Keeping your Durkins straight

There's been a lot of news lately about Chicago attorneys named Thomas Durkin of late. One of these (the one at right) is among the attorneys representing the NATO-3, the three out-of-towners picked up during the recent NATO Summit on state terrorism charges.

The CBS Chicago website refers to this attorney only as "Thomas Durkin," as does the ABC7 website.

But, although it did not do so originally, the Chicago Sun-Times has begun referring to this attorney as Thomas Anthony Durkin. As far as I can tell, the Chicago Tribune has referred to this attorney as Thomas Anthony Durkin right along.

The use of the attorney's middle name is important because another Chicago attorney named Thomas Durkin -- Thomas M. Durkin, a Mayer Brown partner, was recently nominated, just last month, to the Federal bench in Chicago.


That's Thomas M. Durkin, above.

Regular readers of this blog are, by definition, assumed to be sufficiently sophisticated to make this distinction between Durkins. But U.S. Senators may be more easily confused. Consider this, then, a public service.