Michael Tolbert’s turn to lead the Indiana State Bar Association could not have come at a more challenging time. Having led multiple local bar groups, the Gary native takes the helm at the ISBA during a time of pandemic and persistent racial inequities that at times have put the law and lawyers on the defensive. Tolbert, though, is relentlessly optimistic.
Read MoreWhat began with a desire to help and an offhanded comment about jumping into Lake Michigan has ended with the Lake County Bar Association raising a record $15,000 for the Northwest Indiana Food Bank.
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has appointed two lawyers and one nonlawyer to the Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission, completing the selection of the JNC under controversial legislation enacted this year that changed the makeup of two judicial nominating groups.
Attorneys from the Lake County Bar Association took a break from the law to spend part of Thursday morning at Washington Irving Elementary School in Hammond, where they handed out 114 Care Bears to third-grade students and taught youngsters the importance of being kind.
The Lake County Bar Association will hold an in-person robing ceremony in honor of the newest judge of the Lake Superior Court later this month.
The structure of judicial selection in Lake and St. Joseph counties will soon change now that Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has signed controversial legislation changing the composition of the judicial selection panels in the northern Indiana counties.
Despite final pleas from Lake County Democratic lawmakers to kill a controversial judicial selection bill that one said treats their county and St. Joseph County “as stepchildren,” the Indiana House voted Wednesday to agree to Senate amendments, sending House Bill 1453 to Gov. Eric Holcomb.
A parade of attorneys from Lake and St. Joe counties testified against House Bill 1453. Most spoke in disbelief that this was happening without any prior consideration. They explained why they had taken their time and traveled all the way down to Indianapolis, some twice, to tell lawmakers why this is a bad idea and why the current judicial nominating system works. It was enough to give any reasonable person pause. But this is the Indiana Legislature we’re talking about.
A bill that would change how superior court judges are nominated in Lake and St. Joseph counties was uniformly opposed by lawyers and judges from those counties in a Senate hearing Wednesday but narrowly advanced on a 5-4 vote.
Legislation that has drawn fire from bar associations and members of the legal community who say proposed changes to judicial appointments would politicize the trial court benches in Lake and St. Joseph counties will be heard Wednesday by a Senate committee.
The Lake County Bar Association on Thursday issued the most damning rebuke to date of a bill in the Indiana General Assembly that would alter how judges in that county and St. Joseph County are selected. The northwest Indiana county’s bar called the bill “an abomination” and “a political power play by parties not even within Lake County to take even more power away from the people of Lake County in selecting their judges.”
For the second time this year, the Indiana State Bar Association is publicly opposing legislation targeting judicial selection in Indiana, this time speaking against a bill that it says would “unnecessarily change a working system” for judicial selection in Lake and St. Joseph counties.
A bill in the Legislature would restructure the composition of judicial nominating commissions in Lake and St. Joseph counties. Currently, an even number of attorneys and nonattorney members are appointed by local stakeholders, but the proposal would reduce attorney representation, which has prompted a backlash in the northern Indiana legal communities.
Efforts to amend a bill that would fundamentally change the composition of the judicial nominating commissions in Lake and St. Joseph counties failed in the Indiana House on Tuesday, setting up the controversial legislation for a possible final House vote next week.
Legal professionals in Lake and St. Joseph counties are raising serious concerns about advancing legislation that would change the structure of the local judicial nominating commissions that shape the state trial court judiciary in the northern Indiana counties.
The Lake County Bar Association not only surpassed but more than doubled its fundraising goal to help the hungry in their community.
After a series of software failures, increasing anxiety and a quick pivot to another format, Indiana administered the state’s first remote bar exam Tuesday without an apparent glitch.
On the federal level, ratings of judicial nominees are often cast as partisan. But in Indiana’s state courts, bar leaders say they view their role as helping Hoosiers to impartially decide whether members of the judiciary are adequately serving their communities.
After a protracted battle between the judge and the city, the Hammond City Court will not be accepting any new civil filings after Sept. 30 in anticipation of the court’s closure at the end of the year, according to a letter sent to local bar members from Hammond City Court Judge Amy Jorgensen.
Around Indiana, attorneys put aside their lawyerly work recently to paint, clean, stock, harvest, weed, plant, saw and hammer. They volunteered in their communities as part of the Indiana State Bar Association’s fourth annual Week of Service, Sept. 23-29.
Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb will select one of three magistrate judges to fill the vacancy on the Lake Superior Court created when Judge Elizabeth Tavitas was appointed to the Indiana Court of Appeals this summer. The Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission late Tuesday named magistrate judges Lisa A. Berdine, Thomas P. Hallett and Nanette K. Raduenz as finalists to succeed Tavitas in Lake Superior Court 3, family division.