It's Sunday afternoon and the neighbor kid's drone comes buzzing over your yard, maybe 50 feet overhead. Like any good lawyer you ask yourself, "Is this drone flight violating my airspace?" (If you're a really good lawyer, you refer to "airspace" as "vertical curtilage.")

The short answer is yes, writes Elizabeth Austermuehle in the April ISBA Real Property newsletter. "[I]n the absence of federal or state regulations granting drones the right to fly over private property without the property owner's permission, drones do not have the right to do so," she writes. Though Illinois has passed legislation ordering up a task-force report on drone regulation (due July 2017), state law does not currently regulate drone use.

As for federal law, the FAA has long permitted flights over private property in "navigable airspace," which generally applies to the space 500 feet and higher above ground, Austermuehle writes. But it hasn't had much to say about drones - at least not until June 2016, when the agency "released its first operational rules for routine use of small [unmanned aircraft systems]," she writes. "The rules offer safety regulations for UAS weighing less than 55 pounds conducting non-hobbyist operations. Among other things, the rules require drone operators to keep the drones within their visual line of sight and prohibit flights over unprotected people on the ground who are not directly participating in the UAS operation."

The Illinois State Bar Association’s Lawyer Referral Service provides referrals to local lawyers Mondays through Fridays.  The Service makes referrals in a number of areas of law.  For the month of April, there were at total of 940 calls.

Today's challenge is to create a more thoughtful out-of-office ('OOO') message, also called an automatic email responder, to better serve and delight your clients.

An Easy Way to Extend Your Customer Service. Picture this...it's the end of the day the Friday before your week-long vacation. You're about to shut down your computer when you remember - shoot! - I need to let everyone know I'll be out next week. So you log back into Outlook/Gmail, spend 60 seconds updating your last (generic) OOO message with next week's dates, and 2 minutes later you're out the door.

Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone.

And while just the basics will suffice, it's certainly not taking advantage of the opportunity to create a positive memorable experience for the reader. You've worked hard to develop client relationships and deliver exceptional service while you're in the office. It's time to extend that to your client touches when you're out of the office as well.

The Bare Necessities. A professional OOO message should at minimum cover the following 3 items:

Don’t miss ISBA’s final installment of the Family Law Table Clinic Series! Join us in Chicago on May 18, 2017 as our speakers offer informal table top presentations on a number of key family law topics, including how to understand financial statements, personal returns, operating agreements, and LLC returns; proving marital and non-marital characterization; maintenance issues; property division; issues with pension and retirement asset division; and more. This interactive innovative CLE format gives you ample opportunity to ask questions, clarify issues, and discuss concerns with faculty members at the end of each presentation. Attendees move from table to table throughout the day, gaining the perspective of both experienced and newer attorney speakers throughout each 30 minute table clinic. The series is open to all levels of practice experience, but designed with attorneys new to family law (or who need a refresher) in mind.

The program is presented by the ISBA Family Law Section and qualifies for 6.0 hours MCLE credit.

Click here for more information and to register.

Enter 'MMAM17' as a coupon code when viewing your shopping cart in the Bookstore.

Save 25% on ISBA books, Fastbooks and merchandise* from May 8-19.

ISBA books are a great resource to help save you time and money. Covering a wide range of subjects, all books are written by recognized authorities and are focused on Illinois law.

Each title is available in a convenient paperback format, and most are also available as a downloadable Fastbooks PDF. Because Fastbooks are downloadable and searchable, they make it easy to always have the law at your fingertips.

What's more, most ISBA books are bundled with a complimentary Fastbook PDF that you can download after placing your order.

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