Does your client (or potential client) have a company logo, a jingle, an industrial design, an invention, or a patent? Does their company have a trade secret that needs to be guarded? Do they draft architectural design, write novels, develop music, or create artwork? If so, then you won’t want to miss this opportunity to get the information you need to advise and protect your clients on important intellectual property issues!

Join us in Chicago on October 17^th for this basic overview of several intellectual property areas, including copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Topics include: common intellectual property issues; recent developments and political changes to the intellectual property law arena; the benefits of trademark registration; sending or receiving cease-and-desist letters; patent concerns in business transaction and patent litigation; managing confidential disclosures; eavesdropping and privacy laws; how the Internet has changed intellectual property; and the ethical considerations in intellectual property cases. The program is presented by the ISBA Intellectual Property Section and qualifies for 6.25 MCLE hours, including 0.50 Professional Responsibility MCLE credit (subject to approval).

Can’t attend the live program in Chicago? Then join us via web! This program will broadcast live over the Internet so that attorneys can attend remotely.

Asked and Answered

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

Q. I am the Director of Administration with a 45 attorney firm in Des Moines, Iowa. I am new to this position and could use some pointers on what I need to be successful in my role. This is my first law firm

A. Few things are as important to an administrator’s future as that person’s ability to influence the decision-making process and effect change. Skills and competencies are important, but so are results. To transcend to the next level and enhance your value to your law firm, you must help your firm actually effect positive changes and improvements and improve performance. This requires selling ideas to partners in the firm, and having them accept and actually implement those ideas. To succeed, you must achieve three outcomes:

1. You must provide new solutions or methods.
2. The firm must achieve over time measurable improvement in its results by having adopted the solutions, and
3. The firm must sustain the improvements over time.

Click here for our blog on governance

Click here for our articles on other topics

There are five ways to pay for long-term care in Illinois. William Siebers' and Zach Hesselbaum's article in the October Illinois Bar Journal discusses all five and brings you up-to-date on the most recent developments in the ever-shifting Medicaid and Veterans' Administration rules governing nursing home stays.

The Illinois State Bar Association's Special Committee on Law School Debt, formed by President John E. Thies, will hold five open hearings throughout the state. ISBA members are encouraged to attend these meetings to discuss how increasing law school debt is impacting the delivery of legal services.

The Committee is particularly interested in hearing about the impact of law school debt in the following situations:

1. Recruitment and retention of new lawyers in small- and medium-size firms
2. Decisions by lawyers to open practices in small communities
3. Recruitment and retention of new lawyers working for legal aid organizations
4. Financial ability of new lawyers to open solo practices (and possible liability and ethical consequences resulting there from);
5. Availability of lawyers being willing to perform pro bono services;
6. Opportunity for new lawyers to advance from entry level positions in the profession.

Hearing Schedule

The hearings will held from 2 to 4 p.m. at the following locations:

ISBA President John E. Thies provides highlights from the ABA Annual Meeting, where Chicago attorney Laurel G. Bellows became the organization's 136th president.

By Jim Covington, Illinois State Bar Association

With the Illinois General Assembly in recess, ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington provides a helpful legal writing checklist. The full checklist is also available below the video.

(1) Front-load your information by starting with a meaningful synopsis. Readers process information much easier if they know where they are going.

(2) Use descriptive headings as signposts to guide your reader followed by bite-size chunks of text. Your sentences should average about 20 words per sentence because big chunks of text intimidate readers.

(3) Use active voice so that the actor is doing the action instead of receiving it. We talk in active voice. For example, “I hit a home run” instead of “a home run was hit by me.” Active voice creates shorter, tighter sentences. Try to keep your passive sentences under 20%.

(4) Use conversational word order. The natural flow of an English sentence is subject-verb-object. Don’t interrupt this flow by separating your subject from your verb with a long dependent clause. Don’t get bogged down starting with a long dependent clause. Ask yourself, “Who is doing what to whom?”

(5) Less is more. No judge ever finished reading a concise brief or motion and wished it were longer.

Chief Judge James F. Holderman announced today that the U.S. District Court Clerk’s Office has applications for the position of United States Magistrate Judge available online.

The Court expects, subject to Judicial Conference and Circuit Council approval, that one vacancy will exist for the position of United States Magistrate Judge later this year, following the retirement of Magistrate Judge P. Michael Mahoney in December 2012. Chief Judge Holderman intends to appoint a Merit Selection Panel that will screen the candidates and make recommendations to the district judges in January of 2013. This is a full-time position with an eight-year term of office and a duty station at the Stanley J. Roszkowski Courthouse in Rockford. The current salary for this position is $160,080.

The duties of the position of a United States magistrate judge include conducting most preliminary proceedings in federal criminal cases, the trial and disposition of federal misdemeanor cases as well as civil cases upon consent of the litigants, conducting various civil pretrial matters, such as settlement conferences and other proceedings on reference from the district judges of the Court.

ISBA Past President Leonard Amari met with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at the dedication of John Marshall Law School's Goldberg Courtroom. Scalia praised the late Justice Arthur Goldberg as one of the most prominent labor attorney's in the nation's history.

Amari, the managing partner of Amari & Locallo, serves as the President of John Marshall's Board of Trustees.

The Illinois State Bar Association is participating in Lt. Governor Sheila Simon’s annual cell phone drive to collect old phones for use by victims of domestic violence.

Phones may be dropped off at the Illinois Bar Center, Jackson Street parking lot entrance in Springfield from 8:30 a.m.– 4:30 p.m., through Oct. 12. Other locations are in Chicago and Carbondale, and at the State Capitol. [See complete story.]

For each phone donated during the drive, Verizon Wireless will donate $10 to the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence.