The ISBA Board of Governors on May 19 authorized the Criminal Justice Section Council to further explore the establishment of an entity that would review the system of delivery of legal services to indigent defendants, and make recommendations for improvement.

The concept was proposed by section council member Randall Rosenbaum, who is Champaign County public defender and president of the Illinois Public Defender Association.

Rosenbaum attended a summit on indigent services during the midyear meeting of the American Bar Association in Chicago, where presenters from around the country discussed a national trend of state review of ways that indigent services are provided.

He cited nationwide research indicating that public defenders and other defense attorneys are hampered by excessive caseloads and lack of staffing and funding resources.

“Many have reviewed their state systems by empanelling commissions, generally at the request of state bar associations,” Rosenbaum said. After the reviews are completed, some states start fresh with new systems.

The Criminal Justice Section proposal was supported by the Committee on Scope and Correlation, which recognized that other organizations might be interested in joining such an initiative.

The scope committee and Board of Governors have approved the request of the Public Utilities and Transportation Law Section Council to changes its name to the Energy, Utilities, Telecommunications and Transportation Law Section.

Section council chair Michael S. Pabian noted that telecommunications falls within the section scope, and no other section deals with matters involving telecommunications law and regulation.

The board also approved appropriate changes in the section's scope statement.

An updated document titled “Recommen-dations to Lawyers Regarding the Use of Non-Lawyer Assistants,” which was drafted by the ISBA Task Force on Unauthorized Practice of Law, was adopted May 19 by the Board of Governors and referred to the Assembly.

The new recommendations, dated May 4, 2006, would supersede a previous publication dated May 10, 1988, that incorporated a 1984 position paper on use of attorney assistants in real estate transactions.

The 2006 document highlights specific ethical responsibilities of lawyers as supervisors over non-lawyer assistants in their practices.

The UPL task force said the revisions are timely in light of legislation that created “legal document preparers” as a class of non-lawyers who would be able to work independently of supervising lawyers.

The ISBA will join several other state, county and specialized bar associations in support of an American Bar Association resolution from the Presidential Advisory Council on Diversity in the Profession.

The resolution calls for the ABA to work with the National Conference of Bar Examiners in urging state and territorial bar examiners “to ensure that the bar exam does not have a disparate impact on minority bar passage rates.”

Further, bar associations are urged to work with accredited law schools “to combat high rates of minority attrition and to ensure that admission policies do not have a disparate impact on minority acceptance rates.”

Associations also are asked to work with colleges and universities to develop and support pre-law programs that increase the number and readiness of minority applicants to law schools.

The resolution is included in the preliminary agenda for the August meeting of the ABA House of Delegates as Item 7: Diversity in the Educational Pipeline.