Practice News

Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. Our firm has 24 attorneys. We are managed by a management team consisting of a managing partner (25% of his time), a full-time office administrator, controller, and marketing director. I am currently serving as the managing partner. Recently we have been having conflict between various members of the management team. Our team meetings are stressful and I fear that our effectiveness is being compromised. Do you have any suggestions?

A. I suggest you start by identifying some of the causes. Poor communications are often the root cause of such problems. Interview each of your team members individually and probe. What do they think? Is communications a problem? Are roles, duties, and responsibilities clarified? Lack of clarity in these areas can lead to turf wars. You may want to design a team charter as well as job descriptions for each employee and clarify roles, duties, and responsibilities for each team member. Conduct short weekly team meetings to enhance communications. Use agendas. Take minutes of the meetings. Advise each team member of your expectations including all members working together as team members. Let them know that working together as a team is a performance factor that will be considered in performance evaluations and reviews. Conduct periodic performance reviews. Counsel and take action against problem team members.

Take stock of your performance as well. Are you micro managing the team or second guessing team members? Have you honed your leadership skills? If not - work on your management and leadership skills as well and consider coaching and leadership training if necessary.

The legal community struggles to figure out how to best deal with social media evidence, such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Pinterest.  Fortunately, bloggers have posted helpful articles, such as The Four Corners of Social Media and eDiscovery, How Hard is Authenticating Social Media?, The No Fly Zone of Producing An Entire Facebook Profile and Published cases involving social media evidence.For employment lawyers is Hot Off The Press - Today's New NLRB Social Media Guidance, from the Social Media Employment Law Blog.Tort and media lawyers will find How Should We Measure Damages for Defamation Over Social Media?  from Citizen Media Law Projectthought provoking.

Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride and the Illinois Supreme Court announced Thursday that two counties in the Second Judicial District will be added to a pilot project allowing the filing of the trial record on appeal electronically.

The Supreme Court Order authorized the Illinois Appellate Court in the Second Judicial District to begin an e-project that will allow attorneys, parties and appellate justices to view, access and work electronically from the official record of cases on appeal from DeKalb and McHenry counties for appeals filed after August 1, 2012.

DeKalb and McHenry will join DuPage and Ogle counties in the Second Judicial District to electronically transfer the official court record of cases on appeal. Other Illinois counties in the pilot project include Clinton County in the Fifth Judicial District, Rock Island County in the Third Judicial District and Adams County in the Fourth Judicial District.

In addition, the Court announced in January a pilot project for the electronic filing of motions, briefs and related documents with the Illinois Supreme Court Clerk's office. That project involves the Illinois Attorney General, the State Appellate Defender's Office and the Office of the Illinois State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor.

Chief Justice Kilbride has said making the records on appeal available electronically will bring the courts closer to eventually making e-business universal throughout the Illinois court system. Justice Kilbride has pledged to make Illinois court operations more efficient by implementing improvements in technology since becoming Chief Justice in October 2010.

ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington reviews bills in Springfield of interest to ISBA members. This week he covers House Bill 5823 (Health Care Services Lien Act), Senate Bill 3171 (Medical Records of deceased family members) Senate Bill 2840 (Medicaid and estate planning) and House Bill 1263 (eavesdropping). More information on each bill is available below the video.