In February 2021, the Illinois General Assembly enacted sweeping changes to the state’s criminal justice system. The 764-page bill (now Public Act 101-0652), which has since been amended in part, addresses police conduct, bail reform, and pretrial release among other issues. In their June Illinois Bar Journal article, "To Release or Not to Release," Emily L. Fitch and Brenda M. (Duke) Mathis note that many prosecutors across the state opposed the changes in the bill while many defense attorneys embraced them.
Practice News
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June 13, 2022 | Practice News
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June 13, 2022 | Practice News
A new project will make early Illinois Supreme Court case files more accessible to the public.
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has awarded the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission a $135,000 grant to support the digitization of nearly 3,700 case files from 1818 to 1865—the beginning of Illinois statehood through the Civil War. The Commission expects the work to take two years.
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June 8, 2022 |
Practice News | Events
The undergraduate Mock Trial Team for the University of Illinois is hosting its 15th Annual Illinois Invitational Tournament on October 22 - 23, 2022, at the Urbana-Champaign campus. The Illinois Trial Team is in need of additional teams to judge the tournament on both Saturday (10/22) and Sunday (10/23).
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June 8, 2022 | Practice News
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is accepting applications for two positions: Deputy General Counsel Air Enforcement Attorney and Technical Advisor. Both positions are located in Springfield.
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June 7, 2022 | Practice News
The Illinois Supreme Court Pretrial Implementation Task Force (Task Force) will host a series of monthly town hall meetings starting on June 23 at 4:00 p.m. via Zoom. These meetings will update court stakeholders on the work of the Task Force as it prepares for the changes coming once the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFA) goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, and will answer questions regarding the PFA. This legislation, passed as part of the SAFE-T Act, abolishes the use of cash bail in pretrial release decisions on Jan. 1 and establishes new processes for pretrial release and detention decisions.
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June 6, 2022 | Practice News
In Suburban Real Estate Services, Inc. v. Carlson, the Illinois Supreme Court tried to reconcile two lines of caselaw governing when a legal malpractice claim involving a transaction accrues under Illinois’ two-year statute of limitations. However, as Mark Bernstein and Joel Bertocchi note in their June Illinois Bar Journal article, "From the Start," as much clarity as the Court delivered in Carlson, it left some questions unexamined.
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May 31, 2022 |
Practice News
Illinois voters are responsible for electing and retaining judges. To assist them in making informed decisions, ISBA provides information about the qualifications of judicial candidates and judges seeking retention. Lawyers who practice alongside candidates and judges are in a unique position to assess the professional qualities that are necessary for good judges.
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May 31, 2022 | Practice News
Like many organizations that took a look in the mirror following the murder of George Floyd, the Illinois State Bar Association made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) within the ISBA one of its top priorities. One major accomplishment during the past year is a comprehensive DEI assessment of the ISBA prepared by diversity consultants Richard Harvey of Saint Louis University and Kimberly Norwood of the Washington University School of Law.
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May 26, 2022 | Practice News
The Illinois Judicial Conference’s Remote Proceedings Task Force (Task Force) announced today the publication of two short surveys as they hope to hear from both the legal community and the community at large about remote court experiences and preferences. One survey is for judges, attorneys, and other legal professionals and one is for members of the general public, which includes self-represented litigants.
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May 23, 2022 | Practice News
When writing or editing on behalf of your boss, you need to keep two things in mind, writes Patrick Barry in his May Illinois Bar Journal article, “Anticipatory Edits.” Barry, a writing professor at the University of Chicago Law School, says always consider “the actual people who are going to review your writing; and the likely changes they’ll make to it. By implementing those changes yourself—before the document ever hits your boss’s desk or inbox—you can save them a lot of time and cognitive effort. I doubt they’ll hold that against you. One way to think about anticipating the edits of your boss is to view the process as a form of targeted foresight. You need to make informed predictions about a particular person’s future revisions and then adjust your current draft accordingly.”