Rita B. Garman
SPRINGFIELD — For the second time in three years, attorney registration fees are going up.
The state’s top court announced this morning that the registration fee will increase by $3 for 2017 for in-state lawyers who have been active for at least three years.
Attorneys who have been active for less than three years, who have an inactive status or who are listed as out-of-state attorneys will not be subject to the increase.
Annual fees were increased by $40 at the start of 2015, from $342 to $382. But the new increase will go specifically to fund the Lawyers’ Assistance Program, which helps those in the legal profession with drug, alcohol and mental health abuse problems and which currently receives $7 out of every attorney’s annual fee.
The increase is expected to generate an additional $200,000 total for the program, a spokeswoman for the high court said. That estimate is an approximation based on the current number of lawyers who’ve been active for more than three years.
Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Rita B. Garman said in a statement today that the change is “modest” but would have a “significant impact” on the LAP. She said there’s a strong link between lawyer-discipline problems and substance abuse.
“I have often observed that when the [c]ourt is called upon to impose professional discipline on an attorney for some sort of professional misconduct, the attorney very often has an underlying history of substance abuse or mental illness,” Garman said.
“Intervention by the LAP, thus, serves not only the attorney whose career may be impacted by these issues, but the members of the public who have placed their trust in the attorney.”
The boost is specifically aimed at increasing the LAP’s outreach and educational abilities and to meet increasing demand for such assistance, said Robin M. Belleau, the program’s executive director.
The program currently gets about 300 requests for help each year from lawyers, judges and law students. And the number has gone up as more people have found out about what the group offers, she said.
“Lawyers are not very good at asking for help for themselves,” Belleau said. “And the reason being we’re the problem-solvers of society, so people usually come to us for help.”
Belleau said LAP would also like to open up a midstate office either in Springfield or Bloomington. It currently has offices in Chicago and Belleville.
The fee increase comes on the heels of a study done by the American Bar Association Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs and the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, which was published in February in the American Society of Addiction Medicine. It shows more than a quarter of lawyers suffer from depression, while 21 percent had issues with alcohol.
It also showed that attorneys under the age of 30 were the ones showing the most anxiety, unlike previous reports which suggested lawyers who were winding down their careers tended to feel the most stress or depression, Belleau said.
“The numbers were so staggering that people really felt the need to pay attention to it,” she said.
She added that the program requested the $3 increase from the Supreme Court on March 15.
“The increase in funding will enable the Lawyers’ Assistance Program to continue to fulfill its mission of helping lawyers, judges and law students get assistance for these issues, educate the legal community concerned about addiction and mental health issues and protect clients from impaired lawyers and judges,” said J. Nelson Wood, president of the group’s board of directors, in a release.