Its that time of year when attorneys across Illinois should start their continuing legal education if their last names starts with the letters A-M. There are so many ways in which an attorney can do this very important CLE that there is NO excuse not to do so. Every bar association offers it if you are a member. If you work for a public agency they ensure you obtain your CLE with lectures, trainings & more. In private practice an attorney has a plethora of choices. For example half of MoraskLaw, LLC likes to use the CBA classes. The other attorney likes to buy a prepared bundle geared towards the particular fields we practice as well as containing the ethics and morale component.

I find these bundles to not just be a consistently good deal, but to also contain very informative and sometimes unique classes that are really good at teaching long time smaller practioners who have been attorneys for several decades.

A few trends of interest we wanted to point out. The first has been a well needed focus on mental health, stress, and burnout which started at least two cycles ago. Some of these, especially ones I took last cycle were incredibly helpful in tecniques to combat those issues. This trend continues this cycle and in our opinion is an excellant and much needed component for us attorneys who are responsible for what can at times feel like -and to a client, very much is, the weight of the world. As one helpful class puts it, we owe it to our clients to mitigate stress and bolster our mental health. Secondly, in my opinion, discussing these issues lessens the societal stigma around seeking help for mental health issues in any field.

The second trend noted in this year’s CLE cycle is a virtual explosion of classes in dealing with AI. For the ones I’m doing, as a criminal practioner, the focus is in almost every area of our practice. For example, it is considered to possibly constitute an ARDC complaint against us, if a practioner has not kept up with the principles of learning AI, the manner in which it can be used, the manner in which it absolutely should not be used, use by the police in some of their attempts at identifying criminal trends that can have a constitutional impact on our client’s constitutional rights. In this cycle, there are at least 15 classes that deal with AI in various capacities.

While it is fascinating in many respects, it can constitute minefields for the unaware attorney. Don’t let that be you. One of my lectures gave very specific case law examples of attorneys using AI in briefs which many jurisdictions bar and then further failing to actually verify that cases “cited therein” actually exist. This is further cause to be disciplined and is a complete abdication of your duty to your client, the Court, and justice. That’s why in our opinion these classes learning how to best deal with the use of AI in numerous situations and types of law, are extremely valuable to attorneys practicing in all fields.

I have been writing this over a period of time and over the weekend I saw a news blurb about a 70 something grandma who was wrongly identified by a type of AI that the local police department in a small jurisdiction used to unfortunately arrest the wrong person. The police commander in his press conference explained the cascade of things that went wrong. They use AI to create a pool of suspects but it is always supposed to be double checked by a human being police officer and instead someone entered a warrant to arrest based on an AI program (which he claimed he didn’t realize the identifcation was based on). The problem was that that error then led to another error of issuing a warrant based on this so called Identification. This woman was arrested but however had absolutley no ties to the financial case they were looking at. She actually lived in a different state and had nothing to do with this. Imagine this lawsuit. The 70+ lady spent five days in custody until someone figured this out. One of the CLE classes I listened to talked about this exact problem. It isn’t just lawyers who need to worry about proper application, all police departments do as well.