News Tag: JEP

February 27, 2019

What Are We Selling?

It seems a simple question to ask, but one we do not think enough about in law and too often answer incorrectly. Getting that answer right is the first essential step towards carrying out my New
Year’s Resolution for 2019 for the legal profession to tackle our affordability problem for everyday people.

Two recent commentaries in the New York Times and the Atlantic challenge us to re-examine our profession’s longstanding assumptions on this question, and offer a good jumping off point for discussion.

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December 20, 2018

2019 Resolution—Time to Tackle our Affordability Problem for Everyday People

Lawyers often joke that they couldn’t afford themselves if they ran into a serious legal problem. While that is (usually) an exaggeration when a lawyer says it, it reflects a reality we all know to be true for most people in our community. It was not always like this, but somewhere along the way our profession managed to price the proverbial “regular guy” out of the market for most legal services.

As lawyers, we like to think of ourselves as problem solvers. This time the problem is us, and in 2019 we all need to make it a priority to solve it.

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December 11, 2018

Sharing the JEP’s (Not So) Secret Keys to Success

The goal of the CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project has always been twofold. First and most obviously, we want to increase access to affordable legal services for low and middle-income people and businesses in the Chicago area through the direct efforts of the lawyers in the JEP network.

The second aim of the JEP has always been to […]

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November 29, 2018

JEP Network Embodies Best Practices

At the beginning of summer in 2013, ten attorneys signed on to a program that offered them the training, resources, and connections they’d need to launch innovative and socially conscious solo and small law firms that serve low and middle income clients. The CBF had done its research; we knew the need for affordable services […]

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November 15, 2018

New and Graduating JEP Attorneys Ready for New Growth

Last week, the CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project (JEP) celebrated the graduation of the ninth cohort of participants to successfully complete the 18-month program and welcomed in the twelfth group of attorneys aiming to build innovative and affordable law practices.

Attorneys graduating from the JEP. Good luck!

Graduates Daniel Hernandez and TJ Walczak work on family […]

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November 5, 2018

Pricing for Access to Justice

The billable hour is dead! You’ve likely seen this headline a time or two over the past couple of years, and for good reason. As CBF Executive Director Bob Glaves pointed out in his 2016 blog post on pricing, we’ve largely priced the proverbial regular guy, and even ourselves sometimes, out of the market for […]

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October 25, 2018

Pro Bono Connects JEPers to Practice Experience and Their Community

The CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project is in an open-plan, loft office space just west of the Loop. This is where program participants (JEPers) start their innovative, socially conscious law practices serving low and middle income Chicagoans. This is where they learn skills and techniques for doing law differently setting predictable prices, offering unbundled services, making […]

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October 18, 2018

Partner-Powered Training Helps JEP Lawyers Innovate

At the CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project (JEP), we prepare talented and entrepreneurial lawyers in the Chicago area to launch and manage innovative, socially conscious, and successful law practices. One way we do this is through our comprehensive training program that focuses on building a new kind of practice one that is more accessible and affordable […]

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August 30, 2018

Expanding Practices and Access through Limited Scope

Across the country, the civil justice system is undergoing a transformation. More and more litigants are appearing in court without lawyers, making up well over half of the civil litigants in Illinois and closer to 75% nationally. Self-representation is no longer limited to the poorest users of the court system; growing numbers of middle-class people […]

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August 14, 2018

Seeding Innovation in the Practice of Law

Flash back to 2010, a time few of us would look back on fondly. Our legal community was in the full throes of the recession, with the job market for newer lawyers in tatters and more people than ever in need of legal help yet unable to get it.

Never let a good crisis go to waste was a quote often heard from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel around the time, and the CBF did not. The CBF saw a prime opportunity to tackle this growing dysfunction in the legal market and began the work that ultimately led to the launch of the CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project in early 2013.

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