"Need an Adult Guardianship for Someone Close?" and "Seeking an Adult Guardianship: What's Next?" aired on the Illinois Law cable program in June and July. These programs were moderated by the Hon. Cheryl Cesario and featured Margaret Benson, Nancy Spain and Gregg Garofalo. "Seeking an Adult Guardianship: What's Next?" begins at 26:23 in the video.

ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington reviews bills in Springfield of interest to ISBA members. This week he covers House Bill 5221 (Child-support enforcement), House Bill 4665 (Residential construction and radon), House Bill 5314 (Security deposit and email), Senate Bill 1691 (Business law cleanup) and HJRCA 49 (Constitutional amendment for pension increase).  More information on each bill is available below the video.

Asked and Answered

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

Q. Three years ago our firm merged. The merger involved three solo attorneys and their staff merging into one firm. Now the firm consists of three partners and six staff members - a firm of nine people. While the firm is doing well financially and we are on a growth track we are having issues involving conflict among the partners and staff. In some ways we are still operating as three law firms. Staff are not working well together and they refer to old firm and new firm. They are resistant to change and they have created personal fiefdoms. We merged to create one firm - not three - but we fear that we are still functioning as three law firms. Do you have any suggestions?

John E. Thies, a shareholder at Webber & Thies, P.C., in Urbana, will be installed Friday as the 136th president of the Illinois State Bar Association at the Annual Meeting at The Abbey Resort in Fontana, Wis. His installation marks the first time both a father and son have led the Association. Thies’ father, Richard L. Thies, was ISBA president from 1986-87.

“It’s a great responsibility and opportunity. As the largest state-wide organization of Illinois lawyers and judges, the ISBA has an enormous capacity to champion the core values of our system of justice, and the lawyers who serve it,” John Thies said. “As ISBA President, it is my top priority to make the most of this capacity for the benefit of our membership and the public our members serve.”

During his term as president, Thies will place special emphasis on four major projects that derive from his own experiences in life and the law. A Law School Debt task force will examine the heavy educational debt burden faced by new lawyers as they begin their careers and how that impacts the delivery of legal services. A Committee on Fair and Impartial Courts will coordinate the ISBA’s efforts to identify and publicize threats to fair and impartial courts due to lack of funding.

The Illinois State Bar Association will present Board of Governors Awards to Oak Forest attorney Edward J. Burt, 4th District Appellate Justice M. Carol Pope and Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Julie Ann Sebastian on Friday at the Annual Awards Luncheon during the 136th Annual Meeting at the Abbey Resort on Lake Geneva. Board of Governors Awards are given to ISBA members for significant service to the profession and the public.

Burt is partner with the law firm of Urban & Burt, Ltd. He is a past member of the ISBA Assembly and a current member of the ISBA Family Law Section. He also currently serves as a Board member of the Illinois Bar Foundation.

He is a 1970 graduate of the University of Notre Dame and received his J.D. from DePaul University College of Law in 1973.

Pope, of Petersburg, is a Justice with the 4th District Appellate Court in Springfield. She recently finished her term as president of the Illinois Judges Association. Pope was elected Menard County State’s Attorney in 1984 and 1988. In 1991, she was appointed a resident circuit judge of Menard County by the Supreme Court of Illinois and was elected to that position in 1992 and retained in 1998, 2004, and 2010. She was assigned to the Appellate Court in 2008.

Illinois State Bar Association President John G. Locallo talks about Cameras in the Courtroom in his final Tech Minute -- and thanks all ISBA members for his past year as president.

The Illinois Supreme Court announced Wednesday the formation of a commission to remove barriers and increase the ease of interacting with courts by those persons who can’t afford lawyers to represent their interests and needs.

It will be known as the Illinois Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission and is made up of 11 persons, seven of whom are appointed by the Supreme Court. The Illinois Bar Foundation, the Chicago Bar Foundation the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois and the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation appoint one member each. Those groups are all active in raising and distributing funds to legal aid organizations.

Jeffrey D. Colman, a partner at the Chicago firm of Jenner & Block and long a champion of delivering legal services to those who cannot afford them, has been named chair of the Commission by Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride. The Chief Justice presented the proposal to his colleagues on the Court for approval.

“The idea for the Commission was brought to me at the initiative of the Illinois Coalition for Equal Justice to build significant steps throughout the state to improve access to the justice system, particularly for the poor and the vulnerable residents of Illinois,” said Chief Justice Kilbride. “The Coalition for Equal Justice and several other groups have made important strides in ensuring equal access to the justice system, but the Supreme Court believes much more remains to be done.”

The Supreme Court charged the Commission on Access to Justice with promoting, facilitating and enhancing equal access to justice with an emphasis on access to the Illinois civil courts and administrative agencies for all people, particularly the poor and vulnerable.

"If you’re a solo or small firm practitioner, chances are you do a fair amount of your own document production," Trent L. Bush writes in the latest ISBA Standing Committee on Legal Technology newsletter. "Even if you never touch a keyboard, someone on your staff spends a fair amount of his or her time generating those documents."

So shouldn't you be looking for ways to automate the process of document creation? Especially documents you draft again and again? "The traditional approach for handling these documents has been to save them somewhere on the computer system and customize them for each particular client, either by cutting and pasting, searching and replacing text, saving over forms, or some combination thereof," Bush writes. "While this is certainly a much better approach than busting out the old typewriter, it still has its problems."

That's where document assembly software comes in. It's much more powerful than garden variety search and replace and holds the promise of greater productivity and higher profits. But it comes at a cost and with a learning curve, and there are several options to choose from. Read Trent's article and learn the basics.

The Illinois State Bar Association invites members of the Young Lawyers Division to enter the Lincoln Award Legal Writing Contest and take aim at the $2,000 First Place Prize!

You're out in the trenches... you know the hot topics in your field...the legal developments you and your colleagues grapple with in the real world of lawyering.  We invite you to share your hard-won knowledge and maybe win $2,000 in prize money by entering the 2013 Lincoln Award Legal Writing Contest.
 
Get the details at www.isba.org/ibj/lincolnwritingaward. And don't delay – the deadline for filing a notice to enter the contest is July 16. Good luck!