WGN Radio has launched a new weekly radio program, “Let’s Get Legal,” which features ISBA members discussing legal topics and answering questions from callers. “Let’s Get Legal,” hosted by Jon Hansen, will be broadcast throughout the state on WGN Radio 720 AM and WGNRadio.com from 3-5 p.m. on Saturdays. The first episode on July 10 will feature ISBA President and collaborative divorce and mediation practitioner Anna P. Krolikowska at 3 p.m., real estate attorney Kevin Camden at 3:30 p.m., property tax appeal attorney Fred Agustin at 4 p.m., and University of Illinois College of Law professor Robin Fretwell at 4:30 p.m. 

In their July 2021 Illinois Bar Journal column, The Resolution, Dr. Mary L. Milano and Kenya A. Jenkins-Wright, provide an update on the ISBA’s Steering Committee on Racial Inequality, which seeks to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion based on the ISBA’s equal justice resolution and to move collaboratively toward the resolution’s goals through a variety of means. To date, Milano and Jenkins-Wright note, the committee has undertaken public education in areas such as: claim rights in our property tax system; standards of nursing homes, particularly in minority areas; lending practices; and disciplinary practices in education that impact students of color disproportionately. The committee also spearheaded continuing legal education programming on addressing areas of unequal justice and practices resulting from bias, whether conscious or unconscious. “Our education for the public subcommittee continues to educate the public on how issues of diversity, bias, and equity affect all communities in various social, economic, and ethnic ways,” the authors say. “The future is beckoning. Lawyers need to be at the forefront of its framing and its becoming. It is all worth the risk and it all demands our commitment.”

In this video by the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism, attorneys Mark C. Palmer, Aaron W. Brooks, and Josef R. Kurlinkus—who are all members of the ISBA’s Standing Committee on Legal Technology—discuss what happens when law firms get hacked, how they should respond (including if they should pay a ransom), and what steps firms can take to protect their data.

The Illinois Supreme Court today issued two new orders which will resume statutory time restrictions for speedy trials on October 1 and relax social distancing requirements in courthouses. Both orders are effective immediately.