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This is a potentially exciting development, particularly since the last bit of technology “reform” that impacted our Cook County practice was when the parentage courts recently disallowed private attorneys from using the copy machines down at the Daley Center concourse level. Seriously, the “technological progress” was a return to carbon paper. I was going to post a photo of the signage but didn’t feel right about snapping a picture in the courtroom.

But I digress…

The original article was in the 4/22/11 Law Bulletin (full article is password protected), a couple excerpts:

The program, known as e-filing, has been a pilot project for the Law Division’s individual commercial calendar for two years. The service will expand to the rest of the Law Division next month, so trial lawyers can use a credit card to file suits and motions from a computer for an extra cost of $4.95 plus 4 percent of the total filing fee.

Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy A. Brown said she hopes the system will solve a common complaint heard in the Daley Center that court files are sometimes missing or incomplete. But with e-filing, documents will always be available electronically.

“That was a problem that I’ve worked on diligently and just trying to reduce that problem on a manual basis,” Brown said. “But I realized that you can’t watch everybody that’s pulling a file to see if they’re taking something out. And people just do it all the time.”

“And then you have the files going into so many different hands; folks in the judiciary and they decide they want to hold onto something. That’s basically unsolvable. It’s always going to be something. This is the only answer,” Brown said…

Every Law Division case type will be available for e-filing except for building condemnations. Pending approval from Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans and the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, e-filing is scheduled to launch in the Chancery Division in July; all civil cases in the municipal districts in September; the Domestic Relations Division and Child Support Division in December and the County Division in February.

Checkout some useful webinars from the Circuit Clerk’s Website. As many of you know very limited e-filing has been active for certain law division cases for the last 6+ months and this announcement seems to be the final expansion of e-filing throughout the court system.

Who likes recurring monthly expenses?

I hate products/services that require monthly/installment contractual agreements. I think of these as being the carbon-monoxide of a business or personal budget…silent, stealth killers. And that’s the trick for the product or service-provider, right, getting that price point at a low enough level that the consumer thinks “oh what’s $19 per month.” Well, that’s $228 a year fella…real $$$. All that to say I’ve been taking a hard look at some of my Firm’s recurring monthly expenses notably our telephone/fax services and making some changes.

I’ve used eFax since the day I opened my doors back in 2005 and I’ve used eVoice for at least the last 2+ years since I’ve been in a more virtual practice setting. They’re both part of J2 Global Communications, Inc. and for the most part I’ve been pleased with their products but as the largest player in that market place the pricing has crept-up. We currently pay $30 monthly for eVoice and $20 monthly for eFax with an extra charge per page faxed…so generally $50-ish monthly.

In the last week we moved our office telephone# to Toktumi for $15 monthly so I just cut our telephone costs in half. Toktumi also has a $10 flat monthly Internet fax option that includes unlimited monthly sending/receiving of faxes. I MAY just move both phone/fax to Toktumi and bag a $25 monthly/$300 annual expense savings and be quite pleased with myself.

But has the time now arrived that a fax is wholly unnecessary? What are your thoughts or experiences? Anyone dumped their fax machine/number completely?

I used to have my hand in residential real estate a lot more than I do currently…by choice and due to soft real estate market conditions I haven’t been involved with a real estate transaction in 6 months. I think of residential real estate as very fax intensive particularly due to the various contractual notice provisions. So since I’m not really doing real estate any longer and quite frankly don’t want to return to it in the future…why do I need a fax (e-fax account or otherwise)?

My current monthly payment to eFax gets me to May 14th so I have nothing to decide until that point but I plan on being ready to decide by that point. I MAY just use the Toktumi monthly unlimited $9.99 plan. But I’m also intrigued by Pay Per Fax and Innoport Express (the two providers I’ve located) where you simply pay per use to either send or receive a fax. I KNOW that using one of those providers would bring cost savings, my only hesitancy is on the fax “receive” side of the coin. Both of these providers seem to do a similar set-up with receiving faxes. You “reserve” one of their fax #s that is good for some time period like 6 hours and that’s how you receive faxes . Would that be a hassle or turn-off to clients however infrequent it might occur? Someone calls and says I want to fax you something and then I/legal assistant would need to get our temporary # from one of the sites, then call-back the person wanting to fax something, then they can fax something…assuming they fax in the next 6 hours. Obviously a lot more hassle than just having a fax# on the Website or something and folks can fax whatever/whenever.

Of course we could just answer NO when someone asks about faxing something.
What do you think?

If you’re like me and spend an inordinate amount of time down at the Richard J. Daley Center, then you’re surely also like me in that you spend a lot of time waiting for an elevator. Now the larger issue is courtroom scheduling and the question of why must say 90% of all cases be set for the 9-10am time slot and what’s the need for status court dates at all? But I suppose the functionality of the Daley elevator banks themselves could use an upgrade too.

I saw this little nugget buried at the bottom of this piece from the Sun-Times regarding President Preckwinkle’s recently unveiled capital plan:

The overall capital plan, which ultimately must be approved by a vote of county commissioners, also includes:

† A new $92 million diagnostic and residential treatment unit for prisoners at the Cook County Jail.

† A $50.2 million expansion of the garage at the current Stroger Hospital to add 1,760 spaces. The current garage has 1,340 spaces.

† A $10 million upgrade of the elevators at the Daley Center courthouse complex.

For the life of me I can’t find any further specifics or coverage of these Daley Center proposed elevator upgrades. No press releases nor any video clips from a press conference. This does require Cook County Board approval so hopefully greater detail will come around the time of that debate/vote.

I’ve never really had judicial aspirations but I do get into Cook County courtrooms quite often (**Disclaimer:  I am not a candidate for any of the current associate judge vacancies). Sunday’s Tribune had a nice overview piece about how associate judges are selected, (Mike) Madigan letters offer glimpse of clout in Cook County judge selection.

Even to a practicing attorney the associate judge selection process has always been veiled in a bit of secrecy. I recall attending a ‘lunch with a judge’ seminar some years back and knew generally that the associates are elected by the circuit judges and that there’s a good deal of politicking involved.

The article fundamentally attempts to tie good old political clout to the selection process, with a focus on letters that Speaker Madigan has sent to circuit court judges over the last several elections (here, here, here, here, and here). From the piece…

Since 2003, Madigan has recommended 37 lawyers to become associate judges, and 25 were selected outright, according to documents obtained by the Tribune and interviews. Several more made it to the bench through appointments.

About half of those on Madigan’s list made political donations to his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, the state’s highest law enforcement official. Campaign contributions are common among lawyers vying for judgeships and are typically not large — but enough to indicate the donor recognizes the value of political participation.

I’ll be honest using the general “Combine” culture that exists in Illinois as the measuring standard I found the article rather tame. And the 2 judges that I hold in my highest regard in Cook County are actually Associates judges too.

Editor’s Note: Jack Leyhane over at For What It’s Worth has some additional useful commentary on the article/subject from someone more intimately involved with the Associate judgeship application process.

A common attorney rite-of-passage is the ‘summer-of-the-bar’…the summer following law school graduation where too much time and angst is spent in bar exam preparation. Leaving any subjective comments about the general usefulness of the bar examination as a requirement for law licensing to the side, the summer-of-the-bar is a time of a lot of exam preparation and exam preparation generally means a lot of sedentary time spent sitting around with a book or laptop open. And all that sitting around isn’t particularly healthy. Weight gain is often another fun side effect to the summer-of-the-bar. I gained some 20 pounds over my bar summer. I was in as good of physical condition I’d ever been in near the end of law school…Southern Illinois has great outdoor culture, most large universities have excellent workout facilities, and I’d play regular marathon tennis matches with classmate Larry Maitland.

Although I did rid myself of that bar exam 20 in time for my ’04 wedding, I’ve found that my virtual/home legal practice has brought new challenges with regards to remaining fit. No surprise right, working from home is a lot like that summer-of-the-bar sitting around tapping on a computer keyboard, thinking, and speaking on the telephone.

So how can you be healthy/productive while working from home?

• Replace the calories burned you had previously burned doing “at work tasks” and commuting. Until you really sit down and think about it, it’s not obvious how much activity is involved with a traditional office job that’s not involved when working from home. Things like getting ready to be presentable out in public (dressing/showering) to walking to a train/car to walking somewhere for lunch to the repetitive moving around within an office to meetings I’d guess adds up to nearly 700-800 burned calories per day. Two-three days per week I generally do none of those things. You need to intentionally plan how to replace this “exercise.” During my bar summer and in recent years I’ve never stopped my hard exercise due to just being a jock but I had not dealt with these “work task” calories. Some easy ways to handle this might be a couple long walks daily or perhaps you do pretend like you’re going to the office by showering/shaving and changing clothes to start your day.
• Never eat lunch. I actually think this is a pretty good rule whether working from home or not. Nothing leads to lowered productivity better than over-eating at lunch. My suggestion would be 2 snacks one at say 1130am and one around 3:30 pm…you’re never full like after a big lunch, consume fewer calories, but, you eat enough to stay energized.
• Have a great/productive late afternoon. Here’s where I think I’m far more productive than back “in the office” days. With me being a morning person the trick seems to be absolutely maximizing the first chunk of my work day and just maxing-out until say 130-2pm. Then, take a long midday break often including rigorous exercise. Finally have my second snack of the day, perhaps a caffeine boost and I’m ready for a great final 2.5 hours of my day. No rushing to leave the office, rather finishing my day STRONG.

Update: The Danger of Sitting Still.