Solo In Chicago…Grow Your Practice!

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I’m making a little confession here about a stupid thing I did recently to save you a future hassle.
I over-relied on a particular judge’s idiosyncrasies to the detriment of what I wanted done. Nothing major or particularly fatal longer-term but I had a less than perfectly productive court date. Because, “our” judge wasn’t on the bench for our court date.

I have this case that’s been going on for 5+ years and we’re now at the post-appeals stage (If you want a primer on the Illinois Partition Act just ask…that’s this case). Well, we’ve had this same trial judge for all that time and he knows the case well. And he has this thing that he literally does NOT look at pleadings. So over five years I’ve probably filed 50ish motions/petitions and he’s likely never looked at one of them and he shuns even your attempt to hand documents to the bench when you’re before him.

And wouldn’t ya know it this week he wasn’t there, and his replacement actually wanted a written motion in order to do what we wanted done. And this BAD, BAD lawyer didn’t have one.

Well lets see here, there are golf driving ranges that charge more for hitting off grass than off mats; loud music played in public places; and, people who have more than one hand on the table while eating. Yep, those three things bother me!

But keeping it in lawyerland here, how ’bout judges that hold-up their courtrooms for 5-10 minutes per case by drafting court orders for pro se litigants. I had a morning over a 32 W. Randolph this week and the phenomena is prevalent over there. The issue is that there are many, many cases there (parentage court) where neither party is represented by counsel. But is it really the best use of your time (and the public’s dollar/time) to be spending 5-10 minutes once every say 4 cases or so to be drafting a court order while a room of 25 other litigants waits?

There are always several lawyers in the room…how ’bout asking for a “friend of the court”? I’m there for ya.

Why do so many lawyers have this affinity for doing everything at the last minute? Even when it’s not at all necessary and often hurtful.

Let me explain, earlier this week I had a status hearing on a domestic relations case. A temporary visitation schedule had run out and we hadn’t quite come to a final case settlement. So, there wasn’t much disagreement about setting out some additional, short-term visitation at this court date.

Why not spend a little time on the case 2-3 days before hand, negotiate an Agreed Order outside of court, and then at the court date no clients and likely only one attorney is needed. It saves time and money & you eliminate mistakes. I’m pretty darn detail-oriented but mistakes are inevitable and there chances are greatly increased when you’re negotiating out in the courtroom hallway and then drafting fairly complex, multi-page orders by hand.

Looking ahead a few days on your calendar and then shooting over an e-mail or fax to your opposing counsel really is the better way to handle the above.