All Illinois judges running for retention, as well as candidates for Illinois judicial offices who are running in the March 18 primary election, have been rated by Illinois State Bar Association evaluations committees, or in a poll of lawyers conducted by the ISBA. Results were made available today at www.isba.org/YouBeTheJudge.In Cook County, an ISBA Judicial Evaluations committee used the results of a questionnaire, background investigations, and in-person interviews to rate candidates for all judicial offices. Candidates for the Appellate and Supreme Court outside Cook County were also evaluated using this process.In counties outside Cook, the ISBA conducted an advisory poll of members in the circuit or district from which a candidate seeks election or retention. Licensed lawyers who are not members of the ISBA may request a ballot. The poll reflects the opinion of those lawyers who choose to respond, and not the opinion of the ISBA.

In its January meeting, the ISBA Board of Governors approved the following three ethics opinions addressing probate fees, conflicts of interest in representing partnerships, and UPL, respectively.Opinion No. 13-01: Fees and Expenses; Court ObligationsIt is not ethically permissible for a lawyer for a representative of a decedent's estate to enter into a fee agreement, or to collect a fee, for an amount in excess of the amount of fees allowed by a probate court as reasonable.Opinion No. 13-02: Arbitration and Mediation; Conflict of Interest; and Multiple RepresentationA lawyer ordinarily represents a partnership as an entity for conflicts of interest purposes. Where a lawyer has represented a partnership and all individual partners in various matters in a common representation, and one partner subsequently files an arbitration matter against another partner, whether the lawyer may represent the defending partner with informed consent will depend on the circumstances. Similarly, whether the lawyer can continue to represent the partnership or any of the partners in other matters with informed consent will depend on the circumstances.Opinion No. 13-03: Arbitration and Mediation; and Unauthorized Practice of LawA nonlawyer’s representation of parties to a FINRA arbitration generally constitutes the unauthorized practice of law.Visit the ISBA ethics page for full-text opinions dating back to 1980.

ISBA Director of Legislative Affairs Jim Covington reviews bills in Springfield of interest to ISBA members. In this episode he covers UM and UIM arbitration (Senate Bill 1636), Short-term guardian (Senate Bill 1565), Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act (Senate Bill 1568) and Mortgage foreclosure (Senate Bill 1602). More information on the bill is available below the video.

Chief Justice Thomas L. Kilbride announced Wednesday that a pilot project established last year to allow electronic filing of documents with the Illinois Supreme Court has been expanded to include the option for all documents in cases on the Court's general docket to be filed with the Supreme Court electronically. The expansion also includes the electronic filing of documents concerning attorney disciplinary matters before the Court.The pilot project, approved by the Supreme Court in January 2012, allowed the Illinois Attorney General, the State Appellate Defender's Office and the Office of the Illinois State's Attorneys Appellate Prosecutor to digitally file motions, briefs and related documents with the Clerk of the Court through a secure password system designed and operated by a third-party vendor.Now the pilot project expands to give the option for more persons registered with the third-party vendor, including pro se litigants and attorneys licensed in other jurisdictions appearing in a specific case, to file documents electronically. This move could eventually result in the savings of tens of thousands of pages of paper documents.