Bonnie has many years of experience in high volume courtrooms; she is highly efficient and has a reputation for paying close attention to legal details.  She has experience in every division of the Circuit Court.  She has been a prosecutor and has also done defense work and transactional matters.  She has completed 30 criminal appeals, represented parents in the juvenile court system for several years, is a chair-qualified arbitrator for more than a decade--having ruled in almost 300 cases--and has done immense amounts of legal writing and teaching during her entire law career.  Her teaching of “Courts and Law” to graduate students at Columbia College has engendered praise and high evaluations.

 

Bonnie also became an expert in Administrative Law early in her legal career, specifically municipal ordinances dealing with vehicle impoundment, and she has advised Circuit Court judges, practitioners here and in other jurisdictions (some from Michigan specifically working on a case before the United States Supreme Court) and the Chicago City Council.  She has made television appearances to discuss vehicle seizure, as well.

 

Bonnie has won three Chicago Bar Association Herman Kogan Meritorious Achievement plaques through the years for legal writing.  She has contributed to manuals dealing with subjects such as legal ethics, traffic prosecutions and circuit court procedures.  She excels at being objective, neutral, understanding and even-handed.  She is also a patient and engaged listener--and reader--and would never make an important decision without hearing all the facts and familiarizing herself with all aspects of the law.  

 

 

Other bar associations, nonetheless, consistently praise Bonnie--and point out positive factors such as her voluminous pro bono work, her good temperament, her commitment to the legal profession and the community at large, her hundreds of civil bench trials, her opinions on diversity, her integrity and diligence--and her extensive background in legal analysis, among other recognition.  In fact, within just a few years of becoming a lawyer Bonnie won the Chicago Bar Association Pro Bono Award for Sole Practitioner for doing the most pro bono work among her peers--ranging from representing domestic violence victims and juvenile arrestees to counseling  people with problems regarding landlord/tenant, employment discrimination, domestic relations, elder law and bankruptcy.  Both judges and law professors have referred cases to her involving their own friends and families.

 

Bonnie has garnered many other major writing awards throughout her career--from the Illinois Woman’s Press Association (three awards), the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and from the Copley Press.  And she has a stellar background in bar leadership:  She has been president of a bar association--the Decalogue Society of Lawyers; chair of many bar association committees, including both the Criminal Law Committee and the Bench/Bar Relations Committee of the Chicago Bar Association; spearheaded many legal projects--including a pro bono civil order of protection desk at the Maywood courthouse which garnered an award from the American Bar Association; and she has participated in many legal education seminars, courses, panels and programs, often as an instructor, speaker or panelist.  She has also been a legislative liaison for several bar association committees.  In addition, during her years as a lawyer she has been invited to join a number of task forces created to address pressing issues involving diversity, rapid response, fairness to defendants and other matters that needed creative and diligent attention.  

 

 

Before becoming a lawyer 16 years ago, Bonnie worked as a journalist for many publications; she was a contributing writer for many years for the Chicago Reader and had her own column in the Chicago Tribune in the 1990’s.  Before that, she was a telephone installer for many years in Chicago--and was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 165.  She installed phones and climbed poles in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, where she grew up, as well as in Edgewater and Rogers Park.  She is also a former board member of Chicago Women in Trades.  Bonnie also has a master’s degree in public health (she has degrees from the University of Illinois--BS--the University of Missouri--MS--and the John Marshall Law School--JD), and she has written stories for magazines and newspapers about serious health issues for decades.

 

Bonnie has a grown daughter, Molly, who is autistic, and who works as an artist at “Project Onward,” a studio and gallery at the Chicago Cultural Center for artists with mental and developmental disabilities.  In Bonnie’s spare time, she volunteers for a number of not-for-profit groups and she is a docent at Glessner House Museum.  She is on the board of many organizations including the John Howard Association (a prison watchdog and reform organization), Dearborn Park Advisory Council, South Loop Neighbors and the Chicago Homes of Dearborn Park.  She volunteers as a committee member at Shedd Aquarium and is on the Chicago Bar Association Editorial Board.  She has been one of Today’s Chicago Woman’s “Women Making a Difference.”