No, this isn’t about corruption in Illinois politics…that’s on display live in at least 3 courtrooms at the federal court for the Northern District of Illinois down the street. The issues I’m talking about are systemic inadequacies that affect all 25,000 or so litigants within the state court system within Cook County on a yearly basis. The issues reared their ugly head again in a case I had this week…

1.  An inadequate court case filing system

2.  No electronic or human transcription system within most courtrooms

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse on this…it is a critical issue. And hey, we did eventually get the Daley Center law library to add WiFi so somebody must be listening/reading. First the facts and then the legal consequences and then my personal experience in court this past week.

THE FACTS: The Cook County Circuit Court Clerk uses a primarily paper-based filing system that is difficult to access and more importantly isn’t secure whereby old filings/court orders are lost and gone forever. Due to the storage needs required by a paper-based system, the even inadequate case files are rarely in court when a case is heard in court thus making judges wholly dependent on what attorneys/litigants produce. Finally, there’s no real-time electronic transcription occurring within courtrooms and the Cook County Official Court Reporters office simply cannot staff the hundreds of court rooms throughout the county.

THE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES: Simply, incorrect rulings/judgments are entered and that’s the injustice. And it’s not the individual making the ruling/judgment, it’s the inadequacy of the data upon which individual is forced to relay in making the ruling/judgment (See THE FACTS) which causes the incorrect ruling/judgment. A fair analogy would be the President relying on intelligence that in retrospect is like a 25% snapshot of reality in making foreign policy decisions…not a good decision-making environment.

I don’t think a lot of non-court attorneys or lay-people grasp the very large percentage of current and future litigation that relates wholly to the enforcement/vacating of/modification of previous pleadings and orders thus making the accuracy of a court file and case history critical. Within the domestic relations division I’d say 40%+ of the cases in court every day are in the enforcement/vacate/modify box. I don’t know the exact number that 40% translates into but I’d surmise it’s somewhere between 500-1,000 cases every day in Cook County Circuit Court.

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE/EXAMPLE: This week I had a Motion to Vacate an old court order heard in court this week and it’s a great practical snapshot to illuminate the gravity of the problem. And in the end justice actually prevailed but not until some 6 months of wasted time and the potential for injustice was very likely despite my and a client’s best efforts. So here’s what happened…

Some 6 months ago my then pro se client sets several pleadings for hearing on court date #1. Next, opposing party files a motion to dismiss my client’s pleadings at court date #2 and motion to dismiss is set for hearing. Here’s where the system’s inadequacies first raise their ugly head because the hearing date originally set at court date #1 was supposed to be stricken at court date #2 but the wrong date got stricken because no one was in a position to view the actual order entered at court date #1 while in court at court date #2. Also at court date #2, various response times were set forth and the opposing party’s motion to dismiss was set for hearing a couple months after the hearing date set at court date #1 (note, this date was intended to be stricken but wasn’t so it’s still out there as an active court date). On court date #3 (which is the hearing date originally set at court date #1 that should have been stricken) the opposing party’s lawyer appears but my pro se client does not thinking this hearing date had been stricken. Well, this fine, upstanding lawyer goes ahead and by default has my client’s various pleadings dismissed with prejudice despite the fact that she surely knew the Motion to Dismiss had a subsequent hearing date set at court date #3.

Well, to some degree all is well that ends well and the court did vacate the dismissal order entered at court date #3 this past week. But I’m sure there are hundreds of cases where the opposite occurs. And I’d surmise that if the Cook County filing/transcribing system is better that this simply would NOT occur. Because if the judge has the 2 orders from court dates #1 and #2 in front of him at court date #3, there’s no way the dismissal occurs at court date #3 because the order entered at court date #2 clearly sets a hearing day several months after court date #3 & my client’s time to answer the motion to dismiss had not even expired yet by court date #3.

I know we’re in tough budget times, but this IS a BIG DEAL!

I’m sitting up here on the 29th Floor of the Daley Center getting ready for my afternoon trial and if I’m not seeing things, there’s free wireless Internet access at the law library…FINALLY. That’s a game-changer for us state court people who spend far too much time here and enjoy the nice lake view.

Whoopee!!

The phone ain’t ringin’…it’s Christmas Eve! So I decided to skim some articles I’d been wanting to get around to reading…the highlights:

1. Some news for those of you on the front lines of lawyering in the Circuit Court of Cook County. First, here’s the piece announcing the creation of a new domestic violence division within the Court.  My understanding is this will primarily impact the life of judges (and less that of me as private lawyer) over at 555 W. Harrison since previously the judges over there had been split between the criminal and domestic relations divisions.  As a citizen of Cook County I was a tad saddened to see this proposal regarding the closure of 4 suburban courthouses over the weekend to save $$$. Am I missing something or isn’t there an obvious compromise to close a couple versus the only choices being close 4 or none?

2. The Double-Edged Sword of Suing a Client. A nice analysis from our friend Ed Poll with an analytical process to undertake before suing a client…first, there’s the loss of future business/referrals; second, possible negative publicity; third, possible negative press/perception. Remember regarding these sorts of matters, client communication is key. And I must say I’ve frowned a bit of late on using collection agencies who can be as much of a pain in the butt for creditor or for debtor.

3. One Lawyer’s Definitive Guide to Video Marketing for Lawyers. It’s hard to think of reasons NOT to do this as any cost barriers to entering the camcorder/video market have virtually disappeared. I’m going to make a big push here in 2010.

4. How to Market Your Business with Facebook. Well, since I only use FB to criticize Notre Dame football, converse about golf, and for the occasional political rank this blog ain’t the place to learn about FB marketing. But I WILL have a Facebook Page up shortly! As a non-expert on all things “social networking” it sure seems like FB and Twitter are where the buzz is. A separate link on 21 small to mid-sized Chicago businesses using social media effectively.

5. Total Attorneys:  For-Profit Lawyer Referrals? I honestly had never heard of Total Attorneys until the Tribune ran this piece a couple weeks back (it is a Chicago-based company). It doesn’t sound that different than LegalMatch that I used a couple years back although the article makes it sound like Total Attorneys directs the prospect to a single lawyer whereas LegalMatch merely allowed me as one of 5-10 lawyers respond to a prospect’s fact pattern. Far from being a legal ethics expert, I would only ask why it’s okay for bar associations to have referral services but not private, for-profit companies? SOME of the bar referral services are fairly lame w/o that profit motive.

6. Far From Field, Lawyer’s Blog a Player in N.F.L. A little off topic but I liked this piece because I am more jock than lawyer & it does emphasize a point that I and likely many lawyers should open their eyes to which is something to the effect that social media – Internet business likely has much better business potential than merely providing traditional, bricks/mortar legal services. Florio, 44, an erstwhile Vikings fan living in Steelers country, began his blog in 2001 as a sideline to his law practice. Is 2010 the year your blog income exceeds your lawyer income?

7. And to close with some “light” reading…a primer on international child abduction. Because if you’re a domestic relations lawyer like yours truly one of these IS going to walk into the office sometime…likely sooner rather than later. It’s got something to do with the Hague Convention, no?

Saw this over at Illinois Lawyer Now a couple days back. Here are the 10:

• Carmen Kathleen Aguilar
• Clarence Lewis Burch
• LaGuina Clay-Clark
• Neil H. Cohen
• Stephen James Connolly
• William Edward Gomolinski
• William Richard Jackson Jr.
• Demetrios George Kottaras
• Bernard Joseph Sarley
• Jeffrey L. Warnick

None of the names ring a bell with with me. Here’s some greater detail from the For What It’s Worth blog.

Nevertheless, see you in court!

Darn, and I had some good coupons left in the 2009 Entertainment Book for Arlington Heights…

Saw this on the front page over at the Tribune, Police enter building searching for armed escapee. Sounds like the escapee was on his way to a court appearance in Rolling Meadows this morning before 10 am.  Not to make light of it but it sounds like a well-executed escape:

Rolling Meadows Deputy Police Chief David Scanlan told reporters that Maday was handcuffed in the car, but it was unclear how he subdued the investigators.

He took both officers’ weapons, forced one of them to strip and put on the officer’s pants and shoes, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

After abandoning the officers’ car, he then allegedly carjacked another car at gunpoint and drove to a parking of a Boston Blackie’s restaurant in Arlington Heights, 222 E. Algonquin Rd. A worker at the restaurant said police found the second car there and were searching in the area for the escapee.

The escape occurred near 1701 W. Golf Road in Rolling Meadows, authorities said. Simonton said she did not know how Maday overpowered the officers, who were not injured.

Sort of scary, that’s right in my main stomping grounds.

We have some pretty serious court security problems in Cook County, don’t we? (Note this guy was not actually in the courthouse as yet.) I can surely think of times where I haven’t felt safe when in court and dealing with incarcerated parties. I think 32 W. Randolph (Cook County’s parentage courthouse) is generally acknowledged as the worst. Any prisoners going to that courthouse go into the Daley Center through the underground garage at Daley, into the lock-up on one of the concourse floors at Daley, and then they’re literally walked across the street intersection at Dearborn and Randolph, into the main lobby and elevatored up to the 14th Floor.

And I actually think the problem is worse in the civil court system where they’re not set-up for dealing with prisoners. I’m doing a rare criminal case currently up in Waukegan and I have my one case down at 26th and California currently and those courthouses are essentially attached to jails so the prisoner more or less just takes an elevator up to the courtroom, walks into court and then walks out, down the elevator, and back to jail. The civil courthouses are not convenient to the jails so there’s a lot of transporting both to the courthouses and then walking down corridors in the courthouses which seems to be where the problems arise.

Or should I say I was searching for a needle in a haystack? Alright, enough of the farming analogies by a mostly life long suburbanite…

My challenge of a few days ago was locating a copy of a court order within the Cook County Circuit Clerk’s office, on an expedited basis. Generally, every copy of every order entered in a case is part of our hard and soft client files. This is an area where you do still need some paper copies since you’ll generally have your client’s case file with you in court. But, in this particular case what I recall had happened was I had had to rush out of court on a certain day and could not wait for the judge/clerk to have this order entered and the opposing lawyer never forwarded a copy of the particular order to me.

Fast forward to earlier this week…I’m preparing for a substantive argument on a motion to dismiss for which I NEEDED a copy of this old order that I had never gotten a copy of. I do know that the Cook County Circuit Clerk’s Office does at least now scan all orders and saves them on microfilm so I thought I could quickly grab a copy of the order in room 802 before my case…and I could, it just took a while.

Why?

Back to the chickens and the hay…

Because when you look-up your case online (or within the Clerk’s own DOS based system) all that each case lists is a very, very rudimentary outline of the case that helps with dates but makes it very difficult to see exactly what happened or what was ordered on a particular date. I knew a rough 2-3 month date range for when the order I needed was entered so I could narrow it down quite a but it was still a 30+ minute process that could have been 5 minutes if all the orders were readily available on the Internet.

That’s post # 15 and counting regarding filing difficulties in the Circuit Clerk’s Office, for those of you keeping score at home.

Tags: Cook Circuit Court Clerk

Add Your Comment.

Leave a comment

Logged in as Peter. Log out »

You are the author of this entry. Manage subscriptions.

Subscribe in a reader

I really enjoyed my 830am pre-trial conference this morning over at 32 W. Randolph (and I’m not talking about the specifics of the case). I’d like to see waaayyyy more of these in Cook County. I can’t recall an 830am case set in Cook County EVER before. In a previous life I used to appear on occasion at an 830 arbitration call out in Wheaton. It’s a splendid scheduling move on so many levels…

• For me the lawyer it’s almost like adding an additional billable hour to my day. Because when my court days starts at the typical 930 it’s kind of like I’m killing time on non-substantive work the first hour of my day just waiting to walk over to court. And of course it’s nice to spread out those 5ish cases set at 930am.

• For judges and court administration, wouldn’t things flow better just by moving 50% of those 930am cases to 830am/845am?

Real nuggets from my travels around the Cook, 12th, 16th, 18th, and 19th circuits…

*Lawyers and restrooms. Heard this one sitting in a domestic relations courtroom recently, not my case but sounded like a pre-decree dissolution of marriage. The respective spouses’ attorneys were really arguing about which spouse should be allowed to use which bathroom on the second floor of the marital residence which is currently being shared. Though I found this give-and-take amusing as I sat in the jury box waiting for my case to be called I thought, this really shouldn’t happen. This isn’t always possible but generally I would suggest that lawyer must impose his will on situations about things he simply won’t do. I remember having a dissolution early in my career with an older attorney and his comment being, I’m not fighting over the furniture…good point.

*Lawyers sponsored by Dorothy. Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown that is…I was on the Website today and noticed lawyer advertisements on the front page. Good marketing opportunity? Quite possibly, I’d like to hear some experiences.

*Time/money wasted on civil status hearings…that’s almost criminal. Granted this is very antidotal, primarily because I’ve probably represented 500 people in various civil legal matters over the last 8 years and am currently a part of my very first criminal matter down at 26th and California, but I’m just asking, why can we simply call a judge’s coordinator to continue cases down at the criminal court yet the dreaded “status hearing” remains oh so popular in civil land?

Particularly for small firm attorneys and also domestic relations attorneys practicing in Cook County.

First, there’s the change to the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2-1101) regarding an attorneys ability to issue subpoenas (formerly only done by the circuit court clerk). The change simply adds an Illinois attorney to the group of persons who can issue subpoenas. I suppose all you need to change is instead of the circuit clerk signing/witnessing your subpoena forms now just put your name and perhaps your ARDC # at the botton. I haven’t tried this yet, wonder if some companies might not know of the law change and balk at this…it does “feel” more official coming from the government with the raised seal.

Second, the entire section 13 of the local rules for Cook County governing domestic relations cases were just revamped. As an aside, I’m amazed at how little discussion/publicity this has received…I wouldn’t have heard of this but for the fact I attended a speech by the presiding judge of the division a few weeks back. But how would others know? I think these sorts of things get coverage in the Law Bulletin but who reads that every day. One of the key changes I like is providing for use of a Parenting Coordinator in rule 13.10. These are useful in high conflict cases where there aren’t particularly large and substantive differences between parents regarding visitation and parenting but the two parties are completely incapable of interacting together. A “Parenting Coordinator” is a lawyer-mediator who each parent can contact about minor issues of visitation scheduling rather than involving the court. Hopefully some good, qualified, and affordable attorneys will take on this role.

That’s sort of what the Supremes ruled yesterday regarding Cook County Circuit Court law division presiding Judge William Maddux’s lawsuit concerning mandatory judge retirement at age 75. The law that was ruled unconstitutional required a judge to step down at the end of the term during which he turned 75. He could run again but that would be more difficult than facing the mere 60% “yes” vote retention election that other judges who weren’t 75 face.  Here’s some media coverage.

Good ruling, right? I mean judgment doesn’t leave ya at 75…it’s not like you’re flying an airplane.