News Tag: Legal Innovation
January 21, 2021
New Chatbot Offers 24/7 Information and Referrals for Pandemic Related Legal Issues
COVID Housing and Economic Loss Prevention (COVID HELP) is a new online navigation tool designed to guide Illinois residents to up-to-date information and referrals for common COVID-related legal issues including housing, debt, unemployment, bankruptcy, and guardianship issues. Through the website, users can connect 24/7 with a team of chatbots designed and created by legal aid experts to provide answers to common questions and automated referrals for more complex legal issues.
Tags: Legal Aid Organizations | Legal Innovation | Self-Help Resources read more ...December 21, 2020
2021 Resolution: Don’t Let the Hard-Earned Lessons of 2020 Go to Waste
If you can’t wait to put 2020 behind you and would like to send it off with an emphatic middle-finger salute, you’ve got a friend here. But for those of us who are lucky enough to have made it through this bizarro year in one piece, there is much we can and should take with us that will make the world better in 2021 and well into the future.
That’s why my 5th Annual New Year’s Resolution for the Legal Profession is to take stock of what 2020 has taught us to make for a better profession and a better system of justice going forward. And we’ve got a lot of material to work with on this front.
Tags: Courts | Legal Innovation | Remote Access read more ...November 19, 2020
A Self-Inflicted Access to Justice Scourge
By Bob Glaves | CBF Executive Director
In recent posts, I have been highlighting the larger systemic changes we need to make to significantly move the needle on improving access to justice, and for good reason. As we continue to push forward on those critical fronts, however, there is much we can do on our own […]
Tags: Billable hour | Legal Innovation read more ...October 6, 2020
CBA/CBF Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law & Innovation Releases Final Report and Recommendations
The Chicago Bar Association and Chicago Bar Foundation Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law & Innovation officially released its final report and recommendations today after formally submitting them to the Illinois Supreme Court.
The problem the Task Force seeks to address in a nutshell is an untenable failure in the legal market: at the […]
Tags: Legal Innovation | Legal Regulation | Task Force read more ...October 5, 2020
JEP Applications are Open
The CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project is seeking entrepreneurial and social justice-minded applicants for its next class of participants who will begin the program in January 2021.
The JEP prepares talented and entrepreneurial lawyers in the Chicago area to build innovative, socially conscious, and thriving law practices serving low and middle-income legal consumers and small businesses. We believe in the power […]
Tags: JEP | Legal Innovation read more ...September 24, 2020
A Fork in the Road for Our Profession
The 1980’s called and they want their Rules of Professional Conduct back. And they can have them.
As the world around us has changed dramatically since those heady days when seeing a music video on MTV was mind-blowing, we have seen only modest changes in the Rules governing the business of law. The result is our profession has gradually priced the everyday person out of the market for legal services even though we have more lawyers practicing than ever before.
Something is clearly wrong, and we now face a clear choice: continue down the same unsustainable path, or set a new course where we empower the middle class to access the quality, affordable legal services they need and enable lawyers to sustainably provide those services to them.
Tags: Future of the Profession | Legal Innovation | Legal Regulation | Task Force read more ...August 18, 2020
Lessons from Within
My New Year’s Resolution for our legal profession this year was to make law better by looking to what we can learn from other professions and industries, and as I explored further over the past few months, there is no shortage of material on that front.
As we look at ways we can better and more sustainably serve the public, there also are a number of lessons we can learn from the areas of the legal services market that are functioning reasonably well for lawyers and clients today.
Tags: Future of the Profession | Legal Innovation | Legal Regulation | Task Force read more ...July 22, 2020
CBA/CBF Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law & Innovation Releases Report and Recommendations for Public Comment
The Chicago Bar Association and Chicago Bar Foundation Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law & Innovation officially released its report and recommendations for public comment today.
The problem the Task Force seeks to address in a nutshell is an untenable failure in the legal market: at the same time we have more lawyers practicing than ever before, more people than ever before are going without legal help. Dozens of lawyers and legal professionals from diverse backgrounds across the legal community in Illinois and beyond have worked diligently over the past nine months to tackle these issues and develop a comprehensive series of recommendations for regulatory reform.
Tags: Future of the Profession | Legal Innovation | Legal Regulation | Press Releases | Task Force read more ...July 20, 2020
Where’s the Proof?
This is a common refrain from the naysayer crowd when the subject of regulatory reform and access to justice is raised. And we can be sure we will hear it when the CBA and CBF Task Force on the Sustainable Practice of Law & Innovation releases its report and recommendations for public comment this week.
From the beginning of time, this has been the anthem of all who fear change and resist progress. It is a misguided question because, after all, how can you prove something that has not happened yet? When the question is properly framed in this context, however, it turns out there actually is lots of proof that underscores the urgent need for regulatory reform.
Tags: Future of the Profession | Legal Innovation | Legal Regulation | Task Force read more ...June 16, 2020
Making Law Better By Looking Outside of Law—The Wrap
When I kicked off my 2020 Resolution for the Legal Profession series back in December, to say the world looked different from today would be the understatement of the century. But for everything else that can be said about how much things have changed in just a matter of months, the central point of the resolution—that there is much our legal profession can learn by looking at other professions and industries—has only become more apparent.
The way we do business in law already was not working well for the average person or for the lawyers trying to serve the consumer legal market, and other professions and industries were far ahead of us in modernizing their business practices. As we all adapt to the new normal where more people than ever need legal help and where remote, multichannel access will forevermore be a fundamental part of our lives, it is even more urgent for our legal profession to look beyond ourselves for solutions.
Tags: Future of the Profession | Legal Innovation | Legal Regulation | Task Force read more ...