Asked and AnsweredBy John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMCQ. I am one of the founding partners in a 27 attorney law firm in San Antonio, Texas. We have four equity partners, six non-equity partners and seventeen associates working in the firm. We focus totally on litigation. Each of us four equity partners have equal ownership percentages and since day one (20 years) have divided firm profits equally along those lines (25%, 25%, 25%, 25%). We each put in the same amount of effort and work - but since I am managing partner - my fee collections are much lower than those of the other three equity partners and I am concerned that they may feel that I am not carrying my weight since my fee collections are lower. How should this be handled in our compensation system?A. This is a common question that we hear often. It sounds like you are still allocating income in the same manner that you did when the firm first started. Often when a firm grows the partner compensation system needs to be reexamined when and if partner roles or contributions change. As the firm has grown I suspect that your time spent on management activities has grown as well. I, as well as many other legal management consultants, believe that firm management (running the business) is as important as generating client fees and should be so considered in partner compensation systems. We have numerous law firm clients where at least one or more of the equity partners "run the business" and do not provide billable client services at all.

The Carbondale portion of the Law and Leadership Institute visited the St. Louis law firms Sandberg Phoenix and Husch Blackwell on Wednesday, June 26. ISBA President Paula H. Holderman and LLI Carbondale Chair Alice Noble-Allgire were on hand to assist with the students' activities.

The Illinois Supreme Court announced Monday that it has amended rules that would expand mediation for child custody cases to include requests by a custodial parent to move a minor child to another state.Mediation programs for child custody and visitation cases have been a requirement for each judicial circuit in Illinois through Supreme Court Rule 905.

Illinois Supreme Court Rule 138, amended to protect against identity theft and the disclosure of sensitive information through electronic filing, goes into effect Monday, July 1 with two of its provisions being deferred.A requirement that birth dates and the names of minor individuals be excluded from documents in civil cases has been deferred until Jan. 1, 2014. The delay will allow attorneys and state agencies that handle high volumes of affected cases additional time to adapt to the new requirements. In the interim, the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committeee will schedule a public hearing on the deferred provisions.In response to additional inquiries from judges, practitioners, clerks and other court partners, the following clarifications are offered: