Journal, magazine and newspaper features written by the staff of the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism are shared In Print.
In 2018, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism continued to deliver and further develop its unique Courthouse Professionalism Training. This training program brings together representatives from every segment of the courthouse to consider ways they can increase their professionalism…
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Students experience many emotions as they begin law school. Excitement, fear, and joy are just a few. Each year, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism – 2Civility welcomes first-year law students to the legal profession with an orientation program…
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QUESTION: Several years back we added credit card billing to our options for client bill payment, including through an online secured platform. Our bill collection rates dramatically increased along with how fast a bill was paid with emailed invoices. It was…
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Our legal profession has a diversity problem. Of the 1.3 million lawyers in the country, 85% of them are white. As our country swiftly approaches majority-minority status, we all need to ensure that the legal profession better reflects the population…
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QUESTION: Our law firm would like to reduce our paper and physical storage use and costs by “going to the cloud” with our data. Before we invest in training our attorneys and staff, how do we know what companies are secure…
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It’s all too common to find law firms busting at the seams with an avalanche of paper. Some might say it’s in our nature. The importance of “the original” of a document begins in the hallowed halls of law school….
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“How was your day?” We all get asked this question regularly. However, besides billing our time, how many of us really pay attention to how we spend our time during the day? Why am I asking all these questions? Well,…
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Let me tell you a story about implicit bias. In 2009, I married a man I met the first day of law school. He is white. I am black. We live on Chicago’s North Side. I often walk around my…
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Stop asking what the answer is, be the answer.” Toussaint Romain, former Assistant Public Defender of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Defender’s Office, challenged all attendees with this statement at the end of the third annual Illinois Supreme Court Commission on…
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Let me tell you a story about implicit bias. In 2009, I married a man I met the first day of law school. He is white. I am black. In 2010, we moved to Chicago. By various measures, Chicago is…
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QUESTION: I have finally embraced email as my primary communication tool with clients as well as most of my opposing counsel and even the court. As I tend to serve the new generation of clients more and more, prompt email…
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Remember the old adage that those who chose to become lawyers are people who didn’t like blood so they didn’t want to go to med school, and didn’t like numbers so they didn’t want to go to business school? Forget…
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