Practice News

 Starting in September and continuing through November, the ISBA is hosting a four-part continuing education program on the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The CLE program will be surveying the latest in FOIA developments in a series of lunchtime webinar CLE presentations, the first of which was an overview on Sept. 10. The October 2025 Illinois Bar Journal provides an overview of all sessions, based on interviews with various presenters in public and private practice.

Chicago, IL, September 26, 2025– Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres (CFDB) announced that the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, today affirmed in full the trial court’s judgment in favor of CFDB’s client, Lisa Podmajersky, reinforcing the validity her father, John Podmajersky, Jr.'s estate plans, concluding a multi-year, complex litigation.

Justice Mary K. O’Brien and the Illinois Supreme Court have announced the appointment of Terra Costa Howard as a Resident Circuit Judge in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit (DuPage County), Fifth Subcircuit.

Ms. Costa Howard is being appointed to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Judge Paul Fullerton. The appointment is effective October 17, 2025, and will conclude on December 7, 2026.

 U.S. Circuit Court law clerk Matthew N. Preston II spent considerable time running the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT through extensive testing in various aspects of his work and life. His article “The Law Clerk’s Law Clerk” in the September 2025 Illinois bar Journal is his firsthand account of that experience. Preston describes how tools like ChatGPT might help—and hinder—the judiciary, particularly the law clerks tasked with preparing judges for their decisions.