Advocates offer CLE on equitable remedies in Chancery and other divisions, too

The Advocates Society will offer dinner and an hour and a half CLE program at their upcoming general meeting, Tuesday, May 5, starting at 6:30 p.m., at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence. The details and list of speakers is on the program flyer, reproduced above.

The cost (including dinner) is $30 ($20 for Advocates members). Sponsorships are also available, for $100, which also includes dinner and the CLE program. Tickets are available at this page of the Advocates website. The QR code on the poster might work as well; it's just that I never vouch for such things.

Sponsors assert that the program, entitled "Equitable Remedies in ACTION: From Chancery to Other Court Divisions," will, as the title suggests, be of interest to more practitioners than just those who frequent the Chancery courts.

Clerk announces Amnesty Week for traffic fines -- no amnesty or discount on filing fees, however

This notice was in several of my inboxes in the last few days, and I certainly hope that this effort by Circuit Court Clerk Mariyana T. Spyropoulos will rake in some overdue fines that might otherwise have gone uncollected. Lord knows, the County needs the money.

I only wish the Clerk would consider discounted filing fees for appearances, jury demands, and new case filings. It would have done me a lot of good when I was practicing, particularly when representing individuals (as opposed to large corporate clients) in smaller matters. No matter that I attached the receipts, or provided copies of the fee schedules: When the filing fees equal or exceed the lawyer's fee, a lot of clients become convinced that the lawyer is somehow double-dipping. Yes, I realize that much of our filing fee structure is statutory... and the Clerk has limited (if any) discretion in these matters... but still....

Judges and the occasional politician who pays attention to the civil courts may wonder sometimes where all the pro se litigants have come from in recent years. I don't wonder at all. I've just explained it to you.

Passing of retired Associate Judge Michael C. Brown

A reader advised FWIW that former Cook County Associate Judge Michael C. Brown passed away on April 9.

Judge Brown was assigned to both the Criminal Division and the Child Protection Division of the Circuit Court before retiring in 2013. He was a member of the "Harlan 8," one of eight Black judges that sat on the Cook County bench at the same time from a single Chicago public high school. It is believed that no other school in the country has produced that many Black judges sitting on the same court at the same time.

Brown was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. Tributes to Judge Brown are posted on the Maywood Wheaton Alumni Chapter Kappa Alpha Psi Facebook and North Central Province Kappa Alpha Psi Instagram pages.

CBA Vanguard Award winners announced; tickets available for April 21 luncheon

The Chicago Bar Association will host the 2026 Vanguard Awards Luncheon on Tuesday, April 21, at the Union League Club of Chicago, 65 W. Jackson.

The luncheon will begin at noon, following an 11:30 a.m. reception.

Tickets are $75 each; tables of 10 are available for $750. Tickets are available at this page of the CBA website.

The CBA and an ever-increasing number of local bar groups present the Vanguard Awards each spring, honoring individuals and institutions who have made the law and legal profession more accessible to and reflective of the community at large. This year's honorees include a California Supreme Court justice, a judge of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, six Circuit Court judges, one retired Circuit Court judge, and one associate judge Short List hopeful. The list also includes the former Chicago Human Relations Commissioner. The complete list of Vanguard honorees (and the bar groups sponsoring each) is as follows:

• Advocates Society
  Judge Diann K. Marsalek


• Arab American Bar Association of Illinois
  Anthony (“Tony”) Michael Abou Ezzi


• Asian American Bar Association
  Ajay K. Mehrotra, Justice Goodwin H. Liu, and the American Bar Foundation
  for work on "Portrait Project 2.0: Asian Americans in the Legal Profession"


• Black Women Lawyers' Association of Greater Chicago, Inc.
  Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi


• Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago
  Daniel R. Murray


• Chicago Bar Association
  Judge Fredrick H. Bates


• Cook County Bar Association
  Cannon Lambert, Sr.


• Decalogue Society of Lawyers
  Judge Abbey Fishman Romanek


• Filipino American Lawyers Association
  Mark J. Calaguas


• Haitian American Lawyers Association
  Judie Lyn Smith


• Hellenic Bar Association of Illinois
  Judge Koula A. Fournier


• Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois
  Nancy Andrade


• Justinian Society of Lawyers
  Judge Jill Cerone-Marisie


• Korean American Bar Association
  Caroline K. Kwon


• LAGBAC -Chicago's LGBTQ+ Bar Association
  Judge Mary M. Rowland


• Muslim Bar Association of Chicago
  Naheda Zayyad-Hussien


• Puerto Rican Bar Association
  Judge Lucy Vazquez-Gonzalez


• South Asian Bar Association of Chicago
  Avani Patel


• Women's Bar Association of Illinois
  Judge Patrice M. Ball-Reed (ret.)

For a complete list of all past Vanguard Award winners, scroll down to the bottom of this page on the CBA website. There, you will find a link to a downloadable .pdf file showing all Vanguard winners dating back to 1998.

Shambley and Ori declared winners in close judicial races

The Chicago Board of Elections today announced the final results of balloting in the March 17 primary.

As FWIW readers will recall all too well, results in two City-only subcircuit races were too close to call on Election Night; the results depended on late-arriving Vote By Mail ballots and the adjudication of provisional ballots.

In the race for the Walker vacancy in the 1st Subcircuit, Ashley Greer Shambley (pictured above) is the declared winner, with 16,332 votes, besting her nearest challenger, Tiffany N. Brooks, by ony 70 votes.

Meanwhile, in the race for the Gamrath vacancy in the 8th Subcircuit, Kathleen Cunniff Ori (pictured at left) has been declared the winner over her nearest challenger, Elizabeth Christina Dibler, by 208 votes, 14,468 to 14,260.

For those of you keeping score at home, only a single vote was added to Brooks' totals since we last looked at that race. Shambley picked up no additional votes since that last look-in. (However, if you follow the links from that linked March 31 post, you will see that, quite a few votes were added for both candidates from and after Election Night; indeed, Shambley caught up to Brooks, and passed her, as the VBM ballots were counted.)

The 208 margin in Ori's favor also stayed the same since our March 31 article, with both Ori and Dibler picking up but a single vote in the meantime. In this race, however, the lead never changed hands, and the margin in Ori's favor moved only from 171 votes (on Election Night) to the 208-vote margin when the counting stopped.

Better buckle up: Barristers Big Band Benefit Ball battle set for April 24

Not a battle royale, but certainly a royal battle: The music of (as Stevie Wonder put it) the King of All, Sir Duke versus the music of the King of Swing, Chicago's very own Benny Goodman -- that's the theme of this year's CBA Barristers Big Band Benefit Ball, set for Friday April 24 at the Union League Club, 65 W. Jackson Blvd.

A reception opens the proceedings at 6:00 p.m.; dancing begins at 7:00. Tickets are $80 each. Free dance lessons will be offered. For fast learners, or old pros, there will be a dance contest. And everyone -- present or not -- has the opportunity to bid in a silent auction.

All proceeds of the event benefit the Chicago Bar Association's Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

The silent auction is open now, and new items will be posted for the auction until April 18. To place auction bids, visit app.betterunite.com/bbbbb2026. Event tickets are available from the auction page or at this page of the CBA website.

Did we say April 23? Why, yes, yes, we did -- but things have changed

The new date for the Illinois Latino Judges Association Spring Fling Social is April 30. This is the revised flyer for the event:

Still at Chief O'Neill's Pub, 3471 N. Elston Ave. Tickets and all the details for this event can be accessed through the QR code in the flyer above. Otherwise, seek out a member of the Illinois Latino Judges Association and negotiate with him or her.

Looking more closely at the 2026 Short List finalists - Part 2

In Part 2 of this two-part series, FWIW continues its look at each individual associate judge finalist. For Part 1 of this series, click here. Candidates are listed in alphabetical order. I will update this post as necessary.

Mona Naser is a partner with Carlson Dash, specializing in commercial litigation, real estate (commercial and residential), and general corporate law. She has been licensed to practice law in Illinois since 2002, according to ARDC. (She is also licensed to practice in Wisconsin and Arizona.)

Naser is currently the Vice-President and Board Member of the Arab American Bar Association; she previously co-chaired the AABA's Judicial Evaluation Committee. A Past President of the Illinois Creditors Bar Association, and a past Co-Chair of the Chicago Bar Association's Alliance for Women, Naser is also a Trustee of the State Employee Retirement Systems.

A graduate of Chicago Public Schools, Naser did her undergraduate work at the University of Illinois-Chicago before attending DePaul University Law School.

Ginger L. Odom is one of the two appointed judges to make this Short List. At the time of her appointment, in June of last year, Odom was working as the Director of the Expungement Unit in the Office of the State Appellate Defender. She has been licensed in Illinois since 2003, according to ARDC.

A profile of Odom on the Chicago-Kent Law School website (Odom is a 2003 graduate of that school) says that she was a "non-traditional student." She grew up in Texas and moved to New York to study dance and theater as soon as she was old enough, in the mid-1980s, when the city’s artists were caught in the throes of the AIDS epidemic. A single parent while attending law school, Odom waited tables and tended bar to pay her bills.

Odom has served on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Access to Justice (where she has been a member of the Forms Committee) and as an adjunct professor of law at the DePaul University School of Law.

Nickolas G. Pappas is a sole practitioner with an office on South Michigan Avenue. He has been licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1995, according to ARDC.

Before attending law school, Pappas worked as an analyst at Montgomery Ward's corporate headquarters for a few years. He was the first in his family to graduate from college; his immigrant parents operated a restaurant that was open 22 hours a day, serving employees from O’Hare Airport and the surrounding warehouses.

After completing law school, Pappas went to work for the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, serving there eight years before returning to the private sector, joining Querrey & Harrow Ltd. He left that position to care for his father in his father's last illness, thereafter setting up his current, solo practice. In his current role, Pappas has worked as a Special State's Attorney representing the Illinois Department of Healthcare & Family Services in Title IV-D cases. He was also general counsel for Lakeland Healthcare Group, LLC from December 2012 until April 2015.

Julia B. Ramirez is a Cook County Assistant State's Attorney. She has been licensed to practice in Illinois since 2008.

I spotted a post from the Illinois Latino Judges Association congratulating Ramirez for making the Short List (that's where I grabbed the head shot) but, as often happens with ASAs or assistant public defenders, there is not a lot on line for me to pull together anything but the most basic biographical post. This is one of those posts that is likely to be amended in the days to come.

Anthony Ruffin is a career Cook County Assistant Public Defender, practicing in the Child Protection Division, Juvenile Justice Division and Misdemeanor Trial Section until 2005. He moved to the Felony Trial Division and is currently assigned to the Multiple Defendant Unit. He has been licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1994, according to ARDC.

Ruffin has been a paralegal instructor at Northwestern College in Bridgeview, Illinois for 22 years, teaching legal research and writing, civil and business litigation for 22 years.

A college football player at Purdue, Ruffin attended law school at Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston, Texas. He subsequently obtained an LLM in intellectual property in 1997 from what was then still the John Marshall Law School. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated.

Linda Sackey was appointed to the bench in late 2024 but was passed over by the Cook County Democratic Party at slating time. Sackey was admitted to practice in Illinois in 2006, according to ARDC. At the time of her appointment, she was serving as a Judicial Clerk to Illinois Supreme Court Justice Mary Jane Theis.

Sackey began her legal career as a staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She then worked as an associate at Mayer Brown LLP for five years. From 2013 to 2018 Sackey was an Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Appeals Division of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. She joined Justice Theis's chambers in 2019. She also served as an adjunct professor at The John Marshall Law School in 2016.

Sackey has served as a member of the Board of Directors of both the Cook County Bar Association and the Appellate Lawyers Association.

Smith Spencer is an attorney with Michael D. Gallo & Associates, joining that office after serving for 17 years as an Assistant Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago, including a four-year stint as Supervising ACC of the Torts Division. She has been licensed in Illinois since 2003, according to ARDC.

Spencer began her legal career in Wisconsin, attending the University of Wisconsin for both undergraduate and law school, before working for the university's Office of Equity and Diversity as a civil rights investigator and attorney. She then served as counsel for the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services, from 2001-2004, representing the State in daycare and rehabilitation facility licensing hearings and investigating Medicare fraud claims.

Spencer has volunteered with Cradles to Crayons and Autism Speaks. She has also been a volunteer mentor for the Girl Scouts of America Project Law Track.

Looking more closely at the 2026 Short List candidates - Part 1

Updated 4/2/26

This is Part 1 of a two-part look at the 14 associate judge finalists. For Part 2 of this series, click here. Candidates are listed in alphabetical order. I will update this post as necessary.

Matthew J. Canna is a partner with Costello Ginex & Wideikis, PC. He has been licensed in Illinois since 2003, according to ARDC. His firm biography highlights his experience in premises lability, trucking and automobile negligence, and construction negligence cases. He began his legal career with Hinshaw & Culbertson, and also worked as a plaintiff's attorney, according to the CGW bio, handling wrongful death, medical malpractice, and catastrophic personal injury claims.

A graduate of Marist High School, the University of Notre Dame (with a degree in mechanical engineering), and Chicago-Kent Law School, according to his firm bio, Canna has served on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Special Olympics.

Juanishá N. Dotson is an Assistant Public Defender, serving in the Felony Trial Division of that office; she has been licensed in Illinois since 2010, according to ARDC. Dotson notes that she has tried a hundred bench or jury cases to verdict in the course of her career. She told FWIW that she teaches trial practice and advocacy at Loyola University Chicago and coaches the Chicago Cup Competition and Constance Baker Motley Mock Trial Teams.

A native of Houston, Texas, Dotson did her undergraduate work at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans and went to law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, before arriving in Chicago and setting up her own practice, doing a little bit of everything, including family law, personal injury, and wills and trusts. She currently serves serves on the Board of Managers for the Chicago Bar Association (CBA) and the Executive Board of Directors for Chicago’s LGBTQ+ Bar Association (LAGBAC). Dotson was recently appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court as a member of the Committee on Character and Fitness for the First District.

Caroline K. Kwon has been practicing in Child Protection Court for almost 30 years. She was a supervisor with the Cook County Public Guardian’s Office, representing children in the foster care system as their attorney and guardian ad litem. She joined the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office as a first chair in Child Protection Court in 2019. Kwon has been licensed to practice law in Illinois since 1996, according to ARDC.

Kwon is a former President of the Korean American Bar Association and currently serves as an Advisory Board Member. She is also a board member of the Asian American Bar Association Law Foundation which provides scholarships to law school students. Kwon is a former board member of Hanul Family Services which provides social services to older adults, immigrants and low income families.

Kwon did her undergraduate work at Loyola University Chicago. She is a graduate of the Universtiy of Illinois Chicago Law School.

Daniel T. Madigan is a partner with Napleton & Partners. He joined that firm in 1996, when it was known as Motherway & Napleton, after a three-year stint as an Assistant Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago. He has been licensed as an attorney in Illinois since 1993, according to ARDC.

Madigan also served as a prosecutor for the Village of Western Springs from 2012-2017 and has been a Commissioner for the Illinois Court of Claims since 2013.

Madigan attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for both his undergraduate and law degrees. He now serves on the University of Illinois College of Law’s Advisory Board and as an advisor for the Chicago Bar Association Moot Court Competition. He is a member of the ISBA Assembly.

Alexander D. Marks is a partner with the firm of Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C., concentrating in complex commercial litigation, while also chairing the firm’s pro bono committee. Marks is also an arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association (panelist for Commercial Litigation, Consumer Disputes, and Labor and Employment). He has been licensed to practice law in Illinois since 2004, according to ARDC.

The current president of the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, Marks was appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Professional Responsibility; he also serves on the Chicago Bar Foundation Pro Se Advisory Committee.

Marks obtained his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Illinois and has served on the Northbrook Youth Baseball Board of Directors. He has written a novella, "Little League, Big Lessons. Life Wisdom From A Summer of Youth Baseball" (although, as this post was prepared, it is not currently available on Amazon).

Tene McCoy Cummings has been a Cook County Assistant State's Attorney for over 23 years, currently serving as the Deputy Chief of the Special Victims Bureau in that office. Licensed as an attorney in Illinois since 1998, according to ARDC, McCoy Cummings began her legal career as a staff attorney for the United Auto Workers Legal Services Plan.

McCoy Cummings was a recipient of the 2026 C.F. Stradford Award in recognition of her work for domestic violence awareness. Throughout her career at the CCSAO, she has prosecuted hundreds of serious crimes, including murders, domestic violence cases, and sexual assaults.

McCoy Cummings also serves as the President of the Ability Alliance Network Employee Resource Group, an ISBA Assembly Member, and as a volunteer for Lawyers in the Classroom. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated. McCoy Cummings attended Howard University for both her undergraduate and law degrees.

Gregory T. Mitchell practices with the Law Office of Gregory T. Mitchell, P.C. in Homewood, concentrating, according to his firm website, in federal criminal defense and employment law. He has been licensed to practice in Illinois since 1987, according to ARDC.

A Marine Corps veteran, Mitchell served as a personnel officer and, after completing law school (at the University of Illinois, in 1987), as a Staff Judge Advocate. He founded his current firm in 2000.

Mitchell obtained his undergraduate degree in 1980, from Drake University. He also holds a Master of Public Administration Degree from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, a degree conferred in 1984.