The 2024 first place winner of the Lincoln Award Legal Writing Contest is Morgan Handwerker, an associate at Schiller DuCanto & Fleck LLP, Chicago, who wrote “Practicing in a New World.” Morgan's article appeared in the February issue of the Illinois Bar Journal.
Illinois Bar Journal
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The assumption that gender expressions are fixed and fall into one of two categories correlating with one’s biological sex has given way to a gender-fluid world in which cohorts of people of all ages are transitioning between male and female identities or identifying as nonbinary or genderqueer (neither female nor male). As recounted in the March issue of the Illinois Bar Journal article, “Being a Pronoun Pro,” this has led to discussions and debates about pronouns in all types of settings—schools, health care institutions, and corporate boardrooms to name a few.
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The Illinois Bar Journal’s February issue reports on the Corporate Transparency Act’s new FinCEN filing requirements, which took effect January 1. “The comprehensive legislation requires many companies doing business in the U.S. to report information about the individuals who own or control the business entity,” writes attorney Amelia Buragas in her LawPulse article, “Beneficial Information.”
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“Generative artificial intelligence stands as proof of the transformative power of technology, promising to reshape the landscape of law and advocacy,” writes Morgan B. Handwerker in her March Illinois Bar Journal article, “Practicing in a New World.”
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In his article February Illinois Bar Journal article, “Crafting an Effective Generative AI-Policy,” Carlos Cisneros notes that among the risk factors of using generative online artificial intelligence tools are whether content entered into a generative-AI tool’s prompt becomes the property of the AI company and whether confidential and biometric information is protected after being entered into an AI system. With this in mind, Cisneros recommends that lawyers should verify whether use of AI is covered by their malpractice insurance policy.
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In his fifth and final article in his five-part Illinois Bar Journal series on trial advocacy, Gino L. DiVito focuses on the losing argument, which he says possess a unique status within trial advocacy. In his article, “What I Learned From Teaching Trial Advocacy: The Closing Argument,” published in the IBJ’s February issue, DiVito writes, closing arguments “occupy the climactic arguments in books, plays, movies, stories, and real trials. But persuasion does not magically occur based on the power of closing arguments. If you haven’t done the job of persuasion from the opening gun—if, during the other parts of trial, jurors haven’t accompanied you on the road toward victory—persuasion is unlikely to result from your closing arguments. … Nonetheless, closing arguments deservedly earn the mystique they generate.”
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In a roundup of two recent Illinois State Bar Association CLE programs, the Illinois Bar Journal’s February cover story, “Artificial Intelligence and the Authentic Attorney,” observes that just as an attorney’s time is well spent considering the benefits and drawbacks of AI, the same can be said for keeping in mind best practices for communicating clearly and effectively with clients and colleagues.
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In In re Parentage of A.H., a complicated child-support case that stretched over three countries and involved a recalcitrant noncustodial parent, the First District of the Illinois Appellate Court found several reasons for forcing the creation of a section 503(g) trust, most of which concerned the noncustodial parent.
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In the fourth of five installments of his series on trial advocacy, former trial Judge and Appellate Justice Gino DiVito focuses on cross-examination. The cross-examining attorney’s role is to teach the jury while never giving it an opportunity to learn from an opposing witness, Judge DiVito writes. He suggests that, to avoid turning the jury against you, carefully set up the witness during cross-examination with leading and closed questions, and questions for which you know the answers. And never provide a witness you are cross-examining with an open-ended question.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, many legal professionals abandoned their brick-and-mortar offices for Zoom calls from a home office. Since then, law offices large and small have evaluated the need for a central physical workplace, questioning whether it is best for their employees and clients.