The Illinois Bar Foundation Board of Directors and Illinois State Bar Association Board of Governors will hold a joint reception honoring Richard D. Felice, ISBA president during the 2014-2015 fiscal year, on Thursday, July 30 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the ISBA  Chicago Office, 20 S. Clark.

Individual tickets are $50 per person and can be purchased at https://goo.gl/hr0lY2.

For more information, call (312) 726-6072 or visit www.illinoisbarfoundation.org.

Funds raised will support the bar foundation whose mission is to ensure meaningful access to the justice system, especially for those with limited means, and to assist lawyers who can no longer support themselves due to incapacity. This year, the foundation will distribute more than $850,000. The Illinois Bar Foundation is located at 20 S. Clark St., Suite 910, Chicago, IL  60603.

The University of Illinois has named Vikram David Amar as the next dean of the College of Law, pending approval from the University’s Board of Trustees at their July 15 meeting. Amar will assume the deanship, and also become the Iwan Foundation Professor of Law, on August 16. For the last several years, Amar has been the senior associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of law at the University of California, Davis School of Law.

“Professor Vik Amar stood out to all of us involved in this national search as the clear choice to lead the College of Law here at Illinois,” said Ilesanmi Adesida, the vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost of the Urbana campus. “His vision of a college recognized for its cutting-edge scholarship and for close connections to the profession and society in which its graduates will serve is one that aligns perfectly with the land-grant values of this university. He understands the challenges of providing world-class legal educational and professional experiences to our students while ensuring that those experiences remain affordable and accessible. I look forward to working with Dean Amar as he leads one of our oldest and proudest colleges to national and international pre-eminence.”

Amar said he has been “deeply impressed by the College’s highly productive and influential faculty in law and related disciplines, its dedicated staff, its talented student body, its loyal and accomplished alumni base, and its place in a premier research university located two hours from downtown Chicago, a city where the College is developing exciting programs for upper-division law students.”

The Illinois Supreme Court has announced the formation of a Committee on Equality, charged with promoting equality and fairness in all aspects of the administration of justice in Illinois Courts.

The Committee on Equality will consist of 15 judges and attorneys appointed by the Supreme Court. The membership of the Committee will reflect the diversity of the State of Illinois itself, based on age, race, gender, and background, as well as including members from urban, suburban, and rural parts of the state.

A major overhaul of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act ("IMDMA"), years in the making, was finally passed by the Illinois General Assembly in May and sent to the governor. If signed into law, SB 57 will eliminate grounds for divorce, shift the focus away from custody and toward allocation of parental responsibilities, and make other important changes in Illinois divorce law.

It would amend not only the IMDMA but also the Intergovernmental Missing Child Recovery Act of 1984, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act ("UCCJEA"), the Illinois Domestic Violence Act, the Probate Act, and other statutes. The governor has not acted on the law. Find out more in the July Illinois Bar Journal.

Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. I am a senior associate in an eight-attorney elder law firm in Miami. There is one owner (founder) and seven associates including myself. The owner has approached me with a proposal to over time buy out his interests. I am the only senior associate in the firm and the only associate that he has approached concerning selling his interests. Specifically his proposal is as follows:

1. Pay him $825,000 for the practice over five years.
2. After five years I will own 100% of the shares.
3. My compensation arrangement will remain the same (salary plus formula percentage incentive bonus based upon my responsible attorney collections) until I have acquired 100 percent interest of the firm.
4. The owner wants to work in the firm indefinitely after his interest are acquired as an employee or Of Counsel.

I don't know how to respond to this proposal and would appreciate your thoughts? Is it fair? Does it make sense?

A. It makes sense for him. Seriously, you are going to need much more information than this proposal.To get started you need to ask for and review the following:

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Mary Jane Theis announced on Wednesday an application process for a vacancy in the Sixth Judicial Subcircuit of Cook County.

The vacancy was created by the retirement of Circuit Judge Leida J. Gonzalez Santiago. Judge Santiago had served as a judge since 1992, when she became the first Hispanic woman elected to the judiciary in Illinois. Her retirement takes effect July 2, 2015.
Under the Illinois Constitution, judicial vacancies are filled on an interim basis by Supreme Court appointment until the next General Election. Justice Theis will make a recommendation to the Supreme Court after applicants for the position undergo a screening and evaluation process.

The Illinois State Bar Association issued two ethics opinions June 30, 2015:

• Ethics Opinion 15-01: An in-house lawyer, admitted to the bar of a state other than Illinois but with a permanent office in Illinois, may practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office on behalf of his or her employer without a limited license under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 716. Such a lawyer’s practice is restricted to those activities that are authorized by 37 C.F.R. 11.5(b).
• Ethics Opinion 15-02: A lawyer may deposit his own funds into a client trust account to pay bank service charges on that account, and should pay himself back such funds when they are no longer necessary for that purpose. Unidentified funds contained in a client trust account must, after one (1) year from the discovery of the unidentified funds, be remitted to the Lawyers Trust Fund of Illinois. Unclaimed funds contained in a client trust account should, after five (5) years, be remitted to the State as abandoned property.

View our full database of ethics questions on our ethics page at www.isba.org/ethics

By Judge Barb Crowder, Edwardsville

There is now a book entirely of “selfies” (photographs one takes of oneself). The concept has been around since the 1800s, yet has taken over as a new term that everyone understands. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” (Romeo and Juliet). William Shakespeare may have been among those who first pointed out that the names of things do not affect what they are but even he recognized that a turn of phrase can make a concept instantly understandable. 

The Illinois State Bar Association's Board of Governors elected a new secretary and treasurer at its meeting June 20 in Lake Geneva. For the first time in many years, President Umberto S. Davi held the Board's organizational meeting in conjunction with the Annual Meeting.

David Sosin, of Orland Park, was named treasurer. He is the founding partner in the Orland Park firm of Sosin & Arnold, Ltd. He has served on the Board of Governors since 2013 and is a past president of the Illinois Bar Foundation. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the ISBA Mutual Insurance Company. Sosin has been honored as a 2011 Laureate of the ISBA Academy of Illinois Lawyers and has received an ISBA Board of Governors Award.

Sonni Choi Williams, of Peoria, will serve as secretary. She is Deputy Corporation Counsel for the City of Peoria. Williams has served on the Board of Governors since 2012 and the Assembly since 2004. She received the ISBA Diversity Leadership Award in 2015.

The Board welcomed new members Dennis J. Orsey of Granite City, Daniel R. Saeddi of Chicago, Kent A. Gaertner of Wheaton and Rory T. Weiler of St. Charles.

President Davi appointed Williams and Chantelle Porter to the Board of the Illinois Bar Foundation.