· Rule 53 of the Rules of the ARDC requires lawyers practicing within the state of Illinois to respond to ARDC’s requests for information in writing within 14 days. Complaints filed with the ARDC should always be taken seriously and handled promptly. Most often, the ARDC is willing to provide an extension of time to respond if requested.
 · Also my lawyer told me that remaining trust assets (145k) were safe. I asked him to remove my sister as trustee or freeze assets at least a dozen times. We knew as of the date of her accounting on 10/2015 she had taken almost $5200 to pay for her defense. This not done and she took 16k more. Other side offered to put 8k back into trust.
The short-term solution, until an independent agency replaces the ARDC, is to file an FOIA with the ARDC in order to see the complaints filed against the lawyer you are thinking of hiring. Also, please share you experiences with the ARDC with the news media and others. You can find email addresses of reporters on your local TV stations' websites.
 · Complainants who are motivated to acquire information about respondent-attorneys can seek that information from the ARDC – especially by requesting a copy of the …
A: The lawyer should be responsive to your questions within 24-48 hours after you left a message. If the lawyer is not responsive, perhaps he or she is on vacation and unable to return.
There is no set formula for how often you will hear from your attorney. However, the key to a successful attorney client relationship is communication. Whenever there is an important occurrence in your case you will be contacted or notified.
Once a case gets filed in court, things can really slow down. Common reasons why a case will take longer than one would hope can include: Trouble getting the defendant or respondent served. The case cannot proceed until the defendant on the case has been formally served with the court papers.
If you believe that your attorney acted unethically, you should consider filing a complaint with the State Bar. You can complete a complaint form online or download a PDF complaint form from the State Bar's website.
Throughout the process of getting your financial settlement after becoming injured, there may be periods of time that you do not hear from your attorney. Although this can be unnerving, it is a normal part of the legal process.
Sometimes, lawyers take a bit longer than usual to respond because they are away from their office or traveling for business. If you have not heard back from your lawyer within 48 hours of sending them an important email, you should send another email just asking if there is any news or status about your case.
If your attorney is not experienced or efficient, they may have missed a deadline or made another mistake and aren't willing to confess their error. There could also be some bad news that is entirely outside of the attorney's control.
This is how the practice of law is supposed to work. So often when a lawyer does not return your call for a few days it may simply mean your lawyer is busy getting some important work done in your case or in another client's case. There is nothing going on with your case.
If your lawyer still does not respond, you can send him or her a letter explaining the communication problems. If at this point you do not hear anything from your lawyer, you should consult with a legal malpractice attorney.
Perhaps the most common kinds of complaints against lawyers involve delay or neglect. This doesn't mean that occasionally you've had to wait for a phone call to be returned. It means there has been a pattern of the lawyer's failing to respond or to take action over a period of months.
9 Taboo Sayings You Should Never Tell Your LawyerI forgot I had an appointment. ... I didn't bring the documents related to my case. ... I have already done some of the work for you. ... My case will be easy money for you. ... I have already spoken with 5 other lawyers. ... Other lawyers don't have my best interests at heart.More items...•
In a nutshell, if opposing counsel isn't responding:Document your repeated efforts at contact, including your statement of the consequence of continued nonresponse.Wait a reasonable amount of time.To be safe, get a court order authorizing direct contact.More items...•
The ARDC represents itself as a government body protecting the interests of the public against incompetent and unethical lawyers. In reality, the ARDC is operated by lawyers who (almost without exception) are protecting lawyers that members of the public have accused of wrongdoing.
The only way people in Illinois can get rid of the ARDC's disciplinary role and replace it with an honest, independent agency is for people to complain to their elected representatives and the news media.
If you don't receive an adequate response from an elected representative, consider voting that person out of office and urge others to do the same and tell your friends how your elected officials treated you.
The ARDC indicates on its website which attorneys have been sanctioned but since only about 2 percent of the almost 7,000 complaints filed each year are sustained, many deceitful and incompetent lawyers are never indicated on the ARDC website. The short-term solution, until an independent agency replaces the ARDC, is to file an FOIA with the ARDC in order to see the complaints filed against the lawyer you are thinking of hiring.
ARDC investigations can become, among other things, warehouses of information. The initial request for information can reveal to the lawyer what a client or former client thinks about something that happened during a representation, often in the client’s own words. When the request comes in the form of a (putative) Himmel report from another lawyer, the respondent-attorney can glean the outlines of the reporting lawyer’s dispute – and perhaps their motivations, tactics, and strategies.
A more solid and lasting solution would be an amendment to Rule 766 that clarifies the obligations of the respective parties involved in ARDC investigations. The most crucial step would be to impose an obligation on a complainant, their lawyers or representatives, or any third parties, not to use copies of materials received from the Administrator in the course of a confidential investigation in any matter pending before any tribunal.
Typically, the complainant receives a copy of the response as a matter of course. Certain complainants may intend to use the ARDC as the informal discovery clearinghouse it isn’t intended to be. They may have little regard for the spirit of Rule 766 and its mandate that investigations (and some other proceedings) remain confidential. The Administrator may not know of or realize the risks of releasing otherwise confidential information to a complainant. Complainants thus can, and sometimes do, provide “confidential” ARDC material to courts and others, to their own ends.
Can the respondent-attorney control any of the risk in these situations? She or her counsel can and should alert the Administrator to the existence of pending litigation involving the complainant, and they should request that the Administrator not provide copies of responsive materials to the complainant. The Administrator will strongly consider that request, and will often honor it. If there is a specific reason not to honor it, the Administrator’s staff will discuss that with the respondent or their counsel. In practice, making that request is the most effective method for ensuring that sensitive materials do not end up in the wrong hands.
Supreme Court Rule 766 provides that several phases and kinds of Illinois disciplinary proceedings “shall be private and confidential” – including the approximately 5,200 investigations the Administrator initiates per year. Seems simple enough: the investigations are confidential, and the formal charges are public. But how does it work in practice?
Rule 766 means that only the respondent-attorney, the complainant, and the Administrator’s staff should be seeing and reading the investigatory materials, including the initial request, the respondent-attorney’s response, and any reply from the complainant.
But who is bound by Rule 766? Who must keep investigations, and the materials they generate, private and confidential? The Rule is silent on that point, but the way it has worked out in practice shows the common-sense answer: the Administrator and his staff are the parties bound by the Rule. They must ensure the confidentiality of all matters mentioned in the Rule.
When someone files a complaint about an attorney with the ARDC, it doesn’t just end up in a file somewhere. The ARDC reviews each complaint and determines whether the complaint is legitimate and whether the case should go on to the next level.
The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) investigates complaints made by clients, fellow attorneys and others. The legitimate and serious ones can make their way all the way up to the Illinois Supreme Court, which hands out punishments and disbars those attorneys who should no longer be allowed to practice law. ...
As a client, you should look into the disciplinary record of any attorney you are thinking about hiring. These records are public information. Anyone can go to iardc.org, which has a lawyer search option, and type in the name of the Illinois attorney they’re curious about. The database should tell you what, if any, disciplinary action the attorney has faced. If you are unsure about what you find, ask the attorney about it.
The ARDC opens about 6,000 investigations a year. In 2013, 151 lawyers were disciplined, and 35 of those were completely disbarred. Lesser disciplinary action includes suspension, probation, censure and reprimand. Basically, it’s varying levels of punishment based on the offense.
If you are unsure about what you find, ask the attorney about it. If you have a complaint about an attorney, you can file a request for an investigation on the same website.
Make a written request to inspect the Board minutes and books, call a special meeting, and review the Condo Act, declaration and bylaws. Hire your own attorney if you want to take action. A member of an association can bring a derivative suit against the board of directors.
First, unless protected by an exception to the general rule, all association books and records are accessible to unit owners. Typically the advice from the attorney would be available unless there is a justifiable reason for keeping it confidential.
Assuming that "HOA" refers to "homeowners association" and that the question is not posed by a member of the Board of Directors but by an owner, then at first glance there does not appear to be an attorney-client relationship between the owner and the owner.
However you decide to respond to the lawsuit, remember there are deadlines to take action. Typically, you have twenty calendar days from when you received the summons and complaint (not counting the day of service) to file a response with the court. But that time might be shorter in some cases.
If you do not file a written response within the required time, the “plaintiff” (the party suing you) can ask the court for a default judgment against you for everything she asked for in her complaint. After the plaintiff gets a default judgment, she can try to garnish your wages, attach your bank account, or take your property.
File a motion to dismiss or for a more definite statement. There are a number of reasons why you might file a motion to dismiss, including: Lack of jurisdiction. In other words, the court does not have jurisdiction over you. Click to visit Deciding Where to File for more information about jurisdiction.
If the contractor instead had a claim against you because you crashed your car into his, that would be a permissive counterclaim. The contractor could pursue it in the case you filed against him, but he could also file a separate lawsuit.
An answer is your opportunity to respond to the complaint’s factual allegations and legal claims. It also allows you to assert "affirmative defenses," facts or legal arguments you raise to defeat plaintiff’s claim. Filing an answer prevents the plaintiff from getting a default judgment against you. It signals to the court and the other side that you intend to defend the case.
Overview. If you have received a summons and complaint, that probably means you are being sued. Being sued can be one of life’s most stressful experiences. Although it might be tempting to ignore a summons and complaint, ignoring a lawsuit does not make it go away.
On the first page of the summons or complaint, there's a "caption" (heading). That caption should indicate which court the case was filed in (district or justice).
Under Model Rule 8.3 (a), if you know that “another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects,” you “ shall ” inform the proper authority.
your threat of disciplinary charges has no substantial purpose other than to embarrass or harm; or. your threat of disciplinary charges violates other substan tive laws, such as criminal statutes that prohibit extortion.
Limiting threats in this way doesn’t mean that you have nothing to say to that troublesome opposing counsel, says the ABCNY committee. You can confront opposing counsel with evidence of the misconduct, confirm whether she denies it or can explain it, and if appropriate, notify her as a courtesy that you intend to file disciplinary charges. See Roy D. Simon, Threatening to File Grievance Against Opposing Counsel (cited by the ABCNY committee).
But now, counsel has crossed the line with conduct that you think is not merely uncooperative or dilatory, but also unethical.
In other words, under this New York opinion you can’t use a disciplinary-charge threat in order to gain leverage for your client. If the conduct is really an ethical violation, you must analyze whether you have a duty to report it under New York’s version of Model Rule 8.3 (a), and if so, you must pull the trigger, not just make a threat.
you are ethically required to actually report another lawyer’s misconduct, and you instead, threaten a disciplinary complaint to gain some advantage or concession from the lawyer; or. you lack a good faith belief that the other lawyer is engaged in conduct that has violated or will violate an ethical rule; or.
The New York Rules of Professional Conduct actually lack a direct rule on threats to file disciplinary complaints. Therefore, the ABCNY ethics committee had to look to other ethics opinions and several other rules in order to reach its result, including NY Rules 3.1 (b), 4.1 (a) and 8.4 (c). (Likewise, the ABA Model Rules don’t address disciplinary-charge threats directly, although ABA Formal Ethics Op. 94-383 says that other rules “constrain” such threats.)
A guardian ad litem is appointed by the court to act as an independent investigator and make recommendations for the best interests of a child or person with a disability.
A guardian ad Litem is simply another witness, which means that their report can be disputed. Challenging a GAL report involves cross-examining them about their findings and recommendations. It is not recommended that you challenge a GAL report without the help of a qualified attorney.
The judge doesn’t always agree with the guardian ad litem, but they do recognize the importance of the GAL in proceedings.