Practice News

Not surprisingly, our friends in the Fourth Estate have a keen interest in the newly effective changes to Illinois' FOIA law and related statutes, as their writing about the topic shows. Here are just a few of the articles I've seen in the last week or so, all of which do a good job of hitting the highlights. New Illinois FOIA charged with stressing 'transparency,' Peoria Journal Star County gears up to answer information act requests, Springfield State Journal-Register FOIA changes make requests easier, denials harder, Champaign News-Gazette Some officials leery of FOIA alterations, Champaign News-Gazette

EITC Due Diligence - Know the Law. Ask the Right Questions. Get the Facts. Presented by Stakeholder Liaison Small Business/Self-Employed Division Date: January 13, 2010 (archived* for later viewing) This FREE webinar is for:

• Tax Professionals
• Tax Practitioners
• Enrolled Agents
• CPAs

Learn about:

• Due Diligence - What does it mean? Getting Comfortable with Due Diligence Where to Learn More about Due Diligence

Earn Continuing Professional Education credit

• Enrolled agents receive one CPE credit for participating for a minimum of 50 minutes from the start of the webinar.
• Other tax professionals may receive credit if the webinar meets your organization's or state's CPE requirements.
• To receive credit, you must attend one of the three presentations offered on January 13, 2010. Register for the webinar using your e-mail address, and use the same e-mail address to log in to attend. This will confirm your attendance and generate your Certificate of Completion.
• *Only January 13, 2010 participants will receive certificates. If you do not need a certificate to obtain CPE credit, you may choose to view the archived version of the webinar after January 13, 2010.

•    Look for your Certificate of Completion by e-mail approximately one week after the webinar.

Let’s talk about four kinds of formatting used and misused in legal documents: all-caps, typefaces, boldface, and underlining. (1) Underlining was used for years for case names and for emphasis because of typewriter limitations. I’m still surprised by the number of lawyers who still underline cases instead of italicizing them. Italics may also be used for emphasis but don’t overdo it. (2) Typefaces (fonts) affect the readability of your work. The consensus is that you should use serif fonts for text and sans-serif fonts for headings. Serif has the little squiggles such as the y in happy. Sans-serif is more block-like. The Seventh Circuit’s seven-page Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers recommends any serif font for text that has the word “book” in it. (This is a great overview of document design and may be found at http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/.) I use Bookman Old Style, Century Schoolbook, and Book Antigua all of which were included in Word for Mac. Many writers simply default to Times New Roman because that is their default font in their word-processing program. Times New Roman is a newspaper font that is shorter and more difficult to read in longer documents. Remember, most of your readers are older and may have difficulty reading. Make it easy for them. (3) All-caps for emphasis or for titles and headings in legal documents is another hangover from typewriters. Two problems: it’s harder to read and IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING AT YOUR READER. Ray Ward has a great suggestion for briefs and legal documents.

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. I am one of the founding partners in a 25 attorney law firm in the northeast. We have three equity partners, six non-equity partners and sixteen associates working in the firm. We focus totally on litigation. Each of us three equity partners have equal ownership percentages and since day one (20 years) have divided firm profits equally along those lines (1/3, 1/3, 1/3). We each put in the same amount of effort and work - but since I am managing partner - my fee collections are much lower than those of the other two equity partners and I am concerned that they may feel that I am not carrying my weight since my fee collections are lower. How should this be handled in our compensation system? A. This is a common question that we hear often. It sounds like you are still allocating income in the same manner that you did when the firm first started. Often when a firm grows the partner compensation system needs to be re-examined when and if partner roles or contributions change. As the firm has grown I suspect that your time spent on management activities has grown as well. I, as well as many other legal management consultants, believe that firm management (running the business) is as important as generating client fees and should be so considered in partner compensation systems. We have numerous law firm clients where at least one or more of the equity partners "run the business" and do not provide billable client services at all. Management time should not be used as a non-billable time category (excuse) to simply "dump" time.