CBA Record July-August 2025

EDITORIAL BOARD EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nikki Marcotte Kirkland & Ellis LLP ASSOCIATE EDITOR Anne Ellis 2E Services, LLC SUMMARY JUDGMENTS EDITOR Daniel A. Cotter Dickinson Wright PLLC YLS JOURNAL EDITORS CBA RECORD

EDITOR’S BRIEFCASE

BY NIKKI MARCOTTE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

“Kid, You’ll Move Mountains!”

Joanna Kopczyk Attorney at Law

W hen I was a little kid, one of my favorite books was Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the last book he published during his lifetime. In a way, then, it’s somehow poetic that it was one of the first I learned to read. I remember loving it for how excited I felt when I could read it aloud to anyone who would listen. How the whimsical rhymes seemed to dance off my tongue and quixoti cally morph into musical notes as they hit my ears. How the pastel colors of the strange, peculiar worlds Dr. Seuss illustrated appeared

Katherine Hanson IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law

Daniel J. Berkowitz Cruser, Mitchell, Novitz, Sanchez, Gaston & Zimet LLP Jacob B. Berger Tabet DiVito & Rothstein LLC Amy Cook Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Anthony F. Fata Kirby McInerney LLP Clifford Gately Judge Jasmine Villaflor Hernandez Circuit Court of Cook County Kaitlin King Hart David Carson LLP Theodore Kontopoulos Internal Revenue Service Kathryn C. Liss DePaul University College of Law Clare McMahon Reed, Centracchio & Associates, LLC Pamela Sakowicz Menaker Quarles & Brady Meredith A. Geller Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

to jump off each page and right into the room where I sat clumsily thumbing through them. How the narrator seemed to grab my hand and take me on a wild journey to places I could only literally dream of—I was, after all, a relatively poor kid growing up in a small, rural town in middle-of-nowhere Kansas. What I learned as I got older was that Oh, the Places You’ll Go! was so much more than a playful escape from reality. At its core, it’s a how-to guide for navigating life’s ups and downs while helping young readers develop a strong sense of self and resilience along the way. The story starts out with the narrator encouraging the unnamed protagonist (the reader) to leave the town where they grew up. On each page, the narrator leads the reader to a new and exciting place, filled with awe and uncertainty—slowly building up the reader’s confidence to explore new things. The two eventually encounter The Waiting Place, which is ominously referred to as a place filled with doubt and apprehension, where everyone is always waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen. For a brief moment, the protagonist is unsure of what to do or how to move past it. But with the narrator’s gentle encouragement, the reader moves through The Waiting Place and is once again “off to Great Places!” While there are other bumps along the way, the story ends with a hopeful message as the narra tor sends the protagonist off on their own and into the world: You’ll get mixed up of course, as you already know. You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step, step with care and great tact. And remember that life’s A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.) KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS! As someone who grew up with very little means, who struggled to fit in, and who secretly navigated being queer and gender nonconforming in a rural, conservative Mid western town, I can say I’ve spent more than a day or two in The Waiting Place. But as

Clifford Law Offices Kathleen Dillon Narko Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Alexander Passo Latimer LeVay Fyock LLC Trisha M. Rich Holland & Knight LLP Adam J. Sheppard Sheppard Law Firm, PC Richard Lee Stavins Buchalter Kevin A. Thompson Levin Ginsburg Rosemary Simota Thompson

Judge E. Kenneth Wright, Jr. Circuit Court of Cook County

THE CHICAGO BAR ASSOCIATION Sharon Nolan Director of Marketing

4 July/August 2025