Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

A good evidence resource:  Illinois Evidence with Objections in Family Law Cases by Gunnar Gitlin.

Got that one recently from the bench…extemely upsetting. Or another way of phrasing it is “I don’t want to hear your logical, law-based arguments…I’ve made my decision regardless of the facts and the law.”

Ya know the one where George Costanza had the desk at Yankee Stadium where he could sleep in a hidden compartment and then Jerry called in a terrorist threat to get Steinbrenner to leave George’s office so George wouldn’t get caught napping…

STEINBRENNER: Costanza here is busting his ass on those hats.

JERRY: think I’ve changed my mind.

STEINBRENNER: You don’t want them, then goodbye.

GEORGE: ??? sir.

STEINBRENNER: Well what do you want instead?

JERRY: What?

STEINBRENNER: Well, you’re the terrorist. You’re going to want something.

JERRY: I guess it would be nice if you called all the ticket holders if the game was going to be rained out.

That was absolutely the first thing that came to mind today when I got a call from a judge’s clerk telling me that she had an emergency and won’t be on the bench tomorrow. I’m not criticizing the absence, judges are human too, rather complimenting the call that our case is not going to be handled tomorrow rather than getting everyone downtown, waste time, money and days off from work, and then get the continuance.

It’s nice when the Court can call the lawyers when Court gets “rained out”!!!

I encountered the first instance in my entire career where a client would have been better off having filed a Counter Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, where his spouse initially filed for divorce. I used to think that the filing of Counter Petitions in the divorce setting was one of the bigger wastes of time going and just a bill padding technique used by certain firms. And oftentimes it is, but particularly in Cook County this can be a smart move.

Why?

Because a divorce case can be dismissed just like the $2,000 collection case and if you’ve gotten a lot of favorable rulings or if you have a judge who you think “likes” your case you probably don’t want to enable the other spouse to just dismiss the case and start-over in a different courthouse with a different judge who may NOT like your case quite as much. And this is pretty readily done in Cook County, you can file in one of the suburban courthouses and then dismiss and file at Daley. Or, you could likely dismiss your Daley case and re-file at Daley with little risk that you’d get stuck with the same judge. In less populated counties this likely isn’t as much of an issue because if you dismiss you’d probably be re-filing before the same judge regardless.

For example, I observed a situation (was involved in the case post-decree) where case is filed in suburban Cook and proceeds for some 6 months up to a pre-trial conference with judge who gives very favorable recommendation to W. But H was petitioner in case so he just dismisses the case and re-files a month later down at Daley. Well, the Daley case proceeds to trial and H gets a great result. Now W doesn’t feel too great…and this feeling could likely have been avoided if a Counter Petition had been filed.

I’ve written about this topic many, many times during the history of this blog including here. And I’m not trying to moralize or be too touchy/feely…I’m looking at you lawyer’s self-interest. Like sometimes picking up clients from opposing parties who liked/respected you and thought you were a better lawyer than your opponent.

But here’s another reason that I’ve been dealing with recently…

Lets face it, there are many cases that for whatever reason start with both parties represented by counsel but don’t end that way. So then you as lawyer (if you’re the one remaining in the case) now HAVE TO deal directly with a pro se client. And if there’s absolute mistrust and no respect or rapport I don’t think that helps your client.  So think ahead!

I’m within 1 week of wrapping up the longest and most contentious case I’ve ever been involved with. It was a case where trial/judgment didn’t occur for 4 years from case filing and then the last couple years have involved petty in-fighting as some real estate has sat on the market. Well, this was a case where the last 1.5 years of the 6ish years of the case became me dealing with a pro se litigant. And I’m not suggesting that I didn’t have my times of utter disgust but I was able to I think work with and earn the opposing party’s respect to a degree to cut through the garbage and at least get some real estate sold and now we’re down to one court hearing to disperse proceeds.