The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC), the administrative agency that regulates licensed Illinois lawyers, has filed its year 2012 Annual Report with the Supreme Court of Illinois. The report was released to the public this morning when a copy was posted on the ARDC website: www.iardc.org.

A summary of the annual report entitled Highlights from the Annual Report is available below. Click here for the full report.

The ARDC annually evaluates the effectiveness of the disciplinary system.  Complete and comprehensive statistics concerning the disciplinary caseload are submitted to the Illinois Supreme Court and are published in the Annual Report. Few professions account for their regulatory activity in such detail. In addition, the Annual Report also includes the findings of an independent auditor that the agency’s financial statements were accurate and that the ARDC employs appropriate accounting procedures.

In its Annual Report, the ARDC accounts to the Supreme Court for money received and spent. No tax money is used to fund the agency. All operating funds are taken from an annual registration fee paid by Illinois attorneys. Most lawyers now pay an annual fee of $342. Of that amount, $200 is used by the ARDC to pay for lawyer regulation; $95 is remitted to the Lawyers Trust Fund to fund legal services for the indigent; $7 is sent to the Lawyers’ Assistance Program, an organization that helps lawyers, judges, law students, and their families with alcohol abuse, drug dependency, or mental health problems; $15 is submitted to the Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism; and $25 funds the Client Protection Program. The Supreme Court of Illinois created the Client Protection Program in 1994 to reimburse clients who lose money because of the dishonest conduct of a lawyer. 

Annual reports for the prior twelve reporting years are published at the ARDC website under the tab marked: ARDC Organizational Information. The website also includes the Master Roll of Attorneys in Illinois and permits a user to search for certain basic public registration information, including the business address and public disciplinary record, of Illinois lawyers. The site attracts up to 108,000 visits each month and, in 2012, visitors totaled more than 1.3 million. It has a searchable database of disciplinary decisions.

The ARDC consists of four members of the Illinois Bar and three non-lawyers appointed by the Supreme Court. The ARDC Chairman is Joan Myers Eagle of Chicago. The Vice Chair is James R. Mendillo of Belleville. The Commissioners receive no compensation for their services. The Commissioners create ARDC policies, establish an operating budget, appoint members of the Inquiry and Hearing Boards, and manage the Client Protection Program. Subject to the approval of the Supreme Court, the Commissioners appoint the ARDC’s chief executive officer, the Administrator. The Administrator is Jerome Larkin.

There are two ARDC offices: One Prudential Plaza in Chicago and 3161 White Oaks Drive in Springfield.

Highlights

Lawyer Population

The names of 89,330 lawyers appeared on the Master Roll of Attorneys as of October 31, 2012. That number does not include 2,203 attorneys who took their oath of office in late 2012. The overall lawyer population in Illinois saw a modest increase of 1.6% from 2011. The percentage of attorneys reporting a principal address outside Illinois remained at 27% of the total registered lawyer population. There are 323 Illinois lawyers who serve on active military duty.

Grievances and Formal Disciplinary Charges

During 2012, the ARDC docketed 6,397 investigations, a 3.9% increase from the prior year and the highest number of docketed investigations since 1996. Much of the increase is attributable to a Supreme Court rule requiring financial institutions to report any overdraft on a lawyer’s trust account. In 2012, the ARDC received 421 such reports. More than half of all grievances filed involved issues of poor attorney-client relations, typically neglect of a client matter (38% of all grievances) or failure to communicate with a client (20% of all grievances). Consistent with prior years, the top practice areas likely to attract a grievance include criminal law, domestic relations, tort, and real estate.

Disciplinary Sanctions

During 2012, the Supreme Court entered 103 sanctions against 102 lawyers (one lawyer was disciplined twice in 2012). The Court suspended an additional 7 lawyers on an emergency basis. Cook County practitioners accounted for 43% of all disciplined lawyers. Approximately 22% of those disciplined in 2012 had one or more identified substance abuse or mental impairment issues. About 88% of sanctioned lawyers were sole practitioners.

Public Outreach Efforts

The ARDC continues to be a national leader in providing professional responsibility training and ethics seminars to the profession and public. Commission personnel made 220 presentations to bar associations, government agencies, law firms, law schools, public interest groups and other organizations in 2012. The ARDC also produced several Minimum Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) accredited webcasts posted on the agency’s website. More than 34,000 Illinois lawyers watched those webcasts and earned up to seven hours of ethics and professionalism MCLE credit at no cost.

Pro Bono Legal Services and Contributions

Despite a still sluggish economy, the percentage of lawyers making monetary contributions to support legal services for the poor increased slightly to 18%, as compared to 17.4% of lawyers who contributed in 2011. Almost $16 million was donated to fund legal services to the poor in 2012. In addition $42 of every annual registration fee last year was used to fund legal services in this state. Since 2003, the first year that the ARDC began collecting the funds, more than $26 million has been remitted to the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois. Finally, over 30,000 lawyers provided pro bono legal services in 2012, totaling 2,142,527 hours of legal aid.

Client Protection Program

The Supreme Court of Illinois established the Client Protection Program (CPP) to reimburse clients who lose money due to the dishonest conduct of lawyers. The maximum available award is $75,000 per claim and $750,000 per lawyer. In 2012, CPP approved 70 claims against 34 lawyers and paid $986,771 to claimants. Six approvals were for the $75,000 maximum, 31 were for $2,500 or less.

Assistance to the Bar and to the Public

In 2012, ARDC staff paralegals provided assistance to over 5,000 people seeking help, including information about specific lawyers and ARDC procedures. In addition, the ARDC Ethics Inquiry Program, a telephone inquiry resource, continued to serve attorneys seeking help in resolving hypothetical, ethical dilemmas. In 2012, staff lawyers responded to 4,541 ethics inquiries. Questions about a lawyer’s obligation to report the misconduct of another attorney continue to be the most frequent area of inquiry posed to the Program. Also, the ARDC publishes and distributes free of charge booklets containing the Rules of Professional Conduct as well as The Client Trust Account Handbook, which details a lawyer’s duties to safeguard client funds and property. Last year, the ARDC published on its website articles concerning the ethics of closing a law practice and of departing a law firm.