Join us online from noon until 1 p.m. on Tuesday, May 5 to learn how to advise clients in the COVID-19 era.

By now, many clients have filed for their portion of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) or applied for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), both of which are made available through the CARES Act. For those that have not, there may exist lingering questions on the impact of these loan opportunities. For the businesses that have obtained or will obtain PPP loans, there exists certain requirements to ensure the maximum amount can be forgiven. Additionally, the CARES Act provides businesses (and their employees) a number of additional opportunities to weather the COVID crisis. At the same time, there are certain measures a business should employ to protect its interests while employees work from home. Likewise, our clients need to be aware of the paid leave obligations under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and related statutes.

The Illinois State Bar Association’s Lawyer Finder Service provides referrals to local lawyers Mondays through Fridays. The Service makes referrals in a number of areas of law. For the month of March 2020 there were more than 600 referrals given.

Here are the results for March 2020:

The Illinois Supreme Court handed down four opinions on Thursday, April 16. In People v. Lindsey, the court held that the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights were not violated when the police obtained a search warrant partially based on a drug dog alerting outside his hotel room. In Dynak v. Board of Education of Wood Dale School District 7, the court held that section 24-6 of the School Code only permits teachers to use up to 30 days of accumulated paid sick leave during the six-week period immediately following the birth of a child, and not at the start of the next school year. In Dew-Becker v. Wu, the court ruled that the plaintiff could not recover the $100 he lost in a two-person, head-to-head competition conducted on FanDuel involving an NBA contest under the Loss Recovery Act. In Restore Construction Company, Inc. v. The Board of Education of Proviso Township High Schools District 209, the court addressed whether the Board of Education of Proviso Township High Schools District 209 could assert the Code’s requirements for contract approval to defeat a quantum meruit claim for costs to restore a high school after a fire.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s office has issued an executive order temporarily suspending the service of garnishment summonses, wage deduction summonses, and citations to discover assets on consumer debtors and consumer garnishees for the duration of the Gubernatorial Disaster Proclamations.

The Illinois Supreme Court Judicial College (Judicial College) Committee on Guardian ad litem Education (GALE) and Committee on Judicial Education (COJE), will host a one-hour live webcast on April 17 at noon titled Conducting Remote Hearings in Child Protection Cases. Registration is available at https://www.pathlms.com/aoic

Join us online from 11 a.m. until noon on Wednesday, May 6 to learn how to build a law firm financial crisis game plan.

Your first objective as an attorney is to help your firm survive, and then you can move toward the efforts that will make it thrive. Attorney and Atticus Practice Advisor Steve Riley reviews how to assess your practice’s financials and recognize traps to avoid in a cashflow crunch. He’ll share strategies to help you protect and manage your firm’s assets, such as lines of credit, cash on hand, and outstanding collections. You’ll learn how to triage your caseload so that you’re always moving your firm’s most profitable, fast cash-producing casework forward and not wasting precious time on work that could be placed on a back burner. The goal of this discussion is to help your law firm be in a great position after the financial crisis and know how to prepare for and benefit from deferred demand.

The ISBA has launched a new video series to help educate members affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The videos, which are available on YouTube and the ISBA’s COVID-19 resources page, provide practice information and tips from expert attorneys throughout the state. The videos focus on how to advise clients and meet their needs during this emergency.

Restorative justice offers a method of discussing, coming to terms with, and resolving differences using a voluntary, common-sense approach. It brings people together in various ways depending on the nature of the problem, the needs of the participants, and how or where the process takes place. In their April Illinois Bar Journal article, “The Virtuous Circle,” Illinois Appellate Court Justice Michael B. Hyman and Judge Martha A. Mills (ret.), suggest that since lawyers have embraced arbitration and mediation, it’s now time for them to consider how to incorporate restorative justice into their practices.

Voting is now underway in the 2020 ISBA Election. The last day to request a paper ballot is April 15, 2020.

ISBA's election provider Election America emailed e-ballots to members with valid email addresses on March 26. All members of the Association (except non-lawyer members) with dues paid by March 1, 2020 are eligible to vote. The deadline for voting is Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. 

The Illinois State Bar Association invites Young Lawyers Division (YLD) members to establish yourselves as experts in your practice area and compete for $3,500 in prize money by entering the Annual Lincoln Award Legal Writing Contest.

Submissions should be useful, practical articles on topics important to practicing lawyers. Submissions will be considered for publication in the Illinois Bar Journal.