The Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF) is seeking a staff attorney to work part time (60%) at the bankruptcy help desk, which is located in the United States Bankruptcy Court, 219 S. Dearborn, Chicago...
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Effective, tentatively the weekend of July 11, 2008, the Court will be upgrading the electronic case filing application. Many new features will be included. Please select from the links below to learn more.

Electronic Learning Modules

Notes for PACER Users

Effective June 27, 2008, Judge Squires will be sitting in a new Courtroom at the Dupage County Courthouse, Courtroom 4016. All Hearings should be noticed for the new Courtroom Number. All Hearing times remain the same. The Dupage County 341 Meetings have also changed to another location and will be held in Room 2017.

The Lake County bankruptcy call scheduled for August 8, 2008, has been reset to August 1, 2008. There will be no Lake County call on August 8.

Beginning September 12, 2008, the location of the Lake County bankruptcy court call will change again. Lake County chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy matters will be no longer be heard at the Lakehurst Branch Court. The call will instead be heard in Courtroom B at the new Park City Branch Court. The address of the new location is:


The hearing schedule will not change. The hearing schedule at the Park City location will be the same schedule followed at Lakehurst.

The United States Bankruptcy Court is offering attorneys two options for completion of the ECF training: (option one ) on-line training and (option two) on-site classroom training. On-site classroom training is offered to attorneys and their support staff. If you are an attorney and would prefer to take the training on-line you may select option one from the CM/ECF Training - Registration Information page. Once you have registered you will receive an e-mail that will provide you with the required lessons that must be completed prior to receiving your training login and password.

To access the registration process select CM/ECF Information>ECF Training Registration or click on link below:

https://tdi.ilnb.uscourts.gov/training/

The Bankruptcy Court Liaison Committee is looking for practicing attorneys who are interested in serving on the Committee. There will be several positions open to non-judiciary attorneys for the Committee’s next term, which commences in June 2008. The Bankruptcy Court Liaison Committee was formed to promote communication about court procedures, etiquette, filings and other issues; to assist the Court and attorneys in creating a more efficient environment; and to represent a diverse group of bankruptcy attorneys from the Chicago area. Additionally, the Committee members develop, participate in and support educational programs concerning issues affecting the bench, attorneys, financial institutions and consumers, including providing support for the local CARE Program and state law school participation in the ABI’s national moot court competition. The Committee also creates social opportunities to allow greater interaction between the Court and those who appear before it.

If you are interested, please send a letter expressing your interest in serving on the Committee and also send any other information that may be helpful to the Committee. Please submit your information to either Scott Alsterda or Terri Long no later than May 16, 2008, per the contact information below:

R. Scott Alsterda
Ungaretti & Harris, LLP
3500 Three First National Plaza
Chicago, IL 60602
Tel: 312/977-9203
Fax 312/977-4405
Email: rsalsterda@uhlaw.com

Terri M. Long
Law Offices of Terri M. Long
18201 Morris Avenue
Homewood, IL 60430
Tel: 708-922-3301
Fax 708-922-3302
Email: tmlong@tmlong.com

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An important computer room upgrade will be performed this Saturday approximately 7:30 AM to 3:00 PM. During this outage our CM/ECF "Live" server will be removed from service, but our "Replica" server will be available as a reference resource. One may view case information, but no docket entries may be made. The duration of the outage may be shorter."

Apologies for the inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.

The Bankruptcy Judges of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois have asked the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) to survey attorneys who have practiced in the district to assess the performance of each of the Bankruptcy Judges.
View Announcement/Schedule

A revised version of form, "Required Statement to Accompany All Motions for Relief from Stay" has been published. Effective immediately, please use the new form when filing "Motions for relief from Stay".
View Form

For all who participated in our survey in September 2007, Thank You!

You gave us feedback and we listened. In an effort to measure the court’s success, during the week of April 21 and April 28 we will be conducting another survey of our customer at the Dirksen Courthouse, the outlying counties and Rockford. Again we have a team of staff members that will hand out the survey and help facilitate this process. We are interested to see if we have made improvement in the areas of access, fairness and level of service. The survey will only take 5 minutes to complete. The opinions of our customers count and we appreciate your participation.

The Office of the United States Trustee will be moving from its Monroe Street location to the Dirksen Federal Court House over the weekend of Friday, April 4th. On that Friday, the Chicago UST office will have no access to telephones, fax machines, or email. If you have an emergency and need to contact the UST's office, please leave a detailed message with the Milwaukee UST office (414) 297-4499. The UST will get back to you in as timely manner as possible. The UST is expecting that all services will be restored by Monday, April 7, 2008 at the new location. All scheduled 341 meetings will be held at the new space beginning on Wednesday, April 9th. The new address will be:


The main telephone number (312) 886-5785 and fax number (312) 886-5794 will remain the same as will all individual employees’ numbers.
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The Court’s Standing Order Regarding Filing of Payment Advices effective October 17, 2005 has been replaced effective June 23, 2008 by General Order No. 08-01 Regarding Pay Advices. For all Chapter 7 cases filed on or after June 23, 2008, pay advices must be provided to the United States Trustee, in addition to the case trustee and any creditor who timely requests copies. The current Standing Order Regarding Filing of Payment Advices applies to all cases filed on or before June 22, 2008.

Click Here for Instructions for submission of payment advices to U. S. Trustee

To improve the accuracy of the Bankruptcy Case Opening process and in response to our customers' concerns, the system will be modified to require that the county field be completed for each case. Currently, the system defaults the county field to Cook, and while the majority of cases are filed in Cook, this default has sometimes resulted in assignment errors that require correction and delay the release of the 341 notice. Failure to complete the county field will result in a error message that must be corrected in order to complete the filing of the case. This change will be effective Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at approximately 8:00 am. Thank you for your cooperation.

The court's web site has been updated. Not just a facelift, but a completely new site from the ground up. Though the look and feel are not too dramatically different, our goal was to make it easier to find the items you are searching, keep the number of clicks for navigation to a minimum, and to make it more intuitive from a user's perspective. An effort was made to keep you at the main page as much as possible to avoid "backtracking". We have also added a powerful search engine tool. You will be able to narrow your search criteria to avoid the "too many matches" syndrome.

The new site will be activated the morning of Thursday, January 24, 2008. We hope you will find the new site an improvement over the old, but please give us your suggestions using the "Contact Us" option.

Thanks and happy surfing!

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 contains a provision that increased the quarterly fees on disbursements paid by chapter 11 debtors in U.S. trustee regions. The new fees went into effect on January 1, 2008, and are first due from chapter 11 debtors to the United States Trustees for deposit into the Treasury by the end of April 2008.
View Form B200 and Fee Changes.

Due to unexpected equipment difficulties associated to the Sunday power outage full CM/ECF service will not be restored until Monday, January 21th, late morning or early afternoon.

On Sunday, January 20, 2008, electrical power to a significant portion of our building will be turned off. Unfortunately, the data processing center which hosts our primary CM/ECF equipment is in the part of the building that will be without power. The outage is expected to occur from approximately 7:00 AM until 5:00 PM.

During the power outage we will direct users to our "replica" site. The replica will only be available for viewing information. You will not be able to file any documents. If you have ever accessed our systems during previous outages you may be familiar with this arrangement.

The outage may be of shorter duration, but the time mentioned is the best estimate provided by building management. We will send another announcement when service is restored.

Many apologies for this inconvenience.