Practice News

The Illinois Supreme Court disbarred seven lawyers, suspended nine and censured three in its latest disciplinary filing. More information on each case is available at the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission Web site.

Minnesota bankruptcy judge Robert J. Kressel was surprised by the stir he created when he distributed his “Order Preparation Guidelines” to local bankruptcy lawyers. Before he knew it, his legal-writing guidesheet was bouncing around the 'Net, inspiring mostly favorable comments from bloggers at the ABA Journal, Law.com, and other lofty berths. The editors of ISBA's Bench and Bar newsletter asked the good judge to let them publish his common-sense guidelines, and he did. More interestingly, they asked him to comment and expand on them, and he did that, too. Read the article here. By the way, nothing illustrates the challenge of legal writing better than these two sentences from the introduction to Judge Kressel's guidelines: "My goal in preparing orders, as it is for all of my legal writing, is to use regular grammatical English as much as possible. A secondary goal is to use actual statutory language as much as possible, rather than changing or paraphrasing it, which runs the risk of changing its meaning." If only more actual statutory language were written in regular grammatical English.

That can be an important question, writes law student Brent Wilson in his article in the latest ISBA Commercial, Banking & Bankruptcy Law newsletter. "The means test of BAPCPA incorporates 'current monthly income' and uses it as an initial hoop that consumer debtors must jump through. If the debtor’s 'current monthly income' is too high according to the median wages of individuals in the debtor’s state, the debtor may not be granted access to Chapter 7 bankruptcy relief." And it's a question courts are struggling with, he writes. Two bankruptcy courts have said "no," unemployment benefits are not "currently monthly income," while two -- most recently the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of Illinois -- have said "yes." Read his article.

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. I am a partner in a 14 attorney firm. Our bookkeeper has been with us for 20 years. We have a time and billing system, a separate bookkeeping system, and a separate database for clients, and something else for trust accounting. The other partners and myself do not know the name of the software that we are using, don't know how to access the software, and we have to ask the bookkeeper for any financial information that we require. We feel like "hostages". She gets offended when we ask questions. When we do receive information we don't know how to read or interpret much of the information. How can we get control of our firm back? A. It is imperative that owners and partners in a law firm have access to financial information on a timely basis, understand the information, and use the information in a proactive way to manage the practice. We suggest:

• The owner, or an appointed partner(s) in larger firms, obtain a basic level of understanding in basic accounting/bookkeeping and law firm financial management.
• The owner, or an appointed partner(s) in larger firms, obtain detailed training on the accounting software system(s) along-side the bookkeeper when the system is implemented.