Congratulations to Staff Attorney Ali Abid on Partner of the Year Award

On Saturday October 4th, at their 132nd Annual Assembly, the Community Renewal Society honored Chicago Appleseed Staff Attorney, Ali Abid, with their Partner of the Year Award. The Community Renewal Society is a progressive, faith-based organization that works to eliminate race and class barriers....
October 8, 2014

The Clerk of the Court Should Serve the Community

The Clerk of the Court of Cook County has considered—and apparently rejected—a policy change that would have charged all parties to receive the first copy of any order issued in their case. At Chicago Appleseed and the Chicago Council of Lawyers, we are glad to learn that this policy won’t be adopte...
May 8, 2014

Access to Justice

Effective July 1, 2016, the Massachusetts bar exam will include essay questions related to access to justice issues. The questions will cover practice areas typically handled by legal aid services, self help services and pro se parties, such as Landlord-Tenant, child support, custody and divorce, as...
May 6, 2014

An Open Letter from Community-Based Service Providers

You may be aware that the Chicago Transit Authority  will end its program to help ex-offenders gain work experience cleaning rail cars and buses on Dec. 31. We received the following “open letter” from the John Howard Association of Illinois this morning, urging that the program be saved. At Chicag...
December 12, 2013

How Locking Up Adolescents Contributes to Crime

In June, Anna Aizer and Joseph Doyle, in conjuction with the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts released a working paper on rates of incarceration for juvenile offenders and how they correlate with future criminal acts: Juvenile Incarceration, Human Capital And Future C...
July 25, 2013