ARDC Releases 2021 Annual Report
The Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC), the administrative agency that regulates licensed Illinois lawyers, has filed its year 2021 Annual Report with the Supreme Court of Illinois. The report will be released to the public on April 29 when a copy is posted on the ARDC website. The ARDC was created in 1973 and in 2022 is beginning its 50th year of assisting the Supreme Court in promoting and protecting the integrity of the legal profession in Illinois.
A summary of the Annual Report entitled Highlights of the 2021 Annual Reportis also available.
The ARDC annually evaluates the effectiveness of the attorney disciplinary system. Complete and comprehensive statistics concerning the disciplinary caseload are submitted to the Illinois Supreme Court and are published in the Annual Report. Few professions account for their regulatory activity in such detail. In 2021, the Supreme Court disbarred 16 lawyers, placed 62 lawyers on suspension (with or without a term of probation), and censured six lawyers.
The 2021 Annual Report notes that the ARDC completely redesigned its website in July 2021 to make it more user friendly and to improve users’ ability to research Illinois disciplinary reports and opinions. The website handles all registration matters for attorneys, is a portal for connecting the legal profession to various educational resources, and contains a searchable database of Illinois lawyers through which users can easily locate attorneys’ credentials and contact information. Annual Reports for every year since the ARDC’s founding in 1973 are kept on the website, and there were over 1.4 million visits to the site last year.
The report also examines how the ARDC continued to function, largely remotely, during the pandemic shutdown. A majority of ARDC employees worked from home, requests for investigation were accepted by e-mail, legal filings were accomplished electronically, and statements and hearings were conducted remotely via WebEx. The ARDC also completed a transition of its data to a Cloud-based system in 2021, further enabling remote work.
The 2021 Annual Report includes a summary of the ARDC’s Education Initiative. In 2021, the ARDC’s website contained 29 on-demand, recorded webcasts providing 20.25 free hours of professional responsibility Minimum Continuing Legal Education credit. 32,419 certificates of MCLE completion were issued in 2021, totaling 24,274 hours of professional responsibility MCLE credit earned. Additionally, ARDC staff lawyers gave 117 presentations to bar associations and law-related organizations during 2021 and provided research assistance and guidance regarding ethical issues in 2,817 calls to its Ethics Inquiry Program.
In its Annual Report, the ARDC accounts to the Supreme Court for money received and spent. No tax money is used to fund the agency. All operating funds are taken from an annual registration fee paid by Illinois attorneys. By Supreme Court rule, lawyers pay an annual fee of $385. Of that amount, $95 is remitted to the Lawyers Trust Fund to fund legal services for the poor; $25 funds the ARDC Client Protection Program to indemnify victims of lawyer misconduct; $25 is submitted to the Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism to help that entity’s efforts to promote civility and inclusion in the legal profession; $20 is sent to the Lawyers’ Assistance Program, an organization that helps lawyers, judges, law students, and their families with alcohol abuse, drug dependency, or mental health problems; $10 is remitted to the Supreme Court’s Commission on Access to Justice to facilitate access to civil courts and administrative agencies for low-income and vulnerable Illinoisians; and the balance of the registration fee is used by the ARDC to pay for lawyer regulation. The ARDC’s Client Protection Program paid out $715,311 on 58 claims in 2021.
There are seven ARDC Commissioners – four members of the Illinois Bar and three non-lawyers, all appointed by the Supreme Court. The ARDC Chair is Timothy L. Bertschy of Dunlap. The Vice Chair is John H. Simpson of Chicago. The Commissioners, who receive no compensation for their services, create ARDC policies, establish an operating budget, appoint members of the Inquiry and Hearing Boards, and manage the Client Protection Program. Subject to the approval of the Supreme Court, the Commissioners appoint the ARDC’s chief executive officer, the Administrator. The Administrator is Jerome Larkin.
There are two ARDC offices: One Prudential Plaza in Chicago and 3161 White Oaks Drive in Springfield.