ISBA public information pamphlets are a great way to help educate clients about what you can and can't do for them. Printed pamphlets on 20 topics from Adoption to Your Rights if Arrested are available in packages of 100 for a nominal fee to cover printing and shipping. Pamphlets also can be downloaded by lawyers or the public from ISBA's home page.
To view the full text of the pamphlets and order or download the ones you want, visit the ISBA Bookstore under Publications on the maroon navigation bar at <www.isba.org> (or go directly to <https://secure. isba.org/bookstore/>) and click on the link at "Public Information Pamphlets and Booklets."
Director of Legislative Affairs
The 93rd General Assembly will conclude its business Jan. 10 and 11 before the 94th General Assembly begins on Jan. 12. This is a quick overview of some of the action during veto session in November.
Child support and grown kids. Senate Bill 2690 (Crotty, D-Oak Forest; Lindner, R-Sugar Grove) authorizes orders for withholding to be extended past the majority of the child to collect arrearages if the obligor is more than 30 days behind on the date of majority. The Governor amendatorily vetoed it to change the effective date from July 1, 2004 to Jan. 1, 2005, and the General Assembly accepted this amendatory veto.
Adoption expenses. Senate Bill 2499 (Cullerton, D-Chicago; Feigenholtz, D-Chicago) prohibits any person or entity from offering, providing, or co-signing a loan or other credit accommodation with a biological parent or relative of a biological parent based on the contingency of a surrender or placement of a child for adoption. It passed both chambers in veto session.
Lessors and rent payments. House Bill 7356 (Madigan, D-Chicago) was introduced in veto session and may be introduced again in the new General Assembly. If the lessor of residential real property that contains 100 or more residential units in either a single building or a complex of buildings maintains a business office on the premises of the building or complex that has regularly scheduled office hours, the lessor must accept rent payments from a lessee of any of those residential units at that business office during the office's regularly scheduled office hours. It prohibits the lessor from imposing any penalty, fee, or charge for making timely rent payments in this manner. It applies to leases and rental agreements in effect on the effective date unless the lease or rental agreement contains specific language otherwise.
Any provision of a lease or other rental agreement entered into, extended, or renewed on or after the effective date of the amendatory Act that conflicts with the new provisions is void and unenforceable.
Expungement of criminal records. Senate Bill 3007 (Cullerton, D-Chicago; Howard, D-Chicago) authorizes the sealing of the arrest and conviction records of persons charged with, placed on supervision for, or convicted of a misdemeanor or Class 4 felony violation for prostitution, a misdemeanor or Class 4 felony possession violation of the Illinois Controlled Substances Act, or the Cannabis Control Act. It would affect the records of the Department of State Police, the arresting authority, and the clerk of the circuit court. It also restructures the provisions of the Criminal Identification Act relating to the sealing of criminal records. Prohibits a person from getting subsequent felony conviction records sealed if he or she is convicted of any felony offense after the date of the sealing of prior felony records. It passed both chambers in veto session.
Gestational surrogacy amendment. Public Act 93-921 created "The Gestational Surrogacy Act" and sets forth the standards and procedures under which gestational surrogacy agreements will be entered into in Illinois after Jan. 1, 2005. The Illinois Parentage Act is the mechanism that establishes the parent-child relationship when the requirements of the Gestational Surrogacy Act are met. The physician must also sign a certification that states that the physician must certify that the child is the biological child of intended mother "and" intended father. It should have read that the child is the biological child of the intended mother "or" the intended father. House Bill 1021 is in the House on concurrence, and it corrects this typo.
"The (U.S.) Fifth Circuit just went out of its way to defy the Supreme Court on this. The idea that the system can tolerate open defiance by an inferior court just cannot stand."
John J. Gibbons, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as the Supreme Court heard arguments Dec. 5 in the fourth Texas death penalty case in a year. In June, Justice O'Connor wrote that the Fifth Circuit was "paying lip service to principles" of appellate law in issuing death penalty rulings with "no foundation in the decisions of this court."
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"We feel the Supreme Court is changing the rules on us in midstream. If they feel we're not getting it, it's because they're not being clear, but that's just a personal view."
Judge Lawrence E. Meyers of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, rulings of which also have been rejected by the Supreme Court.
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"I think small publishers are now international publications. Dow Jones has three international publications, so we expect that we might face liability in South Africa or London. But what is a small paper like The Columbus Dispatch supposed to do if it's sued in Greece?"
Stuart Karle, a lawyer for Dow Jones, after settling a defamation claim filed in Australia, warning publishers whose content appears on the World Wide Web
Editor
Amo, amas, amicus
Who doesn't love a friend of the court? What better amici exist than those peerless toilers of the bar who share expertise pro bono with indigents who otherwise would have little access to justice?
Most Illinois practitioners probably fulfill minimum spiritual requirements of pro bono service, in one way or another. For legitimate reasons, of course, some can't. Others just don't, but may they be few.
Hackles have bristled at the notion of a rule to demand reporting pro bono participation annually on a growing ARDC form that already requires responses relative to malpractice coverage and IOLTA compliance. The issues will be aired Jan. 24 at the court rules committee hearing.
Is this a prelude to a mandate, or just an attempt to evaluate the legal needs situation? After all is said and done, more will likely be said than done, and the great statewide need for voluntary pro bono will still exceed the supply of willing lawyers.
Meg Benson of Chicago Volunteer Legal Services believes with good reason that pro bono is a gift to the lawyer as well as to the vulnerable client. She said so, artfully in verse, in the December issue of Chicago Lawyer.
She relates a fanciful meeting with a mysterious stranger who comes bearing an unusual perk. He says, "You know donating your work is hardly a sin. You hate your profession 'cause you've left out a part. One most important - the part with a heart."
Meg's alter ego takes his proffered case file, a gift of pro bono, convinced by the admonition that "Our laws are for humans, our profession is, too. Helping people who need you will mostly help you." And she discovers that the "odd little guy" is right.
"You may not believe me, you'll think that I'm weird. But this pro bono stuff's not as bad as I feared," she admits. "I like what I practice, I like what I do. I even like most of my partners, who knew?"
Such a lighthearted look at a heavy subject is more truth than poetry. Perhaps the mere threat of a pro bono rule proposal will be the wakeup call that inspires many a new year's resolution. Give yourself that gift.
Read fine print; fill in blanks
Lawyers should not have to be reminded to read instructions before installing DVDs or filling out income tax returns. Clients expect them to be able to comprehend the small print in legal documents.
Incredibly, though, more than one-fourth of attorneys who registered early for 2005 overlooked the places on their forms that request information about malpractice insurance and trust fund accounts. That's more than 8,300 of the 29,628 lawyers who submitted forms through Nov. 19, according to the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.
Most of the oversights consisted of merely failing to check either the yes-box or the no-box after the inquiry as to whether one has malpractice insurance in force. It was not an essay question.
Dec. 10 was the deadline for registrations from attorneys who hope to get their 2005 cards by Jan. 1. A lawyer who doesn't provide all the requested information is NOT registered and NOT authorized to practice.
Those who haven't submitted forms, or failed to answer the malpractice insurance or IOLTA questions, should plan on taking vacations next month.
Voters were missing the action
Despite a huge turnout of voters for presidential and senatorial elections at the tops of the ballots, there occurred the usual falloff when the time came to poke at the chads of the judicial candidates.
In Cook County, Barack Obama carried 83 percent of the 1,897,948 votes recorded in his skirmish with Alan Keyes. But only 1,216,660 votes were cast, yes-and-no, in the retention campaign of Judge Dorothy Jones.
Arguably the flash point among 74 hopeful Cook County jurists, the Jones retention attracted 681,288 fewer votes than the Obama-Keyes contention. She carried Chicago precincts with 71.7 percent, and in the suburbs, where she tallied less than 60 percent in 16 of 30 precincts, she emerged with 62 percent.
It seems inexplicable that retention judges were rated thumbs up or thumbs down by fewer than two-thirds of the voters who decided Obama had earned a seat in the U.S. Senate. More than 600,000 Cook County voters took a pass on the judicial ballot.
Another ballot will come around in two years, topped with campaigns for governor and other state offices. Let's hope that all the retention candidates receive positive evaluations from the bar, so the energy it would take to unseat one or two is not wasted.
(For additional commentary about retention election results, the involvement of special interest groups in other Illinois elections, and the need for a better method of selecting judges, see the letter from ISBA President Ole Bly Pace III in this issue.)
I received an inquiry about marketing recently from a small firm. This attorney was concerned that he didn't have the skills to be a "salesman," and with all the emphasis on law firm marketing, he felt he may be at a disadvantage.
He asked for some general ideas on how to implement a marketing plan into his practice. Such efforts will vary, depending on the type of practice, so the information I can provide is rather general.
Depending on the type of business, marketing can mean many different things. In a legal practice, marketing is the generally accepted function that defines the process of trying to increase the number of clients, or trying to increase the amount of work with current clients.
Salesman is a term that conjures images of someone going door to door, possessing the skills to unload products or services on prospects that really don't need and really don't want them.
Professional sales people today are referred to as account managers or some similar title that truly reflects what they do - offering a product or service to fill a need of a customer, and working with the customer (managing the account) to make sure he or she is satisfied.
They also keep customers informed on new products and services that may fill other needs in their organization. In addition to managing their current customers, they are always on the lookout for new prospects.
This account-management type of activity can be converted easily into a law firm marketing effort. The most important step is to think like a business owner first and a lawyer second.
With this mental approach, you can still be the world's best lawyer in a client's eyes, but you can also be on the lookout for new growth opportunities for your practice. Concentrating on existing clients is always better and less expensive that seeking out new clients.
Many firms take their clients for granted, but it is critical that you maintain ongoing relationship sand effectively manage them as accounts.
There are several ways to do this, including visiting a client's place of business, sending out newsletters, making updates in person on current matters, and attending educational forums or even social events.
And it's OK to have contact with a client once in awhile without charging for it. If you practice in diverse areas of the law, there is a good possibility you can offer other services to your existing clients.
When seeking out new clients, there are many ways to make yourself known. Some are expensive but others are not. As a guideline, most firms will commit from 2 to 3 percent of annual revenues to marketing efforts. In a small practice, this percentage doesn't go very far in public advertising.
One way to become known is to strive to be recognized as an expert in a particular practice area. This will make you stand out above the crowd when a client has several choices.
A particularly effective and low-cost way to be recognized as an expert is to write articles. Many industry journals will accept and publish submissions on pertinent topics. Your ISBA is always looking for authors, especially for the Illinois Bar Journal or section newsletters.
A potential client can't help but be impressed with an attorney who not only can fill legal needs, but also can provide valuable information to other lawyers on the same or similar topics.
Develop an interesting presentation on a pertinent topic that ties in with your practice. Service clubs like Kiwanis and Rotary are always looking for speakers. This is a low cost way to get yourself widely known, and you will definitely be recognized as an expert.
Web sites can also be effective marketing tools and will help establish your credibility as an expert. These sites can increase a lawyer's visibility with prospective clients and serve as a public relations vehicle to enhance one's image as an expert to an even wider audience.