Practice News

Helping attorneys through the toughest times of their lives has been at the core of what the Illinois Bar Foundation (IBF) has done since 1951. Today, the IBF recognizes that the COVID-19 crisis has presented all of us with a new set of unforeseen, unpredictable challenges. With limited court access and futures uncertain for many, the IBF has established the COVID-19 Lawyers Care Relief Fund as an extension of the existing Warren Lupel Lawyers Care Fund. This initiative will enable the IBF to further its reach to even more attorneys in need throughout the state and will specifically provide financial aid to attorneys struggling to make ends meet as a result of this crisis. This special relief fund has been made possible by a generous cy pres award directed to the IBF by friends at Edelson PC.

The Illinois Supreme Court handed down three opinions on Thursday, June 4. In People v. Coty, the court declined to extend the protections of Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), to an intellectually disabled adult. In Williamson County Board of Commissioners v. The Board of Trustees of the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, the court found that amended section 7-137.2(a) of the Illinois Pension Code was unconstitutional. In Rios v. Bayer Corp., the court dismissed the case for lack of specific personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant as to the claims of out-of-state plaintiffs for personal injuries suffered outside of Illinois from a device manufactured outside of Illinois.

In the Illinois Bar Journal’s June cover story, “Search and Assist,” Thomas Hamilton, vice president of strategy and operations for the legal-research firm ROSS Intelligence, tells the IBJ that “[t]o the extent that lawyers—especially sole practitioners and partners at small firms—also are business people, there’s an enormous suite of AI tools they can leverage to run a more profitable and streamlined business. At the same time, in their capacity as legal professionals, there are now AI tools available that allow them to provide higher-quality work more efficiently and effectively.” Thomas and other technology experts discuss the fast-evolving ways artificial intelligence is making a home in the legal industry, to your benefit.

An underdiscussed but vitally important aspect of today’s criminal justice system is the ever-expanding role of assessments charged to convicted defendants in criminal cases. These fines and fees charged by states and municipalities aim to minimize the cost of criminal prosecutions on the taxpayers and deter future criminal activity. Nationally, convicted persons are charged an average of $13,607 for conviction-related costs, including restitution and attorney fees. As Benjamin Sardinas notes in his May Illinois Bar Journal artilcle, “The Ball Is in Your Court,” nearly half of convicted persons’ families who helped cover those costs say they could not afford such fees and 38 percent of those families found court fees and fines the most difficult among the costs of conviction. Since the passage of Illinois Supreme Court Rule 472, correcting errors in the calculation and imposition of court assessments have become part of the responsibilities of trial prosecutors and defense attorneys. Sardinas reviews the history of correcting errors in sentencing, the changing legal landscape in the wake of Rule 472, and suggests how criminal trial attorneys may challenge assessments and sentencing errors to prevent their incidence and prevalence.