The State of Illinois is proposing rules to implement the federal Deficit Reduction Act. If you do any estate planning at all, you need to click on the August 13, 2010 Flinn Report here and review the Department of Health and Family Services proposed rules. HFS has scheduled a hearing in Chicago on September 13 to take testimony before the proposed rules are submitted to JCAR (Joint Committee on Administrative Rules) for JCAR's approval.
Practice News
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August 15, 2010 |
Practice News
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August 12, 2010 |
Practice News
By Peter LaSorsa In a recent decision from the United States District Court in the Ninth Circuit, Crispin v. Audigier[1], a subpoena issued to Facebook and MySpace for messages and wall postings was quashed. Although the decision of the Court is not controlling in Illinois, I believe the logic of the decision is sound and may be followed in the Seventh Circuit. The Court applied the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) in determining that the subpoena should be quashed. The SCA in a nutshell brings fourth amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures into electronic information. In the Order the Court quashed portions of the subpoena seeking private messages from Facebook and MySpace and drew the analogy that those social networking websites are electronic communication services just as email services like Google and Yahoo. The Court afforded the same protections under the SCA to Facebook and MySpace as it has with email service provides. In essence the Court is saying you can get this information directly from the parties but not from the Facebook or MySpace. The court also held that wall postings and comments are protected under the SCA either as restricted access electronic bulletin boards or because Facebook and MySpace provide storage of the comments for the limited use of a few users.
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August 11, 2010 |
Practice News
You're laughing. But if you haven't read Peter LaSorsa's article in the latest issue of ISBA's The Corporate Lawyer. He recalls his days as counsel to a big corporation, which had TVs on in its megacafeteria. "A funny thing would happen each lunch hour — CNN would end with a clip showing supermodels, usually half-naked strutting down the runway," he writes. "I could usually tell by the looks of the females eating that they weren’t thrilled with what was on the television set. I often wondered to myself what would happen if an employee had a poster in his office of one of the women, half-naked just like what was being shown on television." Good question. So what about those television sets? Read his article, entitled Workplace time bombs.
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August 11, 2010 |
Member Services | Practice News
The ISBA website has a lot of useful resources for a lawyer needing a form. Back by popular demand: we have gathered Rule 213 Written Interrogatories to Parties from the Illinois Supreme Court website for the convenience of the Illinois legal profession. For our members, we have a Form Exchange where members can take a form or leave a form for others. In our links section we also have a Form Links page with even more resources.
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August 11, 2010 |
Practice News
Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. We are a 5 attorney (all partners) personal injury plaintiff law firm in Central Illinois. We are all working hard, are extremely busy, but we don't seem to be seeing the results of our hard work in our earnings and compensation. We are making hefty marketing investments - in fact we are spending around 6% of revenue on marketing. What are your recommendations on how we can improve our profitability? A. It is hard for me to comment specifically with the limited information that you have provided. There are numerous variables that need to be examined. However, in general terms:
- How long have your lawyers been in practice? If over 10 years - you ought to be taking home $200,000+. Many lawyers aren't - but if they have tuned and focused their practices they should/could be.
- Each lawyer should be collecting $300,000+ per year in fees. If not, examine case production hours, quality of cases being accepted, effective rate per hour as well as realization. (Assumes time is being kept on contingency fee cases)
- Firm's margin should be in the range of 35-45%. (Net Income - excluding owner salaries divided by Gross Fee Revenue)
- Is the firm (high volume low dollar PI firms) investing 8-10% of fee revenue on marketing? Many high volume PI practices are spending much more.
- Are you measuring the ROMI (return on marketing investment)? This is critical. Not all marketing investments produce fruit - some fail. You must actively measure, manage, and fine tune marketing programs. Identify those that don't work and kill them. Dashboard reports are crucial.
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August 10, 2010 |
Practice News
It comes up often. Maybe more often than not. “Under Illinois law, a former spouse’s designation as a beneficiary to a life insurance policy is not automatically terminated upon divorce,” write Lauren J. Wolven and Ashley E. Crettol in the August 2010 issue of the ISBA Trusts and Estates Section newsletter. “Unfortunately, it is also a common occurrence that the named beneficiary is never changed following divorce." But death waits for no man. Or woman. Whether or not he or she has changed his or her life insurance beneficiary. “As a result of these two factors,” they continue, “litigation is common in this area as a result of competing claims for the proceeds of life insurance policies – ex-spouses who remain the designated beneficiary claim that they are entitled to the proceeds while other family members or subsequent spouses assert that they are the intended beneficiary.” They go on to discuss Illinois law on the issue and a recent case from the northern district, Richard v Martindale, No 09 CV 4159 (ND Ill, June 14, 2010). The husband in that case never got around to removing his ex-wife as the named beneficiary of his life insurance policy. The court held that a divorce decree that "waived a spouse’s beneficial interest to a life insurance policy trumped any subsequent inference that the spouse remained the intended beneficiary,” Wolven and Crettol write, a ruling that “confirms Illinois’ current law regarding the issue.” A key practice takeaway, according to the authors: make sure your client’s divorce decree includes a waiver like the one in Martindale.
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August 9, 2010 |
Practice News
I just finished reading The Plain English Guide by Martin Cutts this weekend. Good little book. A couple of his passages jumped out at me quoting complaints about legal writing from the 15th and 19th centuries. I thought they would be worth sharing.
- "In 1550, after only three years on the throne of England, Edward VI had become so exasperated with the law that he remarked: 'I would wish that the superfluous and tedious statutes were made more plain and short, to the intent that men might better understand them.'"
- "'Excrementitious garbage' was how Jeremy Bentham described legal English in the nineteenth century."
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August 6, 2010 |
Practice News
Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas R. Fitzgerald announced Friday that Gov. Pat Quinn has restored $20 million to the Supreme Court’s current budget to help fund probation services throughout the state. The governor responded to an appeal by the Chief Justice for the second year in a row to add funds for probationary services to remain a viable component of public safety. For Fiscal Year 2011, the legislature appropriated $36.4 million to the Supreme Court for grants and awards, including probation services. That is the same amount it appropriated last year, and less than half of what had been appropriated for probation services in 2002. In a letter to the governor last month asking to increase funds under the governor’s statutory budget authority, the Chief Justice noted that even with the additional funds last year 90 probation officer jobs throughout the state were eliminated because of a shortfall of funding. “I am compelled to once again write, with an even more heightened sense of urgency and concern for probation’s continued viability and capacity to promote public safety,” the Chief Justice said in a letter to the governor dated July 7, 2010. “Absent an additional allocation of funds in Fiscal Year 2011, there will be a compounded and an accelerated deterioration in probation services. This predictable sequence will begin with a loss of probation officer jobs and the attendant increase in caseload size, reductions in both frequency and quality of offender supervision, and heightened threats to public safety.”
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August 6, 2010 |
Practice News
A podcast that I listen to while driving is Mignon Fogarty's Grammar Girl. She makes this stuff fun. I thought her July 15th podcast was terrific in which she gives these three tips for clear and concise writing. (1) Front-load your copy so that the most important information is first or easy to spot. (2) Organize your copy for readers who skim. (3) Cut anything not pulling its weight. You can also print this episode, and if all you do is follow its advice, you're way ahead of the curve.
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August 5, 2010 |
Practice News
By Shamla Naidoo Many of us use numerous "free" services offered by Google. But we don’t always consider the hidden cost to our privacy. The obvious example is the Google search engine, which tracks every search you make. Other examples include Google Voice, a phone service that tracks every call you receive, and voicemail service that archives your messages. Gmail manages your email, your contacts, and your schedule. Google Maps shows your real-time position on a map, helps you find nearby points of interest, and provides driving and walking directions. It offers real-time traffic information and identifies nearby real estate for sale. Google Latitude lets you share location information, and to see where friends are from your computer or smart phone. While these services enable social interaction on many levels and may increase productivity, there is a cost. You give up your information in return for the “free” service. Google services are offered with terms and conditions, which I recommend reviewing periodically. They include details about what information is collected, how long it is retained, etc. From their Q&A: How does Google protect my privacy? At Google, we are keenly aware of the trust our users place in us, and our responsibility to protect their privacy. We believe transparency and choice are the foundations of privacy. To help you make informed decisions about your own privacy, we work to let you know what information we collect when you use our products and services and how we use that information to improve your service.