Do Lawyers Have to Attend Every Municipal Board Meeting?

A front page article in last Tuesday’s Chicago Tribune Business section got me thinking.

The headline was

“Law clients demand
more for the money”

The subhead was

Recession changes perspective
on existing ‘billable hour’
model

Those who attend board meetings of local governments can see differences.

Some fight like cats and dogs.

Others talk so little you’d guess all decisions have been made ahead of time.

But there are other differences.

Cities and villages almost always have lawyers sitting right up there with the board members, manager and clerk.

Not so school districts.

District 300 Supervisor of Communication Services Allison Strupeck, emailed me,
‘We do not regularly have an attorney at the open session of our Board meetings.  It’s very rare that we’d have an attorney there.

“However, we do sometimes have an attorney for our closed sessions, depending on the topic.”

Same with Crystal Lake High School District 155. Attorneys come for disciplinary hearings, for instance, but not for regular meetings.

And I’ve never seen a lawyer at a Huntley District 158 School Board meeting.

The recession has hurt not only the businesses who are “demanding more for their money,” as the Tribune headline says, but local governments.

So, I’m wondering why city councils and village boards need to have lawyers present, while school districts don’t.


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