News Tag: Legal Innovation

August 17, 2021

jep logoJEP Receives Prestigious American Bar Association Award

The CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project (JEP) was honored to be one of three programs to receive the 2021 E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award from the ABA Standing Committee on Professionalism at the ABA Annual meeting earlier this month. This is just the latest national recognition for the JEP since the CBF launched the program in […]

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July 29, 2021

I Can See Clearly Now

By Bob Glaves | CBF Executive Director

That Johnny Nash classic set the theme for this year’s CBA/CBF Pro Bono and Public Service Awards Luncheon, underscoring the widespread feeling of optimism coming out of the pandemic and being able to gather again in person to honor some unsung heroes of our profession.

We all could see clearly […]

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June 29, 2021

Skate Where the Puck is Going, Not Where It Has Been

By Bob Glaves | CBF Executive Director

Those are the words of the legendary Wayne Gretzky, and they are a fitting way to wrap up my series for this year’s Resolution for the Legal Profession: to use the hard-earned lessons of 2020 to build a fairer and better profession and justice system for everyone.

After a long […]

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June 15, 2021

court buildingA Roadmap to a More Efficient and Accessible New Normal for the Courts

The CBF/Circuit Court Pro Se Advisory Committee recently submitted detailed recommendations to facilitate the permanent use of remote court appearances to improve efficiency and access in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Remote access has proven to be a game changer for improving access to justice during the pandemic, a point underscored by Illinois Supreme Court […]

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June 8, 2021

jep logoMuch to Celebrate at the JEP

It has been an exciting month over at the CBF Justice Entrepreneurs Project as we celebrated the graduation of its 14th cohort of participants and welcomed our 17th cohort of participants. We are excited to welcome four enthusiastic attorneys into the JEP family, and we are proud of our newly minted alumni […]

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April 28, 2021

Lawyering After the Pandemic—A Jolt to a Better Future If We Take the Cue

As a profession that puts a premium on precedent and still regularly uses terminology from hundreds of years ago that few understand, change does not come easy to us as lawyers. But like everything else in our lives, the practice of law got an epic jolt when the pandemic hit.

As was true with the courts, the way lawyers quickly adapted to the new reality was impressive and inspiring, and now the million-dollar question is what we will do with that newfound knowledge and experience as we start the transition to a new normal. That is the backdrop for the following three-step process towards a better, more inclusive, and more accessible profession going forward, and the next stop on the journey to fulfilling my 2021 Resolution for the profession.

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March 25, 2021

Just Because We Can Doesn’t Mean We Should, and Just Because We Should Can Never Again Mean We Can’t—Part Two

Doing a sequel is a fraught exercise. For every classic movie like the “The Godfather” or “Die Hard” that nailed it a second time, there are many more examples like “Caddyshack” and “Airplane” where an ill-advised sequel did no justice to the original masterpiece.

With knowledge of that risk, it feels particularly timely to do a follow-up to my post last May, one of the more popular ones in Bobservations history (a low bar, yes). It has only become clearer over the past ten months how critical it will be for remote access to remain a central feature of the court system for the long haul. At the same time, however, we have also learned some things during that time that will be key to making a hybrid system work effectively.

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January 21, 2021

covid bots imageNew 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.

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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.

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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 […]

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