I am a lawyer who represents both employees and employers in worker’s compensation cases.
You recently advocated ” the involvement of lawyers in the system.” What involvement do you seek to reduce? Lawyers make the system work. Employment in Illinois is up, and therefore there are more work-related injuries. Yet the governor has severely reduced the budget of the Industrial Commission, so the commission has to handle more cases with fewer resources.
The lawyers take up the slack. We try to bring a voice of reason to our clients so that they may compromise disputed claims. We prepare outlines for busy arbitrators. We prepare proposed decisions so that arbitrators may reduce the time that they spend writing. We spend an inordinate amount of our time writing and calling for medical and lost- time benefits, for which we often do not charge our clients a fee.
Eliminate lawyers in Illinois worker’s compensation and prepare to either spend tremendous amounts of tax dollars to add to the commission’s budget or prepare to make Illinois a place where companies want to locate but men and women do not want to work.
