Early Bird Registration is Open for 2024 Future Is Now: Legal Services Conference

The Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism is pleased to announce that early bird registration is open for its eighth annual Future Is Now: Legal Services conference. The conference will be held virtually from 12 – 4:30 p.m. CDT on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

Early bird pricing of $30 per ticket will be available through Friday, March 15, 2024, when the price will increase to $50 per ticket. Tickets are limited.

Register here: https://events.ringcentral.com/events/the-future-is-now-legal-services-conference-2024

The 2024 Future Is Now conference will explore topics in legal innovation and professionalism including:

• A lawyer’s ethical obligation to pursue and advance justice.
• Practical use cases for generative AI in legal practice, including ethical considerations.
• What authentic allyship looks like in law firms, courtrooms, and other legal workplaces.
• Realistic approaches to navigating mental health and well-being for attorneys.

Attendees are eligible to receive four hours of professional responsibility CLE credit, including one hour of diversity and inclusion and one hour of mental health and substance abuse CLE credit.

The Commission is thrilled to announce the following conference speakers:

• Illinois Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth M. Rochford. Justice Rochford, elected from the Second Judicial District in 2022, has a demonstrated commitment to professionalism, increasing access to justice, cultivating diversity and inclusion, and combatting bias in the courts throughout her judicial career. She is the Illinois Supreme Court’s Liaison to the Commission on Professionalism.
• Michelle Silverthorn, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Speaker; Best-Selling Author; Founder and CEO of Inclusion Nation. Silverthorn, a former attorney in Chicago and New York, has spoken about diversity and inclusion to law firms, Fortune 500 companies, banks, startups, Hollywood studios, universities, and non-profits. Her work has reached tens of thousands of professionals.
• John Kim, Associate General Counsel at Edward Jones, where he counsels on labor and employment matters. Kim is Chair of the Commission on Professionalism and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Law Foundation and the statewide boards of Prairie State Legal Services and the Immigration Project.
• Trisha M. Rich, Partner in Holland & Knight’s Chicago and New York offices, national co-chair of the firm’s Legal Profession Team, and a member of the Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice. Rich is a national leader in legal ethics, a Commissioner on the Commission on Professionalism, and the immediate past president of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers.

Additional speakers will be announced soon.

In 2023, more than 500 legal professionals attended the Future Is Now. The Commission awarded 2,204 hours of PR CLE credit, including 551 CLE hours in diversity and inclusion and 551 CLE hours in mental health and substance abuse.

If you are an Illinois attorney experiencing a financial hardship that makes it difficult to pay the fee for this CLE program, please email the Commission on Professionalism at mail@2civility.org. In your email, please state your name, ARDC number, that you would like to attend the Future Is Now: Legal Services Conference, and that you are requesting a financial hardship exemption.

Once the Commission receives and reviews the email, you will be contacted with instructions on how to fully participate in the program with the program fee waived. The Commission does not want costs to prevent attendance at its programs.

About the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism 

The Illinois Supreme Court established the Commission on Professionalism under Supreme Court Rule 799 to promote integrity, professionalism, and civility among the lawyers and judges of Illinois, to foster a commitment to the elimination of bias and divisiveness within the legal and judicial systems, and to ensure those systems provide equitable, effective, and efficient resolution of problems for the people of Illinois.

The Commission achieves this mission through professional responsibility CLE, lawyer-to-lawyer mentoring, legal professionalism programming, educational resources, and more. To learn more, visit 2Civility.org and follow us on social media.

Press Contact 

Laura Bagby, Communications Director
312-363-6209
laura.bagby@2civility.org