Practice News

The Illinois Bar Journal’s February 2021 cover story, “Small Town Law,” introduces the Illinois State Bar Association’s Rural Practice Initiative (RPI), an innovate effort designed to incentivize practicing law in less-populated areas of Illinois as one way to address access-to-justice challenges in more rural parts of the state. The program will provide funding to young lawyers who are willing to move to rural Illinois. The program also will provide subsidies to firms willing to take them on. The RPI is the brainchild of ISBA president Dennis Orsey, who says of the dearth of legal services in rural Illinois, “I look at this as an access-to-justice issue. If we don’t take affirmative action now to address this problem, in a few years those aging attorneys will retire and there will be no one left to serve these residents.”

Susan L. Zielke, Managing Attorney, Eastern Regional Office, Land of Lincoln Legal Aid

In a new year, we make resolutions. In our work, we set SMART goals. For our life, we choose focus words. Make pro bono one of those overarching themes for 2021.

A right of first refusal (ROFR) is an agreement giving its holder the right to purchase property in certain circumstances. ROFRs usually concern real estate, but they can cover any type of property. Generally, ROFRs provide that if an owner receives a bona fide offer to buy its property on terms it wishes to accept, the owner must give the ROFR holder notice of the offer and the opportunity to match it. The ROFR holder has no obligation to match the offer and it can refuse to do so. In that instance, the owner is free to sell the property to the offeror. If the ROFR holder does match the offer, the holder has the right to buy the property and the owner must sell it to the ROFR holder. But as Mitchell L. Marinello and Andrew P. Shelby demonstrate in their January 2021 Illinois Bar Journal article, “Right of First Refusal, Right?” under the peculiarities of Illinois law, ROFRs generally are enforceable but can lead to litigation, specifically when a property’s ROFR provisions may not be considered definite enough to be enforced.

The Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) Chicago is seeking an attorney for the Consolidated Legal Center (CLC), St. Louis, Missouri.