Talk about timely! CBA Bar Show anticipates holiday headline

The printed circuitry on the faces of Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed is reproduced on all the promotional materials for the Chicago Bar Association's 100th Annual Bar Show, "It's AI Wonderful Life." It's the cover story on this month's issue of the CBA Record, for example.

This year's production will be staged January 12 and 13 at the Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave. Tickets are available at this link.

The Bar Show, formerly known as "Christmas Spirits," has always taken aim at the highlights (or lowlights) of the news of the year -- but, this year, with their cybernetic Jimmy Stewart, they appear to have actually predicted the news.

Or haven't you heard?

Although Jimmy Stewart died a quarter of a century ago, in 1997, he is being resurrected, sort of, by the sleep and meditation app Calm. According to CNN, Calm has employed "Generative AI" to imitate Stewart's distinctive drawl reading a new story, "It's a Wonderful Sleep Story." It's all being done with the consent and permission of Stewart's heirs.

Both CNN and USA Today quote Stewart's daughter, Kelly Stewart Harcourt: "It's amazing what technology can do and wonderful to see Dad’s legacy live on this holiday season in new ways, like helping people find restful sleep and sweet dreams."

Here, of course, where the surviving family is on board, this innovation seems reasonable... if maybe a little creepy. But... what if there is no surviving family? What if there is no estate managing the 'talent's' afterlife affairs? Does a voice ever slip into the public domain? This seems like an appropriate use for Jimmy Stewart's voice... again, the family thinks so... but could the voice of a dead actor... or politician... or religious leader... or tyrant... be employed for less innocent, even evil, purposes?

Technology is amoral. And not at all concerned about it, either.

Just because we can do something... like find new ways to exploit the images and voices of dead celebrities... does that mean we should?

I suspect lawyers and lawmakers will be grappling with these issues long after "It's AI Wonderful Life" is forgotten entirely. But (doing my best Jimmy Stewart imitation now), doggone it, the CBA got there first. Isn't that amazing?

Natural gas stove ban would be great... if only it actually slowed consumption of natural gas

I'm not Andy Rooney, but I'm feeling cantankerous and curmudgeonly these days and, like the late Mr. Rooney, I'm not afraid to tell you about it.

This item on 'X', the site formerly known as Twitter, caught my eye the other day. I reposted it, in fact:

Effective ban on natural gas in new buildings on Johnson's to-do list https://t.co/7oVvU1hOXW

— Crain's Chicago Business (@CrainsChicago) September 28, 2023

I remember way back -- a couple of months ago at least -- when talk of progressives coming for our gas stoves was dismissed as another manifestation of reactionary paranoia. But don't worry: I'm not going in that direction....

Although it would be nice if we could consult back issues of major newspapers on some objective, third-party website, where we could track down and resurrect the assurances in this regard that were provided by so many worthy pundits. Something like what Nexus used to be... and is no more. I wrote a while back (in my long-winded, slow to the point, but unfailingly polite way) about how the removal of content from Nexus threatens all of us -- but this post is not about my Orwellian anxieties either.

Instead, let us stipulate, after the intellectual fashion of this era, Burning Fossil Fuels Bad, Electricity Good.

(Ideas more complex than this tend to give people headaches or at least hurt peoples' feelings.)

And, if we just accept this stipulation, we don't have to pretend that we buy the 'safety' justification for a natural gas ban. Nobody died when functioning gas appliances had pilot lights, and most gas appliances, and certainly all gas stoves, haven't had pilot lights for about a generation. (We can discount the occasional gas explosion -- otherwise you'd have to start toting up how many die from electric appliances that short circuit.) Besides, our pretexts are always good; it is only their pretexts that are bad.

So, we're all on board now, smug and secure in our righteousness... only... well... it's just... there was this other thing on my desk... and I've been trying to figure out how to reconcile this with our cause:

The company that provides my electricity is required to send me a disclosure every so often, letting me know how my electricity is produced. This is the most recent disclosure.

It has a lovely pie chart. Lovely, that is, until you see that the biggest single slice of the pie is natural gas. Forty two percent (42 really is the ultimate answer, isn't it?) of my nice, clean electricity comes from burning natural gas.

Another third comes from nuclear energy -- and we're all against that, aren't we? -- and still another 18% comes from burning coal.

I understand if you need to sit down for a few moments at this point.

Now, it would be great if we could get all our electricity from wind or solar power... I've got family in Florida that has solar panels on their roof generating so much electricity that, even after running the household, charging their two electric cars, and charging their electric golf cart, the household usually has some spare electricity to put into the electrical grid every month.

But the key words in the preceding sentence are "in Florida." The occasional hurricane notwithstanding, they don't call Florida the Sunshine State for nothing. Meanwhile, here in Chicago, there are long stretches where the Sun is not seen. Winter, for example. So my energy disclosure reveals that only 1% of my electricity comes from solar power.

Bummer.

So if I parade my virture by getting rid of my gas-fired stove, my new electric stove will still get 42% of its power from burning natural gas... and still more from nukes and coal besides. Which would be worse, right?

It's almost as if making sound policy in the grown-up world isn't as easy as mouthing the 'correct' slogans -- e.g., Burning Fossil Fuels Bad, Electricity Good. But that can't be right, can it?

The only way I can think of to get my money's worth out of this....

A couple of months ago I paid off my car loan.

(Thank you.)

It will come as no surprise to most of you that the actual amount owed on said car loan at any given time was something of a moving target. The monthly bill contained a specific payoff amount, but only if you paid that amount on one specific day, and probably at one particular hour, whilst standing on one foot whistling a tune to be named later. The makers of the loan were extremely cautious, lest they lose a single minute of accumulating interest.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I needed the car. I needed the loan to get the car. The dealer sold me the car and arranged for me to get the loan from the car manufacturer. When I took the money, I took all that came with it.

But, finally, after what seemed like a very long time (because it was in fact a very long time), my monthly payment and the payoff amount came within shouting distance of each other. I tried my best to calculate, as near as I was able, the exact amount including the last penny of juice that the lender could squeeze from the loan, and added in another $5 besides, and I put that final payment in the mail.

Yes, Millennials and Zoomers, I am fully cognizant of the fact that I could have much more precisely calculated the exact payoff amount if I'd only paid on line.

I do pay most of my bills that way. But this bill I paid by mail. There's more psychic satisfaction, in my opinion, in putting a check like this in the mail than in clicking a couple of buttons on the keyboard. Anyway, that's a collateral point, at best.

My goal was to pay off the loan with this one final negotiable instrument (look, Millennials and Zoomers, you learned about checks in high school consumer ed, even if you have never written one, and you probably got a refresher when you covered the UCC in law school, so stop pretending you don't know what I'm talking about).

I fully understood that the car might yet be re-po'd if I were even a penny short. So I tried to go over the exact amount due. But I also tried to come as close as possible to the exact amount.

And you know what? I succeeded.

When the final check cleared, I was 61¢ ahead.

Pretty good, I thought.

Time went on, and all the required paperwork trickled in confirming that I had actually repaid the loan in full (and 61¢ of then-some), but the overage was not refunded. I did not stress. I did not even care if I got stiffed out of my 61¢ windfall. I was a solo practitioner for the last 20 or so years: I've been stiffed out of lots bigger amounts owed than 61¢. Lots, lots, lots bigger.

I was fine... until I got this:

You are looking at a "prepaid Mastercard" issued by Chrysler Capital, as a part of a program administered by North Lane Technologies, Inc. Pre-loaded, allegedly, with my 61¢. According to the materials to which this card is affixed, if those 61 sweet centavos are not residing physically within the card, they are held at or transferable to Sunrise Banks, N.A.

I've fuzzed out the individually identifying numbers in this picture because I don't want this windfall to fall into the clutches of the Russians. Or the North Koreans.

And, as you can see, all I have to do to tap into this largesse is activate the card and obtain a PIN, either by calling a 1-800 number, visiting the North Lane website (not the bank where the money is waiting), or downloading the North Lane Mobile App.

Because, obviously, one can't be too careful when dealing with these enormous sums.

TikTok seems positively reputable compared to this, doesn't it?

And I haven't even mentioned the $3 monthly fee yet....

Yes, there's a $3 monthly fee that accrues starting in the month following the card's expiration date... you know... if there's anything left on the card after the stated expiration date. Let's see... $3 deducted from a 61¢ balance... I'm a lawyer, so the only math I can do is dividing by three, but I don't think that works very well....

But, OK, assuming that one is willing to sign up for this card -- we'll call it merely registering, of course -- but, either way, necessary, of course, to get the PIN -- allowing all these companies access to one's identifying information, how many places can there be where one can use a debit card with 61¢ on it?

I can just see the happy faces of the cashier and my fellow customers at my local Jewel, were I to pull out this card as the week's groceries are totaled up -- here, let me put the first 61¢ of this on this card right here....

But what really annoys me about this card -- aside from the fact that these 61¢ were brought so tantalizingly close to my grasp, and yet so cruelly kept just beyond -- is that it must have cost a heck of a lot more than 61¢ to deny me that modest sum in this manner.

That, and the obvious fact that someone got paid to come up with this scheme to keep refunds from being paid. Wouldn't it have been a whole lot simpler to just keep the money and not tell anyone? It certainly would have been cheaper to write me a check for the 61¢....

Book focuses on family formation on the frontier

Born of Lakes and Plains, by University of Oklahoma history professor Anne F. Hyde, looks at five different families, over a period of a couple hundred years, from the late 1600s to the late 1800s, each founded by the union of a Native American woman and a European man. The men were traders and trappers (initially beaver trappers) and the women were, with perhaps varying degrees of personal enthusiasm, but in accordance with their duties to their parents and their cultural norms, helping to cement the loyalty and assistance of the European men for their respective tribes. Born of Lakes and Plains tracks the descendants of these unions as they struggled to perserve their property and their culture.

As with all family stories, if told over such a long stretch of time as is involved here, there are conflicts, triumphs and tragedies, people that seem likable, and people that seem loathsome, heroes and villians both in the same or succeeding generations. In this sense in particular, the scope of the work, trying to keep track of so many for so long, left a lot of seemingly interesting stories untold, or told only in outline form.

Perhaps a lot of effort is wasted trying to convince the reader that connubial contact betweeen cultures, and the families resulting, was normal, frequent, and as necessary to European expansion into tribal territories as the erection of forts and the deployment of troops. Perhaps more necessary.

I suppose that the typical reader may not realize how frequently, left to their own devices, Europeans and tribal peoples mixed and began to forge their own cultures, or adopt, more or less, the culture of one of the parties to the union.

Today's history students have heard of the Trail of Tears. the forced removal of the Cherokee and other tribes to Oklahoma from their homes in what is now the American Southeast. They probably don't know that the principal Chief of the Cherokee during this dark chapter in American history, John Ross, was, by 'blood', roughly seven-eighths European. This biographic sketch, on the Oklahoma Historical Society website, does not even mention this. Wikipedia notes that Ross was the son of a Scots trader and a mixed-blood Cherokee woman. Ross's great-grandmother, Ghigooie, was a full-blooded Cherokee; she married William Shorey, a Scottish interpreter. Their daughter Anna, Ross's grandmother, married John McDonald, a Scots trader.

But, because Cherokee society was matrilineal, Ross was considered Cherokee by the Cherokee. This was the case with other tribes also, as Hyde explains in Born of Lakes and Plains. This cultural fact explained how and why persons of mixed-descent could, at least initially, move fairly easily between European and tribal societies.

This changed, in time, as Hyde documents. I thought one story in particular illustrated this: Hyde recounts how one mixed-descent person in one of the families she followed, in the Pacific Northwest, could get elected to local office -- but could not vote for himself because he had been branded an 'Indian.'

I read a book a couple of years back, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, by Jill Lepore, which explored the conflict between Indian tribes and English colonoists in New England in the 1670s (a war that, for a time, seemed as if it might result in the conquest of the not-yet-so-well-established English settlers). It occurred to me then that the war resulted because the ministers of Boston and Salem were alarmed that some of their congregants were 'going native' just as tribal chieftains were getting concerned that their subjects were getting too chummy with the English: Leaders on both sides faced loss of status and their respective subjects mixed and mingled and started creating a distinctly American culture... one in which the existing leaders might not play the central role.

We don't have competing cultures clashing on a frontier in our modern day and age... but we seem to have no end of 'leaders' looking to divide us from our neighbors over issues of identity. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven indeed, as Milton had Lucifer put it in Paradise Lost. But however it may benefit some 'leaders' today, it doesn't help the rest of us one bit.

That process of cultural separation divided some of the families Professor Hyde follows in Born of Lakes and Plains. It virtually destroyed some others. It forced people to choose one world or another -- but both worlds were changed, irrevocably, by the personal choices made by persons in proximity to one another, whether the leaders of those worlds recognized it or not. More than tribal place names survive in our world, too, whether you or I carry any mixed-descent heritage or not, or whether we as a society acknowledge it or not. That's not what Hyde's book is about; she's just providing a foundation for people to realize how much adjacent cultures shared, and for how long. But it's important to realize that foundation exists, and Hyde's book is important for that reason.

Musing about Committeepersons in the Bad Old Days and their role today

Letters. If people remember anything about what Democratic Party Committeemen (they weren't "committeepersons" then) did during the Bad Old Days (for our purposes we'll use this phrase to refer to the reign of Richard J. Daley, pictured here), they'll remember letters.

A letter from one's home committeeman was necessary in order for one to be considered for any public sector job -- and not a few private sector jobs, besides. (What? You think Madigan was the first pol to place people with ComEd?)

Of course, there were LETTERS and there were letters back in the day. The latter got you an interview, but no guarantee of a job, and no guarantee you'd keep the job if you did get it. Some people moved up in public careers without ever getting a new letter after the first one. Persons with particular skills were always needed (still are) to decipher the books, or keep the machines running -- but, if you went back far enough in the employment history of anyone of a certain age, there was sure to be some sort of a letter in there somewhere. If not every one of them, darn near anyone who ever wrote letters at one time had a letter of their own.

And, of course, those persons blessed with LETTERS were pretty much assured of guaranteed employment from the person to whom the letter was directed. Some didn't even need to show up for work at all in the Bad Old Days -- not as long as they worked their precinct anyway, and so long as they didn't run afoul of their clout.

But letters, as important as they were, were not the currency of the Old Machine. They were just a means to an end, that end being: Jobs. Every Committeeman in the good graces of Richard J. Daley had a certain number of jobs that could be doled out to top precinct captains or assistants. The number varied from ward to ward. Critics of the patronage system have correctly noted that committeemen in certain ethnic communities had control of more and better jobs than other committeemen, though the voters in these less favored neighborhoods were no less numerous, and perhaps even more reliable. The 11th had more jobs than anyone, of course, because that was Da Mare's ward.

A committeeman might distribute his jobs solely to relatives and friends, or perhaps to those willing to give the committeeman a 'taste' of every paycheck. This was corruption, surely, and some people eventually went to jail over this kind of misbehavior but, more important, from a party organization standpoint, it was bad politics.

The purpose of any party organization in our system, in the Bad Old Days and now, is to win elections.

In the Bad Old Days, the committeeman was supposed to use his jobs to build a reliable cadre of precinct captains. One was not supposed to waste a LETTER on someone who did not know how to work his assigned precinct or precincts.

And while there may have been (and often were) all sorts of other activities (good, bad, criminal, or merely questionable) involved in precinct work, one core function was what today we would consider "polling." The committeeman was expected to find out how his ward would perform before the election; his captains would tell him what the results would be before any votes were cast. And they'd all better be right. All their jobs depended on it. (I have used 'ward' here on purpose; there were committeemen in the townships even in the Bad Old Days -- Da Mare rather quaintly referred to them as the county towns -- but the expectations, and the corresponding opportunities, were far fewer.)

I was still in college when Richard J. Daley died (December 20, 1976 for those of you who might have grown up elsewhere). I'd been at a prayer breakfast he attended just a couple of weeks before he dropped dead in his doctor's office. But there had been 3,000 or so others present for that same breakfast, and I was seated about a mile away from the head table, so I believe I can confidently disclaim any blame.

Anyway, someone decided that the 1977 St. Patrick's Day Parade would be a proper vehicle for public mourning of the fallen Boss. I gather that every Committeeman was asked to do their part. Certainly the 49th Ward, where Neil Hartigan was Committeeman, wanted to make a big impression. The net was cast so wide even I got hauled in.

Hartigan (not yet Attorney General -- he'd just been defeated for reelection as Lieutenant Governor) wanted to involve Loyola students in the 49th Ward's parade unit. I was the student body president. The head of the Loyola College Democrats, who was a neighborhood guy and active in the 49th Ward Organization, thought it would be a good idea for me to accompany him to a meeting with Hartigan. I guess my participation would supposedly make the school's participation more official. Looking back, I can only imagine what the Jesuits would have said about that.

But I went to the meeting, at the old Elks Club, at Ridge and Thome, right behind Misericordia. I'd helped build floats for Homecoming parades when I was in high school in the suburbs so I knew something about twisting paper napkins in chicken wire and making it look like something. More or less, anyway. I'd never been to the St. Patrick's Day Parade, but this all seemed like great fun until Hartigan asked me point-blank, "How many students will you turn out?"

I was heading to law school by then, although I don't recall whether I'd been accepted or not. I gave, what seemed to me, to be a good, lawyerly answer, "Well, sir, it depends."

I prefer to think that Hartigan regarded me more with pity than with scorn. But it might have been either. He tried again, more slowly this time: "How many students will you turn out?"

Completely rattled by the fact that what I thought was a good and sufficient answer had obviously fallen so flat, I babbled on (and on) about, well, the parade would take place right around midterms, and then there's the weather, of course, more if the weather's nice, but not so many if it's cold or rainy.... Finally, the guy who brought me elbowed me, or stomped on my foot, or gave me some other, similarly subtle signal to please shut up, and, as soon as I paused, blurted out "250."

Hartigan, satisfied at last, moved on to whatever other business needed attention.

I kept my temper until my host and I were headed back to campus. "Why the Hell did you say we'd get 250 people?" I might have used other adjectives and adverbs, but this was the 1970s and language was kinder and gentler then.

"It'll be alright," my host assured me. "He just needed a number." He elaborated: "This wasn't an important number -- like how many votes you'd turn out in your precinct on Election Day -- it was just a number." (In the end, we did turn out at least 250 people, not all of them capable of standing on their own by the time the parade actually started, but these were shunted into the middle of the mass of flesh moving down State Street. Honor was satisfied.)

That was as close as I ever came to providing numbers for the Old Machine, important or otherwise. I also never got to be a judge. There may be -- I begin to think, after roughly 30 years of considering the subject -- some correlation.

For better or worse, party organizations were intimately connected to their communities in the Bad Old Days. That's how good organizations knew which races they would win, and by exactly how much. We can catalog all the bad things about the Bad Old Days some other time. (Yes, we would need to set aside a lot of time.)

But let's stay close to the topic: Are party organizations as 'wired-in' to their communities today?

In running FWIW all these years, I've become familiar with a lot of ward or township groups that give every outward appearance of being very democratic -- small 'd' intended. They enroll members and sometimes charge dues, the members elect officers, and the members vote on the organization's endorsements (which don't always match what the county Party has slated). More than once I've reported about differences between a ward or township's endorsements and the recommendations made by the Committeeperson. How can you get more democratic -- small 'd' intended -- than having an organization that doesn't even agree with its titular leader?

But it occurs to me that all the members of these modern organizations are self-selected. They come out of interest and stay out of affinity with their like-minded fellows. Obviously, the volunteers, however they arrived, have been sufficient to get the petitions signed. But... are they representative of the community as a whole?

In the modern age, with real pollsters ringing our phones every night at dinnertime, all the many direct mail pieces, and a steady stream of commercials helping to guide the formation of our collective opinions, does it really matter who the Committeeperson is, or how the ward or township organization is structured?

In any given election cycle, for somewhere around 20 or 25 people, namely, the slated countywide judicial candidates and the alternates, the 80 ward and township committeepersons are the most important persons in the world. But are these 80 individuals important to anyone else? (I'm not talking about Committeepersons who hold other elected offices, too -- these persons would have importance in those other roles, presumably. Hopefully.) But as Committeepersons? Do Committeepersons still matter? How? Why?

I'll hang up now and listen to your answer.

Huh, that was weird....

Something must have been going on yesterday. According to my dashboard stats, Page One got 11,724 page views Tuesday.

That's a lot of daily page views for a site like FWIW which, admittedly, has a rather narrow focus. It's the kind of number I usually see only in the days before an election, when actual Cook County voters come to FWIW trying to figure out the merits of the competing judicial candidates.

When they are competing.

Though this is off topic, allow me to once again point out that, in Cook County, where Republicans are all but extinct, nearly all judicial contests are decided in the Democratic Primary. Persons trying to be good citizens in November visit Page One only to find that there are no informed choices to make in judicial elections -- all (or nearly all) are unopposed. If I keep repeating this, perhaps it will eventually sink in: In Cook County, if one is interested in judicial elections, one must vote in the Democratic Primary. That is not a partisan statement. It is a simple, inescapable fact.

But back to the topic at hand, namely, yesterday's suprising stat surge.

I've had page view surges at other times -- Russian, or at least East European, bots dumping all sorts of comment spam on various and sundry posts, usually old ones. One of the reasons I have comment moderation here and on Page One is to avoid becoming Cook County's leading source for information on fake Gucci handbags. (There are other reasons, of course.) Anyway, that hasn't happened for awhile... and it does not seem to have happened yesterday, either. No major influx of spam comments or anything. (And nearly all my traffic comes, as it should, from the good old USA... although Singapore is in a surprisingly strong second place at the moment. Are there a lot of persons interested in the Cook County judiciary in Singapore?)

Usually, when traffic ticks up for no apparent reason (no apparent reason to me), it is because a number of my readers believe (and a few of them may already know) that something has happened that I'm supposed to be reporting on and they're clicking back regularly to see when I finally figure it out....

A newly-minted judge I know told me how disappointed she was to find out that a lot of her new colleagues were incorrigible gossips. I told her this this was the secret to whatever limited success I have here. Modern judges can not really 'hang out' with the people with whom they would ordinarily have the most in common, namely, the lawyers who routinely appear before them. (In Lincoln's day, of course, they rode circuit together, eating, drinking, and boarding together. Sometimes they took turns being judge. But that was long before Greylord.) So judges often have only each other to talk to. And not all are equally interested in the latest permutations of the Star Trek universe, or on the latest cuts to the Bears' roster. So they talk about lawyers, and who wants to join them on the bench. Not being an incorrigible gossip, I won't name the reviewing court judge who once claimed that she (or he -- I'm not giving any clues here) clicked on Page One 50 times some days, waiting for my next update.

But this sort of repeat checking-in behavior only explains a jump to 2,000 page views a day on non-peak days when I might ordinarily only get 1,000 page views. It does not explain 11,724 page views on Tuesday. Maybe I'm missing something really big.

Even if I fail to figure it out the reason right away, yesterday's numbers nudged me unexpectedly further down the road to 5,000,000 Page One page views....

New subcircuit maps - Part 2 - Subcircuits 6-10

Updated August 18, 2023 to reflect inclusion of 6th Subcircuit map.

Continuing a look at the newly redrawn Cook County judicial subcircuits that began with this post on Page One.

Here is the map of the City-only 6th Subcircuit:

This is a map of the City portion of the new 7th Subcircuit:

This is a map of the County portion:

This is a map of the new, City-only 8th Subcircuit:

Here is the City portion of the new 9th Subcircuit:

This is the County portion of the 9th:

And, finally, for this post, here is the City portion of the new 10th Subcircuit:

This is the County portion:

For a look at the maps for Subcircuits 11-15, click here or just scroll down.

For a look at the maps for the new Subcircuits, Nos. 16-20, click here.

For a look at the new maps for Subcircuits 1-5, click here.

New subcircuit maps - Part 3 - Subcircuits 11-15

Continuing a look at the new Subcircuit maps that began with this post on Page One.

This is a map showing the City's portion of the new 11th Subcircuit:

This is a map showing the County portion of the 11th Subcircuit:

Just like its predecessor, the new 12th Subcircuit is entirely outside the City of Chicago:

The new 13th Subcircuit is also outside the City:

The new 14th Subcircuit, however, like the old 14th Subcircuit, is located entirely within the City limits:

Finally, for this post, here is the map of the new, all-suburban 15th Subcircuit:

For a look at the maps of the newly created Subcircuits, Nos. 16-20, click here or just scroll down.

For a look at the maps for Subcircuits 6-10, click here or just scroll up

And for a look at the maps showing the boundaries for new Subcircuits 1-5, click here. Yes, I know there's a link at the top of this post, but I've saved you the trouble of scrolling back now, haven't I?

New subcircuit maps - Part 4 - Subcircuits 16-20

This post concludes our look at the maps of the newly drawn Cook County Judicial Subcircuits, a look that began with this Page One post.

Here is a map of the City portion of the brand new 16th Subcircuit:

This is the suburban portion of the 16th Subcircuit:

Here is the map of the City portion of the new 17th Subcircuit:

And the suburban portion of the 17th:

The new 18th Subcircuit lies wholly outside the City:

The boundaries of the City portion of the 19th Subcircuit and those of the 19th Ward may not be exactly contiguous, but there is obvious overlap:

But there is an extensive suburban component to the 19th Subcircuit as well:

And, finally, here is the new, City-only 20th Subcircuit:

If you came to this post looking for maps for Subcircuits 6-10, click here. If you seek maps of Subcircuits 11-15, click here instead. For the new maps for Subcircuits 1-5, click here.

A summer reading pleasure from Tom Hanks

You would expect a book by Tom Hanks to be likeable, right?

Becuase Tom Hanks is pretty much likeable in everything he does. And folks like Tom Hanks in return. Maybe not in everthing, but at least in some things.

And he's been in so many.

A League of Their Own is one of my favorites. As a long-suffering White Sox fan, I often need to recall Hanks' declaration in that movie: "There's no crying in baseball!" Some nights I need to recall that several times an inning. Some nights I cry anyway.

I'm a big fan, too, of the movies Hanks made with Meg Ryan, even Joe vs. the Volcano. Imagine: There was once a time when "brain fog" was an obviously laughable diagnosis, not a recognized and dire consequence of long-COVID.

You probably have different favorites by Tom Hanks. That something-for-everyone appeal is no mean feat in our fractured society.

But it was one Tom Hanks movie in particular that made me look forward hopefully to The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, namely, That Thing You Do. Not just because it is a sweet, enjoyable movie, but because Tom Hanks directed that film and wrote it. If he could write a good movie, perhaps he might also write a good book.

And he certainly did. Although, obviously, I hate the book's title.

Who wants to type out The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece 15 times in a book review, right?

But that's about the extent of my criticism of Tom Hanks' new book.

That, and maybe the framing device didn't work well/ got lost or forgotten along the way/ wasn't really necessary.

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece is a book about the making of a movie and, along the way, about the making of movies generally, about acting and actors, and about history (Hollywood and otherwise). In my view, TMAMMPM rivals David Niven's Bring on the Empty Horses as an insider's guided tour of the Great American Dream Factory. Niven, like Hanks, was more than just an affable leading man; he was heavily involved as a producer during the early years of television. He knew how the business worked. Niven's book was largely first-person stuff, episodes about his interactions with others; only occasionally did he not name names. But, in a very real sense, Niven could probably be most truthful in those stories where he was not naming names.

The auteur at the center of TMAMMPM may have started out as Hanks' alter ego. He shares Hanks' well-documented, weird obsession with typewriters, for example. I don't understand the fascination. I used typewriters back when that was all we could use. In the early days of my practice, I could, when necessary, squeeze five and six letters into three and four spaces with an IBM Selectric. I could do wonders with correcting tape and Wite Out. I learned how to touch type in junior high. I made beer money in undergrad, typing other people's papers at a quarter a page (50 cents if someone was truly desparate) on an old, noisy portable manual typewriter. Allegedly portable. But my battered old typewriter is up in the attic these days, not in a shrine.

However much the writer-producer-director character may have started out as just a stand-in for Hanks in TMAMMPM, I think Hanks found a way to make him and all the other show business characters in the novel into believable, stand-alone characters, while still allowing Hanks to weave in truthful anectdotes, about real people, dishing serious dirt, without naming names, and still staying nice. As perhaps only Tom Hanks can. Tom Hanks knows the modern business from all sides, just as Niven knew the business in his time. Hanks has written, directed, produced, acted... I'd bet he could splice the film if it snapped in the projector; he could probably fix the popcorn machine, too, if necessary. Even in the almost completely fictional world of his novel, Hanks easily persuades you that he is telling you some serious truth -- without (apparently) dumping on anyone.

You may wonder how the first part of the book, about the troubles of a single family in post-WWII California, will fit into the movie-making part. It is not at all obvious. But you will expect that it will happen -- I'm not ruining anything for you by telling you that much -- and you will enjoy how it does.

Everybody likes Tom Hanks. You will like him even more after reading The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece.

My Jerry Springer story

Photo by David Shankbone via Wikipedia

The passing of Jerry Springer this week reminds me of the time someone called and asked me to sue him.

This is how the phone call began: I said, "Jack Leyhane," and the caller said, "I want to sue Jerry Springer."

Even with this very limited vocal sample, I could definitely detect that the caller had a distinctive accent.

If you guessed that the caller's accent was Received Pronunciation, you are both very funny and completely wrong.

Although I do remember exactly how the call began, I don't recall exactly when it happened. I apparently did not note the call on my time sheets.

But the Internet tells us that the Jerry Springer Show was based in Chicago between 1991 and 2009; I was very much on my own when I fielded this call, so we can narrow it down to somewhere between 2004 and 2009. Because I did not take contemporary notes, the quotation marks used hereafter are taken from my best recollection, and not meant as an assertion that I recall the exact words used. Marilu Henner, I am not.

Now, if I had been blessed with even a modicum of common sense, I would have immediately responded with something like, "Oh, gee, that's too bad. I'm sorry, but I'm conflicted out -- I'm Jerry Springer's agent." But, obviously, I was not Jerry Springer's agent; I never met the man. Also, I never could come up with a snappy comeback when I got blindsided by something totally unexpected. And who would have expected this?

So, instead, I asked something like, "How did you find me?"

"On line," he said. Or, "on the computer."

At various times during the Aughts, when I still harbored dreams of building an actual firm with real-life associates, I dabbled in promotional websites with Martindale Hubbell and West. For a time, I may have had both. But, if this was the kind of inquiry generated by these efforts, I was clearly doing something wrong.

I plunged on.

Not because I had to, obviously. But, from time to time, I have been afflicted with a morbid curiousity. This was one of those occasions: "Why do you want to sue Jerry Springer?"

The story came tumbling out. It seems that Mr. Springer was doing a show on men who were cheating on their wives with one of their wife's relations. My caller, it seems, was carrying on with his wife's cousin. The producers flew them all up to Chicago -- himself, his wife, and his wife's cousin (I didn't ask if the caller took the center seat on the flight up, but I wanted to). The producers picked them up in a limo, then put the whole bunch up in a hotel downtown (no, I didn't ask how many rooms they booked either), and brought them down to the studio for the show. But they didn't get on TV.

As I sit here now I can't remember if he told me that the problem was the show ran long or whether the producers just decided to use one or more different threesomes. But my caller was plainly upset at not getting his 15 Minutes of Fame.

Seriously.

I asked some clarifying questions. "Did anyone promise that you'd be on TV?" I asked.

Well, no, he said.

"What did they promise you?"

"Well, they promised to fly us to Chicago and back again."

"And they flew you up just like they said?"

"Well, yeah."

"And they're going to fly you back, too?"

"Yeah. Limo is coming in an hour."

"OK. And they promised to put you up in the hotel? And they did that, too, right?"

"Well, yeah."

"They feed you and all?"

"Room service and everything. Very nice -- but they didn't put us on TV!"

"Well, sir," I said (I had never asked his name), "maybe someone else might figure it differently, but here's the way I see it: They did everything they promised to do. They didn't put you on the show, but they didn't promise to do that. I don't think there'd be much chance of winning if you were to sue. I admit that free advice is worth every cent you pay for it, but that's my opinion anyway."

My caller wasn't satisfied, but he could see he wasn't getting anywhere with me. Besides, he had a limo to catch.

I hadn't thought about that incident for a long time. But remembering that I had to field calls like that every so often makes my not-entirely-voluntary retirement just that much easier to bear.

I wonder now if the fellow got the center seat on the flight home?

Waiting for a telephone call from an oil change place....

I'm not Andy Rooney, but I'm feeling cantankerous and curmudgeonly these days and, like the late Mr. Rooney, I'm not afraid to tell you about it.

And right now, too, since I'm effectively prevented from doing any of the other things that I am supposed to be doing right now while I wait for a phone call.

The Millennials and Gen Zers are already rolling their eyes at this point: OK, Boomer. Nobody makes phone calls anymore.

But -- let me quickly interject -- I agree with that sentiment. I am indeed in total accord with same. I resorted to a telephone call only as a last result.

All I wanted to do was make an appointment for an oil change for the family vehicle. As a true modern person would, I visited the website of said oil change place for that express purpose.

Admittedly, I used a desktop computer and not my phone. The young people may be asking what's a desktop? In 20 years, or maybe in only 10, that may be a serious inquiry. I hope not, but it may. Right now, however, it's just heckling.

I prefer to see what I am doing, and the larger screen of the desktop affords me a better opportunity for this than does my phone. Also, I can type. Therefore I can fill in the blanks on a website form faster and more efficiently on a desktop than most Millennials or Gen Zers can on their phones, even with their amazing thumbs. My thumb is not nearly so nimble. Consider the desktop as a sort of accommodation.

I have successfully scheduled oil changes on this site previously. On a desktop. Without incident. So (anticipating the follow-up line of heckling here) I did know how to use the site, thank you. I fully expected to repeat my previous accomplishment on this occasion without undue difficulty.

Yet my expectations were not realized.

The website loaded fine and I specified the services I needed with no difficulty. But for some reason, though I could select a date for my appointment, I could not select a time. The drop down menu would not drop down.

I tried clicking around a few different ways. I got out of the site and started again, but ran into the same problem.

But I did not despair. Nor did I yet resort to a phone. The site was not working properly in Chrome, so I tried Firefox instead.

But I ran into the same problem again, and at the exact same spot on the form.

It was only then that I determined to make an actual phone call.

I called the telephone number specific to the location where I hoped to obtain service.

But, of course, that's not where the phone was answered. The company I was trying to deal with has several locations in the Chicago area. Apparently calls directed to any one of these are answered at some central location.

I explained myself to the person answering.

"You are attempting to schedule this appointment for our Niles location, is that right?" she asked.

Yes, I did not say, that is why I dialed the number for the Niles location. I did not say this because this response sounded more snarly than sunny, no matter what reading I gave that line in the privacy of my own head. I realized it might have seemed hostile. I did not mean to seem hostile.

But, now that I knew this was some central location, after confirming my intent to reach the Niles store, I proceeded to explain the website issue. She said she'd have someone look into that right away.

No, I don't really think she'll actually tell anyone about that either.

Anyway, she tried to ring the Niles store while I waited. But, she said apologetically, the manager must be on the phone because there was no answer. She asked for my information, so the manager could call me back when he was free. I dutifully provided it.

And now I'm stuck here waiting for the phone to ring so I can accomplish the two-minute scheduling task that I undertook about two hours ago.

At some point, obviously, I have to go on with my day. But I asked for this phone call... and so, I think, I must be honor-bound to wait some time for the call to be returned.

What were the rules in college? If the teacher failed to show on time, the students were free to leave, but only after waiting a sufficient interval. Was it 10 minutes for an assistant professor and 15 minutes for a full prof?

Well, I've waited one whiny essay for the manager of the oil change place. Surely, that should be reasonable.

Except... well... if he calls and I don't answer... then I have to call back and start the whole process over, don't I?

I hope they get that website fixed soon....

Cook County to open south suburban center for hard to recycle materials

And just in time for Earth Day, too! Read on for the press release issued today by Cook County, but, bottom-lining this, the new CHaRM Center will take small appliances, TVs, even some styrofoam -- stuff that no one else seems willing to take....

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today announced the grand opening of the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM Center). Spearheaded by the County’s Department of Environment and Sustainability (DES) in partnership with South Suburban College (SSC), the new facility provides a permanent location for residents to drop-off items for reuse or recycle that diverts waste from landfills, waterways and vacant lots. Cook County allocated nearly $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to partner with SSC on the new facility and to create sustainable practices and programs that increase recycling across communities in the Southland.

“Establishing a location where residents can bring items that are not typically accepted through traditional recycling services will ultimately help our environment by keeping these items out of landfills,” said President Preckwinkle. “I am grateful to South Suburban College for their partnership in ensuring critical recycling services are available to all County residents.”

The CHaRM Center is the first of its kind in Cook County. Residents can drop off materials such as electronics, textiles, used medical equipment, furniture and small appliances, Styrofoam and general household recyclables including plastic, glass, metal and paper are accepted. Materials will be refurbished or recycled.

The center opens on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22 from 8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. at SSC located at 15800 South State Street, South Holland, Illinois 60473. The CHaRM Center will be open Tuesdays from 7:00 a.m. – noon, Thursdays from 2:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. and the second Saturday of every month from 9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

“South Suburban College is ecstatic to partner with Cook County to further its environmental and sustainability efforts,” said SSC President Dr. Lynette Stokes. “The partnership will allow SSC to act as a community steward and lead by example, promoting materials for reuse and recycle to ultimately reduce waste. The permeant recycling drop-off facility is easily accessible to Cook County residents, fosters the local environment's health and educates the local community on the importance of recycling.”

As part of the grand opening of the CHaRM Center on April 22, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is sponsoring a one-day household hazardous waste collection event for residents. Accepted materials include items such as old gasoline, household batteries and lawn chemicals among others.

In addition to funding for the CHaRM Center, the County has allocated over $100 million in ARPA funding to support a clean environment for all and to fight climate change.

This is a great program... assuming, of course, that the stuff that gets dropped off really does get recycled. Which, in other cases, has not always happened.

Not meaning to provide a buzz kill to this feel-good Earth Day story, but Mother Jones magazine ran a sobering article recently, "Your 'Recycled' Grocery Bag Might Not Be." It's a long read, but worth your time.

Donation is one thing -- and it's one thing that we can all do -- but follow-through is necessary to confirm that materials intended for recycling really are. Because, unfortunately, and too often, material intended for recycling winds up in landfills (or our oceans) anyway.

Another problem I never thought I'd have: An old blog post is alleged to have violated Blogger's "community standards"

UPDATE: Immediately after posting this, I opened an email from Blogger saying that the 2010 post described herein has been reevaluated and reinstated. The brown paper wrapper is off. Kind of takes all the wind out of my sails, don't it? Today, at least, if not, a couple of weeks ago, I pressed the right button. My thanks to Blogger... although, in all honesty, I wish they'd held off for a few days so I could convince myself that the following article somehow helped my cause....

I've been using the Blogger platform for Page One of this site since 2006. I started this Page Two in 2008.

That was so long ago, blogging was fashionable, even (arguably) hip. (I realize, of course, that this time is long past; this is why I am so careful to call what you are looking at a "site" instead of a "blog." It sounds more current that way. At least to me....)

Anyway, in that time, between these two sites, I've put up over 4,400 articles (I like to think that 'articles' sounds more contemporary than 'posts'). Some have been better than others, obviously; I even won an award (in 2012) from the Chicago Bar Association for one post. I mean, article. I got an honorable mention from the CBA in 2014, too.

(It wasn't too many years after this that the CBA stopped giving out Kogan Awards. I deny any responsibility for this.)

Along the way, I've attracted some modest trappings of success. For awhile, I even had some of my own trolls. But I try not to be overly controversial in what I publish, and the trolls eventually lost interest.

In other words, I'm boring.

Which is why I was shocked, a couple of weeks ago, to receive a notice from Blogger that one of my articles on this site, a piece from 2010, was in violation of Blogger's Community Standards.

The article was entitled, "Up all night with a sick computer." If you are brave enough to click on that link now you will find the article shielded by the Internet-equivalent of a brown paper wrapper. Judging by the recorded page clicks, only about 250 individuals were potentially contaminated by this content in the 13 years before this label was slapped on.

If you do read the article, which recounts my experience battling a Trojan Horse virus encountered while innocently browsing the Internet, you may find it overlong, self-indulgent, or not nearly as helpful or amusing as I thought it was at the time I pressed the "publish" button. But while I understand that some people don't like The Quiet Man in particular or John Wayne generally, I don't see how the article could conceivably be seen as violating any reasonable set of community values.

My best, non-expert guess is that, after all these years, a passing AI "spider" picked up on the scary website names (the ones that the Trojan Horse virus caused to pop up on my computer screen that night) (not linked, obviously) and leapt to the wholly unwarranted conclusion that I was offering links to pornographic websites.

After receiving the message, I clicked around ineffectually, trying to find some human who could look at the article and remove the 'brown paper wrapper.'

Blogger does not have much in the way of in-person customer service, and understandably so: Who would want to field calls all day from old ladies unable to post their latest kitten-playing-with-yarn videos... or from old lawyers grousing about inappropriate warnings being slapped on essentially innocuous content?

But I have noticed that whatever I did that first day has so far brought no response from the folks at Blogger. The 'brown paper wrapper' is still on that 2010 post.

I looked over the post again today and noted there was a button that could be pressed seeking review. I pressed. Then I wrote this.

Neither tactic may succeed in getting the label removed. But at least I've tried my best.

A death in the family at my "Church Home"

The obituary duly notes that Fr. Eric C. Meyer, C.P., was Associate Pastor at my home parish, Immaculate Conception, from 1987 to 2005, before becoming Pastor from 2005 to 2013, when the Passionists decided they could no longer operate the parish.

The information is accurate, of course, but incomplete: At least twice that I can recall, during his long tenure as Associate Pastor, Fr. Eric served as Acting Pastor. Perhaps the title wasn't meant to convey this, but Fr. Eric took it as a mandate: Given the authority to act on behalf of the parish, he acted.

Since learning, last Saturday, of his passing, I've been trying to recollect specifics about when these stints as Acting Pastor took place. One must have been in the mid-90s, when I was on the parish school board, because I remember a board meeting where he fulminated about some proposed change in Archdiocesan policy toward parish schools with which he strongly disagreed. I'm sure he was no less blunt with the people with whom he was speaking at the Archdiocese. I do not believe that he was in any way a diplomat by nature. He was a tireless advocate, though, for the continued independence and prosperity of IC Parish.

Our Parish Center is named for him. It had to be. He willed that structure into being -- with incessant fundraising, and with constant prayer -- his and ours -- whether we liked it or not. He composed a prayer on the subject and saw to it that it was recited by the entire congregation at every Mass for what seemed like forever. But he got the building built.

Fr. Eric was a scholar. Before coming to IC he had worked in a university setting; he had to learn, the hard way, that one can not question grammar school kids at a school Mass in the same way as he might have talked with college students. Think of Jean Luc Picard's awkwardness with children in Star Trek: The Next Generation, change the subject to theology, and increase the awkwardness factor by about tenfold. But he worked at it, and adapated, and got much better over time.

Not everyone appreciated his scholarship. He did sometimes get off on a tangent about the correct translation of this Greek word or that one, or how it was mistranslated into Latin, and later into English. He had such a grasp of Biblical history and culture besides, so much so that, one day, meaning to pay a compliment, I offended him: I said he reminded me of a Jesuit. I got an earful for that one -- about the scholarly traditions of many religious orders, the Passionists not least among these. But, hey, I didn't know any better; I'd gone to Loyola.

Fr. Eric was a well-traveled man, too. He'd walked seemingly every road in the Holy Land at one point or other (and I do mean walked -- he rode a bike, too, but so far as I know he never drove). Whenever he could tie it into the day's Gospel, congregants were likely to get a very detailed explanation, from personal experience, of how the geography in question contributed to the story. Not everyone appreciated the travelogues, either.

I, for one, was no great fan of Fr. Eric's singing, particularly at 7:30 Mass on Sunday morning, when there usually wasn't any musical accompaniment. But Fr. Eric had a good, strong singing voice and he couldn't help himself.

And Fr. Eric was a devoted Cub fan. This was a serious matter for me and my family. It's tough to be alienated from one's pastor on such a fundamental issue. But we came to a grudging, mutual understanding. In time, we came to understand that Fr. Eric grew up in practically the shadow of Wrigley Field, in St. Ita's Parish, and therefore could not help himself. And Fr. Eric became a little more tolerant, too: One Mother's Day, when my wife wore her Sox cap to church, Fr. Eric offered a special blessing to all the mothers present -- even the Sox fans.

Still, there were lines that could not be crossed: One Spring Sunday many years ago my wife and I were helping to host a Welcome Coffee in the Rectory Assembly. I don't remember whether it was for the School Board, or Parents Club, or the Sunday Pre-School. It was one of the days when it was our turn to help host. I do remember that the kids were still little -- still playing baseball in the house league at Oriole Park. And they'd just gotten their jerseys for the season and they were wearing them with pride -- until Fr. Eric caught sight of them.

"How could you allow your children to go out in public dressed like that?" he demanded.

Well... they were wearing Cardinals jerseys.

Some years ago I had occasion to interview a pastor who was one of the key architects of the "Soul Slate" -- a slate of Black judicial candidates -- I was looking for the story earlier today and of course I couldn't find it in my archives. Maybe it never got written. But I remember the interview because the pastor said that he had the same question for every candidate seeking his endorsement: "Where is your Church Home?"

And the pastor told me of one woman who'd come before his group and, in response to that question, named a church in Detroit, where the candidate had grown up. It was a very good church, the pastor conceded, a very prominent church, but he wanted to know where was her Church Home now. After all, he told me, she hasn't lived in Detroit for a good many years.

It got me thinking about how I would have answered the pastor's question about my Church Home. And the answer, then and now, would be Immaculate Conception Parish. Fr. Eric is not the only priest at that parish with whom I've enjoyed cordial relations; I have been on friendly terms with many of the priests who have served the parish over the years. And all of these have helped make IC my Church Home -- but, for me, Fr. Eric stands above.

Fr. Eric was a tireless advocate for our parish throughout his long tenure, without regard to whether his stance made friends Downtown or with his confreres among the Passionists. And I have no doubt that he will continue to be a tireless advocate on behalf of the parish in his new, eternal assignment. We were blessed to have him; we are blessed to have him still.

Robot to provide legal advice in traffic case: Should the guild feel threatened?

The DoNotPay app, which bills itself as the "home of the world's first robot lawyer," has announced a stunt that has attracted significant interest: Sometime next month the app will (via smartphone and earbuds) advise an actual defendant in a real American traffic court (not in California although, beyond that, the location is unspecified). This coverage on New Scientist is behind a paywall; Lauren Leffer's Gizmodo article is not.

Ms. Leffer's article notes that, "DoNotPay is also reticent to disclose case specifics because what they’re doing is likely in violation of courtroom laws and protocol."

Not just "likely," actually; it's a dead-cinch certainty in Illinois and probably in most places. Apparently, though, DoNotPay has found a jurisdiction which allows hearing impaired persons to use phones with Apple AirPods to amplify the proceedings. If Mr. Roboto (that's a Styx reference, not a sexist lapse) ever wanted to be a real lawyer, he might have a hard time with Character and Fitness should these shenanigans come to light. Ms. Leffer's article quotes DoNotPay's CEO, Joshua Browder, as saying the court will "definitely not" be aware of these arrangements -- so the company is setting out to deceive the court.

And, of course, actually whispering what to say in the client's ear would get any human lawyer sanctioned on the spot.

Leffer's article says DoNotPay is also planning a second stunt involving a speeding defendant facing a Zoom trial. "In that instance," she writes, "DoNotPay is weighing the use of a teleprompter vs. a synthetic voice — the latter strategy Browder described as 'highly illegal.'" Actually, neither strategy would be open to a human lawyer. At least more than once. If said lawyer were caught.

So these tests (or "experiments" as Browder calls them) would appear to confer a huge, as well as unfair, advantage for the AI over a similarly-situated human attorney.

But I wonder....

It seems safe to assume that the human test subjects that DoNotPay has recruited for these exercises have been carefully screened; like news anchors or sports broadcasters they would have to relay the AI-provided information seamlessly, without any perceptible delay as new instructions are received. Moreover, these first subjects would be strongly inclined to follow the direction provided by their robot lawyers. (And incentivized to follow that advice, too: DoNotPay promises to pay any fines that may result from adverse determinations.)

Having a direct, albeit surreptitious, audio channel into a typical client's cranium might prove a more mixed blessing for man or machine alike.

But let's put that aside for a moment.

A post by Anugraha Sundaravelu about these "experiments" on Metro.co.uk, claims that Browder's "ultimate goal is to have his app replace lawyers altogether in order to save defendants money" (the DoNotPay website is careful to note, on the other hand, that "DoNotPay is not a law firm and is not licensed to practice law").

But to determine whether non-lawyer robots could really replace living, breathing lawyers, said robots should be subject to the same strictures as the people they would supplant. So -- for a fair test -- no whispering in the defendant's ears. The robot and the defendant can chat outside the courtroom, as people do with their human lawyers, but not inside the courtroom. And certainly not after every question asked.

Real, unscreened clients routinely ignore their human counsel's advice and instructions -- at least until things go south -- at which point the lawyer is usually blamed for failing to provide what he or she has desperately tried to provide right along. Would robots really fare better?

I'd bet against it. And a disembodied AI can not even hunch over and cover its face in frustration as the client torpedoes his or her own case.
For the foreseeable future, at least, lawyers should have no fear of AI-replacements.