The program, on Thursday May 25, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., is geared, according to its sponsors, towards both those individuals thinking of seeking elective office and those attorneys who may be called upon to represent those candidates.
Potential judicial candidates are not the only ones who might benefit from this program. Potential candidates for suburban school boards or library districts or (Heaven help us) possible candidates for alderperson, committeeperson, or the General Assembly may all benefit.
Here is a list of the scheduled topics and speakers:
Barbara B. Goodman, of the Law Office of Barbara B. Goodman, will serve as moderator. Goodman is Chair of the CBA Election Law Committee.
- Getting on the Ballot
Michael C. Dorf, The Law Offices of Michael C. Dorf, LLC
- Navigating the Petition Objection Process
Thomas A. Jaconetty, Law Office of Thomas A. Jaconetty
- Ethical and Financial Compliance Considerations
Ross Secler, Odelson, Sterk, Murphey, Frazier & McGrath, Ltd.
- Election Day and Voting Rights Considerations
Adam Lasker, General Counsel, Chicago Board of Elections
Attendees will receive 2.0 hours of MCLE credit (including .5 hours of PR-MCLE credit).
The cost to attend is $125 (CBA members get in for $65 -- members of the CBA CLE-Advantage Plan can register for free). Registration can be accomplished by clicking this link.
Odelson's office hasn't knocked a candidate off the ballot in years. So, don't go with him if that's part of your election strategy.
ReplyDeleteAnon 5/16 @ 2:32 p.m. -- Your comment was not flushed because I wanted to make an example of it. It is the kind of comment that should be flushed, and will be flushed going forward: A gratuitous attack, launched from the safety of anonymity, wholly unsupported by evidence of any kind. Mainly because Odelson et al., like all the other election law attorneys out there, do not limit their practice to judicial candidates alone. And, like all the other election law attorneys out there, looking at their results in all cases in all races, they win some and they lose some.
ReplyDeleteMore important, Odelson's office has a decades-long track record of getting candidates on the ballot, and if that's part of your 'election strategy' (duh), they should be considered.
Knocking people off the ballot is not always warranted or possible. The Election Code is chock full of gotchas for the unwary. However, if someone has retained competent counsel and carefully and scrupulously followed counsel's advice, dotting all their i's and crossing all their t's, no one is going to knock that person off the ballot, not Odelson, not nobody.
Success in knocking candidates off the ballot is not guaranteed. The only thing guaranteed is that is expensive to try. It's expensive just to determine whether a petition attack is warranted. And, if an attack is theoretically possible, the prospects for success, especially in close cases, must be carefully evaluated -- and all of this must be done in a very small window of time. And, Lord knows, even if an attack is possible, and winnable according to established case law -- even then -- as in every other practice area I know of -- it may not necessarily succeed.
And if counsel (any competent election attorney) says a petition attack is not likely to succeed, counsel may well be doing you a solid, consistent with counsel's fiduciary duty to you as the client. As in almost all things legal, it depends.
I'm not doing a testimonial here for Burt Odelson or anyone else (although, full disclosure, I know Burt and I've worked with at least one of his current partners on a few matters over the years). But I bristle at stabs from the shadows. Like yours, Anon.