and women imprisoned in Illinois for crimes they did not commit. In 2014, the IIP assisted in the passage of a law to allow post-conviction DNA and other forensic testing in guilty plea cases under 725 ILCS 5/116-3. The IIP has since received a grant from the United States Department of Justice for DNA testing in guilty plea cases in which the defendant may be innocent. Because this change to 116-3 is so recent, many people incarcerated as a result of guilty pleas do not realize they can request this testing, nor do they know about our grant funding. So we are asking you, their attomeys, to think back on your criminal law careers, focusing on serious felony cases. Did you have a client who you thought was likely innocent, but took a plea for any number of reasons (avoiding a harsher sentence, a false confession, etc.)? Please send us information on any serious felony case in which the client took a guilty plea and might be innocent. Even if you do not believe there is any potential DNA to test, we would still like to know about the case for future grant applications. Please feel free to contact Lauren Myerscough-Mueller via email at  lmyersc2@uis.edu, or phone at (217) 206-6051. If you can only remember a name, please send that and we can figure out the rest. We appreciate your time and attention.