Our panel of leading appellate attorneys review Thursday's top Illinois Supreme Court opinions in the Civil case Moline School District No. 40 Board of Education v. Quinn and the criminal cases People v. McFadden and People v. Rizzo.

CIVIL

Moline School District v. Quinn

By Joanne R. Driscoll, Forde Law Offices LLP

Does legislation (Public Act 97-1161) creating a property tax exemption for one lessee of one metropolitan airport authority violate the special legislation clause of the Illinois Constitution (Ill. Const. 1970, art. IV, § 13)?  Affirming the appellate court, the Illinois Supreme Court held that it does. 

Gain an understanding of what it takes to prepare an estate plan for a client from Attorney Ryan Walsh.

Don’t miss this two-hour hot topic live webcast on June 29, 2016 that addresses property tax issues currently being considered by the Illinois General Assembly and Illinois Court in the post-Provena era and the ongoing Carle Foundation Case. State tax attorneys, CPAs, and attorneys with clients that are subject to or are exempt from Illinois income, sales and property tax who attend this seminar will better understand the potential property tax policy issues being considered and how Illinois income, sales, and property taxes may be impacted.

ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington reviews legislation in Springfield of interest to ISBA members. This week he covers Filing fees, Mobile Home and Landlord and Tenant Rights Act (House Bill 6285), Unclaimed U.S. savings bonds (House Bill 5607),  Guilty pleas (House Bill 2569), Counties Code (House Bill 4603) and Toxicology results (Senate Bill 3096). More information on each bill is available below the video.

Filing fees. The Access to Justice Act created the Statutory Court Fee Task Force to study the current system of fees, fines, and other court costs and propose recommendations to the Illinois General Assembly and Illinois Supreme Court. Its report may be found here.

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. We are a firm is a 15-attorney firm in Kansas City, Missouri. Our management committee is charged with the responsibility of determining partner, associate and staff compensation. Several years ago we switched to a competency based, goal driven system for partners, associates, and staff. The system requires self-evaluations, peer evaluations for partners and associates, and self-evaluations. This requires extensive performance reviews, tracking, scheduling, and documentation. We are using Excel spreadsheets and MS Word documents and having a hard time managing all of this. Do you have any ideas?