LawPulse

Illinois Courts 2025 Annual Report provides bird’s-eye view of the justice system down to the circuit clerk level.

The Illinois Supreme Court released its Illinois Courts 2025 Annual Report in September. The report summarizes court initiatives introduced in 2025 as well as updated statistics and financial data concerning the Illinois appellate and circuit courts and circuit clerks.

Highlights from the report, published by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, follow.

Transparency & public records

The Illinois Courts now offer a comprehensive suite of online interactive dashboards. Dashboards are updated regularly and include:

• 2025 Reviewing Court Annual Statistical Report Dashboard.
• 2025 Circuit Court Annual Statistical Report Dashboard.
• Circuit Courts Statistical Dashboard, caseload data, 2022-2025.
• Circuit Courts Statistical Dashboard, caseload data, 2018-2021.
• Circuit Civil, Criminal and Traffic Assessment Report Dashboard.
• Mandatory Arbitration Statistics Dashboard.

Court assistance

The Illinois Court Help program, which provides human and chatbot assistance to court users, assisted nearly 30,000 court users in all 102 counties in 2025. Court users requested the most help for small claims, divorce, and eviction matters.

Interpreters

The need for court interpreters continued to increase in 2025, rising from 144,414 interpretation “events” in 2024 to 176,790 in 2025. More than 80 percent of all interpretation services took place in criminal proceedings. The vast majority (91 percent) of interpretation services were for Spanish-speaking individuals. In 2025, Russian (1.2 percent of all requests) narrowly surpassed Polish (1.16 percent) as the second-most requested language. (Editor’s note: An infographic in the report shows different statistics concerning Spanish, 95 percent; Russian, 1 percent; and Polish, 1 percent.)

Illinois Courts also receive “significant demand” for Arabic, Ukrainian, American Sign Language (ASL), Mandarin, French, Haitian Creole, Vietnamese, Swahili, Kekchi, Romanian, Gujarati, Lithuanian, Korean, and Tagalog/Filipino.

Illinois categorizes interpreters as “certified,” “registered,” or “unregistered.” The percentage of registered or certified interpreters in each circuit varied considerably in 2025. For example, in the 13th, 16th, and 23rd circuits, more than 95 percent of interpreters were registered or certified. In the Sixth, Ninth, 11th, and 24th circuits, roughly 5 percent or fewer of all interpreters were registered or certified. Statewide, 61.44 percent of all court interpreters were registered or certified, according to a table in the report. (Editor’s note: The report’s text refers to 61.44 percent “of all interpretation events” being handled by certified or registered interpreters in 2025.)

Supreme Court caseload

In 2025, 1,871 Illinois Supreme Court cases were filed, a five-year high, and 1,847 were disposed, more than in 2023 and 2024 but fewer than in 2021 and 2022. Filings and disposed cases in 2025 for the general docket, as opposed to the grand total, hit five-year highs, with 1,286 cases filed and 1,269 disposed.

Court funding

Illinois Courts were appropriated less than 1 percent of funds ($532 million) from the state’s General Revenue Fund ($54 billion) in FY 2026. Salaries for judges, effective July 1, 2025, and set by the legislature, were: Supreme Court justices, $298,910; appellate court justices, $281,331; circuit court judges, $258,158; and associate judges, $245,250.

The Annual Report also notes that Illinois’ 102 circuit clerk offices employed 3,055 full-time and 112 part-time staff. Operating costs for all clerk offices totaled $250 million in 2025. Circuit clerks collected more than $66 million in court-ordered fees and fines, the proceeds from which were earmarked for court improvements and to offset operating expenses.

Another $905.3 million was collected by the circuit courts for a variety of purposes, including child support and maintenance ($890 million); drug treatment and assessment ($2.2 million); violent crime victims assistance ($3.7 million); hospital trauma center support ($1.4 million); law enforcement and correctional officer support ($6.4 million); and drivers education support ($1.6 million).

Attorney discipline & client reimbursement

In 2025, 11 attorneys were disbarred, 40 suspended, 7 placed on probation, and 5 censured. (Attorneys can also be reprimanded, but no reprimands were reported in 2025.)

Of those disciplined, 38 percent were identified as having an impairment, 52 percent had been practicing for more than 20 years, 33 percent were 60 years old or older, and 60 percent were solo practitioners. Illinois Courts also paid out $983,227 for 60 claims under the Client Protection Program, established by the Supreme Court to reimburse clients due to attorney misconduct or for payments owed to clients from attorneys who died or were transferred to disability inactive status. Funds for the program come from annual registration fees paid by Illinois attorneys. The program is administered by the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.

Appellate caseloads

Illinois’ five appellate court districts saw 3,324 civil cases filed in 2025 and 3,016 civil cases closed, both five-year highs (the COVID-19 pandemic may have played a role in lower numbers between 2021 and 2022). Criminal filings fell to 2,810 (from 3,763 in 2024 and 3,610 in 2023), and closures to 2,777 (from 4,049 in 2024). Open cases across all case types and appellate districts totaled 6,271 in 2025, a five-year high. 

Circuit caseloads

The report states that data from Kankakee County is missing from the Annual Report due to “a system change.” That means some totals may be understated.

In 2025, 410,395 new civil cases were filed, roughly 20,000 more than in 2024 and 85,000 more than in 2021. While the number of family cases filed in 2025 appears to have plummeted, falling from 113,835 in 2021 to 58,056, the difference is largely due to a change in 2022 in how the circuits categorized family cases.

Criminal case filings edged up from 232,537 in 2024 to 233,504 in 2025, another five-year high. Juvenile case filings dropped compared with 2024, but juvenile filings have fluctuated during the past five years.

Statewide, case filings totaled 1,628,401 in 2025, up slightly from 1,614,586 in 2024. The clearance rate of cases in 2025 was 86.6 percent, the lowest in five years. At 809,395 newly filed cases in 2025, traffic and conservation cases were the largest category and accounted for the lowest clearance rate, 82.1 percent.

Problem-solving courts

The Annual Report does not provide a lot of data on the 124 problem-solving courts located in circuit courts throughout Illinois. It states that more than 1,800 participants take part in these programs every year and that such programs are hosted in roughly 63 percent of counties. Of the 124 problem-solving courts, 65 concern drug use, 29 address mental health, 20 serve veterans, three are for DUI cases, two cover both drug use and veterans, three are hybrid DUI and drug use problem-solving programs, and two are hybrid mental health-veteran problem-solving courts.

See the full 2025 Illinois Courts Annual Report. Reports from previous years are available at illinoiscourts.gov/reports.

Pete Sherman is managing editor of the Illinois Bar Journal.
psherman@isba.org