The group admission ceremony will begin at 8 a.m. Monday, June 6, at the Supreme Court Building, and will be followed by a continental breakfast at which guests may attend. A tour of the Holocaust Museum is slated Monday afternoon.
Room reservations at the Willard must be made through the ISBA. The rate is $219 per day, single or double, from June 4 through June 7. Participants must arrange their own transportation. The court's admission fee is $100.
To obtain an application form, call the office of Janet M. Sosin, ISBA director of bar services, at (312) 726-8775.
Bar Foundation plans annual Gala, Peoria reception
ISBA past presidents Leonard F. Amari and Herb Franks have signed on as honorary chairs of the annual Illinois Bar Foundation Gala, which will take place Friday, Oct. 1, at the Four Seasons Hotel, Chicago.
Highlights of the gala include presentation of the Distinguished Award for Excellence to Joseph A. Power Jr., a partner in Power, Rogers & Smith, Chicago.
Live and silent auctions will be conducted, and a gourmet dinner is planned. Auction items include a Seabourn Cruise, an American Airlines/Four Seasons trip to Hawaii, and a Cubby Bear rooftop party for 25 baseball fans. ISBA Assembly member John L. Nisivaco chairs the auction committee.
Gala chairs are Bar Foundation board members Enrico J. Mirabelli, a member of the ISBA Board of Governors, and Christine M. Ory, past chair of the Task Force on the Unauthorized Practice of Law.
For more information on the annual benefit, opportunities for making financial contributions, or providing items for the auctions, call executive director Susan M. Lewers at (312) 726-6072.
Power received a similar honor in December, when an ISBA Medal of Merit was bestowed on him during the Midyear Meeting for exemplary accomplishments during a career of service to the profession and public.
A past president of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, he chairs the Illinois Lawyers' Political Action Committee (LAWPAC). He is a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates and a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.
Other honors Power has received include the Loyola University School of Law Alumni Medal of Excellence, the American Bar Association Pursuit of Justice Award and a Civil Justice Foundation Special Commendation. He was named 2003 Citizen of the Year by the City Club of Chicago.
Peoria reception planned
The Fellows of the Illinois Bar Foundation have invited Peoria-area lawyers to attend an informational reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1, at the Janssen Law Center, 333 Main St.
The Bar Foundation plans to donate $50 to Prairie State Legal Services for every lawyer who joins the Fellows or upgrades his or her Fellows status during the event.
Members of the host committee include ISBA past president Timothy L. Bertschy, Peoria County Bar past president R. Michael Henderson, a former member of the ISBA Board of Governors, and Elizabeth L. Jensen of the Bar Foundation board of directors.
Fellows slate breakfast
The Fellows of the Illinois Bar Foundation will conduct an award presentation during a breakfast at 8 a.m. Friday, Dec. 10, at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel, where the ISBA Midyear Meeting is taking place.
Nominations are being accepted for Honorary Fellows and the Distinguished Service to Law and Society Award. Call Executive Director Susan M. Lewers at (312) 726-6072 for details.
Honorary Fellows are distinguished lawyers whose professional and public careers set examples to which others may aspire. The Distinguished Service Award honors one who has made significant contributions to law and society, and has been involved with the Bar Foundation and Fellows program
ISBA co-sponsors Humanities Fest program on Iraq
The ISBA will participate in the Chicago Humanities Festival this fall as a sponsor of a government panel discussion on "Iraq: Constituting a Nation."
Chicago attorney Ronald J. Guild, who facilitated inclusion of the program on the festival schedule, announced the event to the ISBA Board of Governors on July 16 during his presentation on activities of the Committee on Public Relations.
The panel discussion, which will review challenges facing Iraqi leaders in creating a new constitution, is scheduled from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, in the student center of DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus.
The moderator will be Mark E. Wojcik, chair of the ISBA International and Immigration Law Section Council and director of global legal studies at The John Marshall Law School.
Scheduled panelists are M. Cherif Bassiouni, president of the International Human Rights Institute at DePaul's College of Law; Douglass W. Cassel Jr., director of the Center for International Human Rights at the Northwestern University School of Law; Feisal al-Istrabadl, vice president of the Iraqi Forum for Democracy, and Chicago Tribune writer Steve Franklin.
Chicago Humanities Festival programs, based on the theme of Time, will be conducted from Oct. 30 to Nov. 14 at various locations around the city. Call Annie Tully, (312) 661-1028, ext. 12, for more information.
Attorneys help churches minister to poor, homeless
Hesed House isAurora's answer to growing need
By Kelly Scotti
"God uses lawyers in good ways," if you ask Sister RoseMarie Lorentzen, B.V.M., founder of Hesed House Inc. in Aurora. Her observation stems from more than two decades of building ministries to aid the homeless.
Aurora attorneys Patrick Kinnally of Kinnally, Krentz, Loran, Hodge & Herman and Timothy Reuland of Lindner, Speer & Reuland have been her wingmen.
Established in 1985, Hesed House is home to several ministries that provide food, shelter, medical care and legal assistance to the poor and homeless. Its genesis was recognition by representatives to the Aurora Clergy Association of the growing need to serve the homeless population.
At that time, Sister RoseMarie was chair of the public issues committee of the Clergy Association. She also was a pastoral associate at St. Joseph's with an assignment was to involve the congregation in social ministry.
In 1982, she conceived of Public Action to Deliver Shelter, (PADS). It started as a circuit of six churches, on a rotating nightly basis during the colder months of the year, that would prepare meals and allow the homeless to sleep inside on mats.
Kinnally and Reuland were first introduced to Sister RoseMarie and her mission to aid the homeless as PADS volunteers for their respective churches.
"The need to give back to one's community was instilled by my parents," said Kinnally. His father drafted him to work the midnight to 5 a.m. shift when the PADS rotation landed at Holy Angels. Through this involvement at the church level, Kinnally became an integral component of PADS.
Kinnally was honored by the ISBA in 2003 with the General Practice Section Tradition of Excellence Award, partly for his involvement with Hesed House and its ministries. He has served as pro bono general counsel to PADS since its inception.
Kinnally says the most professionally satisfying contribution he has made to the plight of the homeless and the missions of Hesed House came with the passage in 1994 of the Illinois Education for Homeless Children Act, known as "Charlie's Bill."
The bill was written to give homeless children the opportunity to remain at the school they were attending prior to becoming homeless, or to attend the school closest to the shelter in which they lived.
It was spurred into existence after a failed countersuit by Kinnally to allow a Hesed House child to remain at his former home school, although Hesed is not within the school district's boundary.
Reuland, as acting pro bono general counsel for Hesed House, was a parishioner at St. Joseph's and, according to Sister RoseMarie, a driving force behind realization of the PADS program.
"We were making meals and providing a space for the homeless to sleep for the night," Reuland recalled. "But packing up the mats and carrying them to a new church site each night proved to be geographically difficult for all concerned.
"The idea was then hatched to form a committee to secure a permanent location," he said.
Although the concept of homelessness was not a politically popular topic at the time, the committee found David Pierce, Aurora mayor at the time, sympathetic to the plight of the homeless and willing to help locate a permanent site.
Reuland negotiated a long-term lease with the city to occupy the municipality's abandoned incinerator. Additionally agreed upon was a dollar-for-dollar rebate to Hesed House for all improvements made to the property.
After recruiting the assistance of attorneys specializing in environmental law to resolve the issues necessary to take title of the property, Reuland closed a purchase deal with the city. Hesed House officially opened its doors in November 1985.
In the past 20 years, Sister RoseMarie, Kinnally and Reuland have witnessed the continued growth of the Hesed House ministries. It is the umbrella organization to the Soup Kitchen, which provides hot noontime meals each day, and Food Pantry, an interfaith venture that accepts non-perishable items for distribution to low-income people.
PADS also falls under the Hesed House umbrella and is maintained in the property. Its ministries include the emergency shelter and PADS A.M. (And More!), a daytime drop-in center.
PADS also operates Transitional Living Center, a communal living arrangement for individuals and families that demonstrate the potential to return to independent living, and the Rainbow Clinic, which provides medical attention to program participants.
Kinnally refers to Hope Legal Clinic, the most recent addition to the PADS ministries, as "the icing on the cake." Founded by Kinnally in October 2002, it is a limited legal assistance program that offers advice and referral services. More than 20 attorneys volunteer in its bi-monthly clinics.
"The legal community has been most generous in growing and maintaining the mission of Hesed House," says Sister RoseMarie.
"Beyond benefactions made by attorneys to our legal clinic are the innumerable hours contributed by countless, and often times nameless, attorneys who collect donations, prepare meals, take overnight shifts at the shelter, or make financial contributions to our program," she said.
Sister RoseMarie recently passed the leadership torch to Ryan Dowd, a long-time Hesed House volunteer and attorney, but her mission continues.
She intends to tap into the corps of Hesed House volunteers and to work with them as part of a legislative advocacy arm to make an impact that she hopes ultimately will lead to the eradication of homelessness.
As the new executive director, Dowd hopes to stem the growing tide of homelessness and continue to provide the services necessary to meet that end.
He is currently devoting a great deal of attention to helping the Hope Legal Clinic become more effective. He says that adoption by the Illinois Supreme Court of new ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct would enhance that effort.
Juvenile Justice panelist on Oct. 15 to air research about young sex offenders
Current medical and psychological research on juvenile sex offenders will be reviewed during an October program that will be sponsored by the ISBA Child Law Section and the Northwestern University School of Law.
The presentation Friday morning, Oct. 15, at the law school will feature Barbara Bonner of the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youths at the University of Oklahoma and Denise Kane, inspector general of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
The schedule follows: 9 a.m., Welcoming Comments; 9:10 a.m., Current Medical and Psychological Research on Juvenile Sex Offenders; 10:30 a.m., Risk Assessment and Re-offenders; 11:30 a.m., Effective Public Safety Policies Based on Research; 12:30 p.m., Closing Remarks.
Bonner will provide participants with profile information about traits that are common to juvenile sex offenders and appropriate risk assessment tools. She also will discuss best practices of state governments in working with such offenders.
A professor and clinical child psychologist at the University of Oklahoma, Bonner also directs its Center for Child Abuse and Neglect. She is president-elect of the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and past president of the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children.
Kane, who has held the DCFS inspector general position since it was established in 1993 by Gov. Jim Edgar, is former associate director of the Citizens Committee on the Juvenile Court.
She serves as an independent advocate for children in the investigation of failures by DCFS officials and caseworkers to fulfill their duties to safeguard minors.
To register for the program at $25 per person, mail payment to Trish Ashton, Illinois Bar Center, 424 S. Second St., Springfield 62701; call her at (800) 252-8908, or send credit card information by facsimile to (217) 525-0712.
ISBA group joins ABA conference on international law
The ISBA International and Immigration Law Section, chaired by Mark E. Wojcik of Chicago, will participate in the fall meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law and Practice from Oct. 13 to 16 in Houston.
The agenda includes a conference titled "Future of the Americas: The Next Ten Years." Members of the ISBA section are eligible for reduced registration fees. For details, call Jennifer Dabson, the ABA section's director of programs, at (202) 662-1667.
New laws secure jobs, rights of guard, reserve personnel
The governor's office has advised the ISBA Committee on Military Affairs that four pieces of legislation have been signed to protect the jobs of service personnel who are called to duty, and to inform them of their rights.
The new laws, which grant to Illinois National Guard and Reserve members greater employment security and benefits equal to regular military on active duty, are effective immediately.
House Bill 4660, sponsored by Rep. Lisa Dugan of Kankakee and Sen. George Shadid of Pekin, strengthens employment protection for guard and reserve members who are called to active duty.
The new law provides for fines that range from $5,000 to $10,000 when an employer terminates a soldier's job while he or she is serving on active duty.
The law also requires the employer to compensate the person called to active duty for any loss of wages or benefits, along with reasonable attorney fees and costs, if the Service Members Employment Tenure Act is violated.
"National Guard members and reservists who are called to active duty to fight terrorism across the world should not have to fight for their jobs when they return home," said Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, who was instrumental in passing legislation that helps inform military service members of their rights and benefits.
Senate Bill 2526, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Welch of Peru and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of Orland Park, requires the Illinois Department of Military Affairs to publish a document that outlines the rights and responsibilities of military service members under state and federal law.
The information will be available, both electronically and in paper copy, to service members, their families and organizations that assist them.