President’s Message
Kent
A. Jeffirs, President
THE
LCBA TODAY:
Hallmarks
for 2005: Communication and Service
Happy New Year! 2005
is here, and I am looking forward to an exciting year of new challenges
and new achievements for the Lake County Bar Association.
With the large and very active association we have, there is a
great deal of LCBA business to keep each new President awash in the day-to-day
concerns of our association. However,
there is much, much more to being a successful LCBA
President. Every year the
incoming LCBA President must
ponder and plan for what he or she wants to make the hallmark or
distinguishing characteristics of their administration.
For 2004 President T. Edward Page, it was the betterment of the
bench and bar culminating in the very successful Bench-Bar Conference
held December 3, 2004. As
both the sitting Crown Point City Court Judge and a practicing Lake
County lawyer, this was and is a worthwhile endeavor near to my heart
that I plan to follow up on and foster during the next year.
I am hopeful that my dual insights from the bench and the bar (T.
Edward having oddly described me in his opening remarks at the Bench-Bar
as "half
judge/half lawyer") will serve to assist me in furthering and
strengthening both our bench and our bar in Lake County.
While what President Page initiated must be continued and
fostered for the benefit of us all, there are two new hallmarks that I
envision for the betterment of the LCBA
in 2005: Improved Communications (among the bench, bar and
public) and a continuing focus by our Association on Service to
our community for the betterment of our citizens, our clients and our
profession.
The ability to effectively
communicate is a must for our Association.
As lawyers and judges, words are our stock and trade, the tools
of our profession. It is
with this in mind that I feel that if we improve our ability to
communicate B
lawyer to lawyer, bench and bar, legal profession to the public at large
B
we will improve the legal services we provide, the legal profession
itself and the public image of lawyers and the judicial system. If effective communication is the goal, what are the means to
get to this end? Some, I am
happy to report, are already well underway.
First, for the past eighteen months, Judge Jeffery Dywan of the
Lake Superior Court in Crown Point has been spearheading a massive
undertaking by him and his committee to bring online access to Court
records to lawyers and the public.
There were months of meetings which I attended as a committee
member and representative of LCBA
where issues were worked through concerning the
content of the records to be provided, the means to provide secure
online access to Court records, obtaining financing for the project and
the programming, testing and modification of this new system.
The nearly completed website was unveiled at a meeting in Judge
Dywan’s Courtroom last October and after further refinements was
presented at the Bench Bar Conference on December 3, 2004.
I am truly amazed at the depth of information and interactivity
which will now be available to us concerning Court records from our many
Courts throughout Lake County. As
I reported to the LCBA Board of Managers throughout this project’s development, this
system will provide lawyers with a valuable new tool in their practices
and the efficiencies of this system will more than pay for the small
subscription requested to help fund its creation and maintenance. It is therefore my pledge that I will work on behalf of the LCBA
to obtain a group subscription to this new system for the LCBA
and make online access to Court records one of the many new benefits of
belonging to the LCBA.
Second, as many of you are already
aware, I headed the LCBA’s
website committee for the past two years allowing us to relaunch a new
and improved LCBA website at www.lakecountybar.com
last winter. This committee
worked very hard along with our new website designer, D.E.A.
Web Designs, to take what was a static, out of date website and turn
it into the informative, custom designed and interactive website it is
today. If you have not yet
visited www.lakecountybar.com, please do.
The new website allows lawyers to obtain information about the
work being done by the LCBA,
schedules for our live Continuing Legal Education Seminars, information
on our referral service, listings to all Lake County Courts and lawyers
and much more. A few new
additions and refinements to the LCBA website are still in the works and should be completed within
the next few months. These
include online access to Lake County’s Local Rules, information on the
new LCBA scholarship and more
information on our Courts including information on the jurisdictions of
our various courts and court filing fees.
In furthering my goal of better communication, the website
committee will also be looking into ways to provide easy one-click
emailing of messages to our lawyer members and an online LCBA
calendar of events. Finally,
in fostering better communication among the bench and bar, I envision an
updated look and feel for this, our LCBA
Newsletter, “The Minute Sheet.”
While our newsletter has performed a valuable function through
the years, it is my guess that a majority of our younger lawyers (i.e.
less than 10 years in practice) would not be able to tell me what a
court “Minute Sheet” was from which our newsletter’s name
originated. I propose that
we look at the possibility of upgrading (much like we did for our
website) this important piece of our communication network with a new
name, new design and adding even more useful information.
The second hallmark of my presidency
will be to foster the LCBA as
a vehicle for lawyers to serve and give back to our community through
volunteer efforts and by supporting the many worthy causes in our
community which are closely tied to our profession.
I consider it an honor and a privilege to be a judge and a
lawyer. The fact that we as
judges and lawyers are leaders in our community and defenders of the
legal rights of our citizens is something both humbling and inspiring.
As such, we should each take seriously the fulfillment of the
pledge we took as part of our Oath of Attorneys -- not just to our
clients but also to serve the defenseless or oppressed.
While we lawyers continue to serve the needs of our clients and
our profession on a daily basis, we also must recognize the power we
have to do good in the lives of the less fortunate.
Again, I am happy to report that providing such service to our
community is nothing new to the LCBA
or to our lawyers. Just
within the past year or two we have seen the establishment of the LCBA
Scholarship Fund, the establishment of mandatory IOLTA (Interest on
Lawyer’s Trust Accounts) to fund legal services for the indigent, and
have had numerous lawyers donate their time and talents for the ISBA’s
“Talk to a Lawyer” and the Legacy Foundation’s AWrite
a Will Week@
programs. I must also make
special mention of two extraordinary new initiatives to provide legal
services to under served members of our community.
First was the establishment last year of the Volunteer Advocates
for Seniors (VAS) Program developed at St. Margaret Mercy Healthcare
Centers and being promoted and assisted by Judge Diane Kavadias
Schneider. This worthwhile endeavor is now providing much needed
temporary guardianship services to the elderly and disadvantaged in our
community when no other family members are available to do so.
Also, we should all applaud the efforts of Hammond Mayor Thomas
McDermott, Jr. who after taking office January 1, 2004 established the
nation’s first municipally run legal aid clinic for the City of
Hammond which is being operating under the direction of former Lake
County Magistrate Kris Costa-Sakelaris.
Thank you to all of our judges and lawyers who have participated
and continue to participate in all of these programs.
I believe such efforts by the members of our bench and bar
significantly contribute toward improving the image of lawyers in our
community while at the same time providing valuable and much-needed
services to an under represented segment of our society.
It is efforts such as these that I have been and will continue to
be involved in and promote in the coming year.
The LCBA
has also over the years been generous in financially supporting
worthwhile causes in our community such as the Calumet Council of the
Boys Scouts of America, legal services for the indigent and the “We
The People” Program. This
year I would like to see one more worthy cause added to that list, the
Children’s Room of the Lake Circuit Court.
If you have not been to the Children’s Room on the ground level
of the Lake County Government Complex Court’s Building, please stop by
for a visit. This room
(which is funded by donations) is dedicated to the care of children
whose parents have business at the government center (not just the
Circuit Court) and has been a godsend to parents with no means of
providing child care while attending court, paying taxes or having other
business in the government center.
Judge Arredondo should be commended for his efforts in making
this room a reality and an example for our state and nation.
We as a bar association should support this effort to assist our
clients, our citizens and our children.
I look forward to a year of
improving how we lawyers communicate with each other, the bench and the
public. I look forward to
further fostering the service we as judges and lawyers can and do
provide to our community. This
will be a very good year for the Lake County Bar Association.
Thank you for your trust in electing me your 2005 LCBA
President. Let the fun
begin!
IRS
SEEKS VOLUNTEERS
The Internal Revenue Service is recruiting volunteers for the IRS
Volunteers Return Preparation. Volunteers
help elderly, disabled, and low or limited income taxpayers in East
Chicago, Gary and Hammond, Indiana, prepare their federal and state
income tax returns. Volunteers
explain many special tax credits and deductions and how people may claim
them on their tax returns. Volunteers
are also needed to help organized sites, and act as greeters,
instructors and screeners.
Last year, volunteers assisted
several thousand Hoosiers with their federal and state income tax
returns. Tax assistance
begins January 24, 2005, and continues through April 15, 2005.
If you are interested in helping
your community, please send your name, address and contact number to
AARP VITA Volunteer Recruitment@irs.gov.
or mail to Internal Revenue Service (Attn: S. Smith), W&I SPEC Area
4 WI-665, P.O. Box 44976, Indianapolis, IN 46244.
CASE
MANAGEMENT AND COMMON SENSE:
How
Courts Should Process Cases
Judge,
Lake Circuit Court
The following article was published in the ISBA’s Young Lawyers
publication in the Spring of 2001.
The content of the article could have barring on some of the
topics discussed at the LCBA’s Bench Bar last month.
As young lawyers, I am going to let
you in on a big secret. Something
you never learned in law school. How
judges should look at cases – court calendar control.
Even before Charles Dickens’ Bleak
House or Roscoe Pound’s 1906 speech entitled The
Causes of Popular Dissatisfaction with the Administration of Justice,
the public perception has been that the court system takes too long,
costs too much and never ends.
Historically, in civil cases, the
common notion was that private litigants and their lawyers, not the
judges nor the courts, should determine when their cases go to trial and
like many civil lawyers, that was my view.
But a quarter century of experience on the Indiana trial bench,
as well as societal concerns and practical considerations, made me a
strong believer in active docket management by trial judges.
What is the goal of docket
management? To provide the
least burdensome, most efficient means of resolving disputes within a
traditional legal framework.
Most legal observers would agree
that the best interest of the parties is better served in settlements
between the parties rather than through invoking the judicial process.
This is why Alternative Dispute Resolution, or ADR, has risen in
popularity recently.
Once a lawsuit is filed it places
the case and its resolution in public hands.
The expenditure of public funds and resources brings into play
the public interest. The
courts are no one’s private sandbox but the public domain.
Judges as public officials have a duty to ensure that public
resources are utilized efficiently and effectively.
Cases must move through the system at the proper pace for justice
to be served. On one end of
the temporal spectrum, of course, Justice Delayed is Justice Denied; on
the other end of the same spectrum, a matter adjudicated without proper
preparation or consideration is also quite often Justice Denied.
How does one determine the proper
pace for a particular case? Case
management theory gives us guidance.
The two main principles of case management theory are: (1) not
all cases are the same; and (2) all similar cases must be treated
similarly.
That being said, let’s discuss two
different approaches to the problem: (a) the Caseload Approach; and (b)
the Laissez-Faire Approach.
The Caseload Approach, for example,
may divide the cases into complex or simple, or involving factual
issues, rather than legal issues, that may dispose of the case in a
certain way. How much time
will it take? What type of
case is it, fact sensitive or a question of law?
This approach raises concerns that
justice may be subordinated to procedural hurdles or that simple cases
may be mischaracterized as complex, resulting in unnecessary expenses
and delay. Another concern
is that judicial time may be wasted evaluating and determining
characteristics of cases that in all likelihood will settle.
Since the data shows that over 95 percent of all civil cases
settle anyway, labeling cases may create havoc because not all complex
cases are equally complex, nor are all simple cases equally simple.
The Laissez-Faire Approach to case
management allows rules of civil procedure and the litigants to
determine the course of the lawsuit regardless of the complexity of the
litigation. The problems
with this approach are that not all attorneys desire to see their cases
move quickly through the system, ceding control to the lawyers makes
dockets meaningless and erodes the credibility of the courts.
Lastly, dormant cases can create a logjam, impeding the flow of
other cases, and fostering the public perception that the system is
failing to function properly.
What constitutes successful docket
management? Now that we
discussed some of the problems, what are some of the solution? Different cases have different needs. What type of case it is, (e.g. criminal, civil, juvenile,
family, probate, mental commitment, traffic, small claim, etc.), will
determine what type of preparation, discovery, pretrial hearings, and
court time are required. Some
types of cases, such as criminal matters and mental commitment
proceedings, have rigid statutory requirements for how quickly the Court
must act, whereas others, such as civil torts and probate, may tend to
languish for some time if they are not actively prodded along.
If attorneys can rely on cases being
heard at a time certain, money and time is saved by all.
Court scheduling must work to see that every case set for hearing
can and will be heard at that time.
Every court appearance and filing
must have a purpose. The
type of court will determine the format of the court’s docket.
No simple docketing system will work under every circumstance.
Consideration must be given to the number and types of courts in
the county along with the size or volume of the court dockets.
Traditional methods of setting cases
must now give way to the actual time allocation needs for jury
trials, bench trials, uncontested matters, summary hearings, discovery,
pleas, etc.
Attorneys may impose the time
constraints. It is their
and their clients’ cases, but they must adhere to the representations
they make to the court staff. A
three (3) day jury trial must not last more than 3 days.
When setting hearings, attorneys must make a conscious effort and
take into account not only how much time they need to present their case
but also how much time opposing counsel needs.
Court staff should be able to rely on representations made by
counsel. Yet, there must be
flexibility built in to correspond to the differing needs of each type
of case and to ensure no significant gap arises between the design and
application of the system. As
Benito Mussolini learned too late, more important than the train
arriving on time is that it gets where it should go - in our case
Justice.
Some thoughts on continuances are in
order. We should invoke the
one continuance rule. Absent
extraordinary circumstances, the first motion for a continuance will be
granted. The second motion
for a continuance generally will not be granted without agreement of the
parties. There needs to be
set rules for requesting continuances, but those rules will have to be
different for different types of cases.
Conflicting dates in different courts need not be a problem, if
courts cooperate and determine which case is the priority.
Perhaps in the near future computerized scheduling will avoid the
need to reschedule around conflicts.
Good case management and docket flow
need not create tension between the Bench and Bar.
It reduces cost and delay, and improves the public perception of
justice. It can be achieved
through a systemic approach to individual dockets.
The Bar has been unwilling to shoulder the responsibility for
timely concluding litigation, and the system is currently bottlenecked.
Now, the responsibility and burden falls upon the Bench.
To the new young lawyers with palm
pilots and laptops and ever driven by the demands of “billable
hours”, it may be difficult to imagine that once upon a time, there
were terms of court, Wednesday afternoons off, fewer and different kinds
of cases, few lawyers a booming economy, more resources and the
automatic change of venue from the county.
Those days, for better or worse, are gone forever.
The time has come to “kindle the flame” of court reform.
Only the young lawyers of the Bar with their energy, stamina,
resourcefulness and creativity can help the Bench make it happen.
And when I am gone I can know that the torch was passed into good
hands and the profession we dedicated our lives to remains Noble.
ABA
LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP
The ABA Legal Opportunity Scholarship Fund applications for the
2004-2005 academic year are now available.
The Scholarship Fund is intended to encourage racial and ethic
minority students to apply to law school and to provide financial
assistance to these students.
The Scholarship Fund will award
$5,000 of financial assistance annually to each scholarship recipient
attending an ABA-accredited law school.
An award made to an entering first-year student may be renewable
for two additional years, resulting in financial assistance totaling
$15,000 during his or her time in law school.
The application can be downloaded from the ABA website, http://www.abanet.org/fje.
Completed scholarship applications must be postmarked no later
than March 1, 2005.
Recipients will be selected based on
their qualifications for the scholarship and not on the law school they
plan to attend. Therefore,
law student applying to any and all ABA-accredited law schools may
benefit from these scholarships.
CHIEF
JUDGE APPOINTMENT
Judge John R. Pera has
been elected Chief Judge of the Superior Court of Lake County.
His two (2) year term of office began January 1, 2005.
He will bring to his new post a
sense of enthusiasm, a dedication to hard work, and an ability to open
lines of communication between judges and attorneys with respect to the
administration of justice.
CRIMINAL
CORNER
Jim
Foster, Chair
The meeting of the Criminal Defense Lawyers on January 5 was
cancelled due to weather conditions. Our next meeting is as follows:
Wednesday,
February 2, 2005
Andorra
5:15
p.m.
Let me give a "thank-you"
to our Executive Director, Vernita Cole.
Vernita, again, remembered what we lawyers do not, as the time
for the January meeting approached.
Several persons had been calling my office starting around 1:00
p.m. on Wednesday the 5th inquiring about the meeting and it
was not looking good when Vernita called and left a message that if I
were going to cancel please notify her and she would get out notice to
the membership. I could
only think, to myself, "of
course"
and called her back, at which time she faxed out the cancellation to
each of our members. It doesn't
sound like an historical event but, as noted, it’s the reason that we
need people like Vernita, who can make certain that people, like we
lawyers, do not mess up too bad.
We hope for several beneficial
matters during our February meeting.
Initially, we will "tie-down"
the picture-scenario for the "hanging,"
in the criminal court building, of the active CDL membership.
This has been on our plate for over a year and we've
attempted, in the past, to use the "picture
card"
as a way to raise enthusiasm in our group. We are now at the end
and the list, of the eligible persons in the picture, has been
distributed earlier and anyone who has any thoughts on why they should
be in the picture (but are not on the list) and/or why someone else
should not be in the picture) (but is on the list) should show up at the
February meeting. We will
determine at that meeting exactly who is or is not in the group picture,
set the times to get the pictures taken and, hopefully, within a very
quick time, get what will be an extremely distinguished group "hanging"
in the criminal court building.
Further, at the February meeting, we
want to make some decisions/choices about the type of "plaque"
to place at our ceremonial tree, in memory of the late Judge Kimbrough
and member Daniel Toomey. You
will recall this past fall we got a tree planted, and it looks like it
is surviving the winter blast and we were going to follow-up with a
descriptive/memorial plaque. Some people have suggested separate plaques for each person
and others have suggested a single plaque, with both names and many
suggested a plaque which is conducive for addition of other CDL’s who
might be added in the future. I
have received some suggestions from Mrs. Kimbrough which I will try to
distribute in advance of the meeting.
I also hope for any other suggestions from other persons out
there. We want to consider
all possible options and try and get the best situation but we also want
this to be completed in the near future.
Please give this some thought, look at the info we distribute to
you between now and then and show up at the February meeting so we can
hear any thoughts you have on when/how/what we should add to the area of
the memorial tree to make certain the purpose, of that tree, is not
forgotten.
NOTICE
OF TRIAL RULE
Effective January 1, 2005, Rule 5, Service and Filing of Pleading
and Other Papers.
(G)
Filing of Documents and Information Excluded from Public Access and
Confidential Pursuant to Administrative rule 9(G)(1).
Every
document prepared by a lawyer or party for filing in a case shall
separately identify information excluded from public access pursuant to
Admin. R. 9(G)(1) as follows:
(1)
Whole documents that are excluded from public access pursuant to
Administrative Rule 9(G)(1) shall be tendered on light green paper,
marked “not for Public Access.”3
(2)
When only a portion of a document contains information excluded
from public access pursuant to Administrative Rule 9(G)(1), said
information shall be omitted [or redacted] from the filed document and
set forth on a separate accompanying document on light green paper
conspicuously marked “Not For Public Access” and clearly designating
[or identifying] the caption and number of the case and the document and
location within the document to which the redacted material pertains.
(3)
With respect to documents filed in electronic format, the trial
court, by order or local rule, may provide for compliance with this rule
in a manner that separates and protects access to information excluded
from public access. (4)
This rule does not apply to a record sealed by the court pursuant to IC
5-14-3-5.5 or otherwise, nor to records to which public access is
prohibited pursuant to Administrative Rule 9(H).
Lake County Bar Association
